Best ways of cutting energy usage?? Last year 63,000 Kwh Gas and 9,300 electric

jimjames

Jonesy_40 said:

k_man said:

@Jonesy_40
What are your water usage habits?
Lots of baths or long showers?

And are you taking daily meter readings? Makes it much easier to keep track. e.g. if gas is high now, when heating is off, there can't be many causes.

Hopefully I can take meter readings when British Gas install a meter on Saturday!

Do you not have access to the meter at the moment? Worth starting recording asap on both meters - but could you have only one supply which would halve the standing charges?

Robin9

@Jonesy_40  To echo @jimjames above  -  do you mean you have never read your meters -  why not ?     They ae not always easy to read - watch out for the decimal point.  Read them today and compare with your last bills.

merchcon55

Have you tried to unplug every item in your house - including refrigerator, chest freezer - for say 2 hours?

Take a meter reading at start and at the end of 2 hour period. 

No food should spoil in 2 hours of no power.

If everything has been turned off your meter should not have moved at all - perhaps minimally if say boiler has a timer, but that will be a tiny amount of electricity. 

If your meter has moved, then perhaps there is something "hidden" consuming power? 

As you have removed your Aga, take a Gas Meter reading say at 8am and another at say 5pm - assuming both your boilers are off, and you have not done any cooking on the hobs ( i am assuming gas hobs for this example) - the meter reading should be exactly the same - that is, no gas consumed.

You need to rule out if you have any faulty meters - and while I can't imagine this in a detached home - you need to rule out if by any chance your meter is somehow hooked up to someone else's usage. Again I can't see this being possible, but at this stage, rule out nothing !

merchcon55

The next test I would try is running each of your boilers for say 1 hour, with the normal number of radiators you would have on. Take a meter reading at start and at end of hour and see what your boiler consumed in that hour. Then run for another hour - the second hour should use considerably less gas. This test is a bit harder to do in summer - try and pick a "somewhat cooler day".

You need to determine if your boilers are functioning correctly. I note you say they were installed in 2018. Yes they are relatively new - but new things can malfunction. You need to rule this out.

As mentioned above, tumble dryers can be a biggie ! As you have 2 young children, I can easily imagine you doing a wash a day and using the dryer say once a day (perhaps not in the summer months).

Say you used the dryer 250 days of the year x 5KWH per use = 1250 KWH just for one appliance.
Washing machines running high temperature washes - I'll estimate 2KWH per wash x 365 days = 730 KWH

To round numbers, say this is 2000 KWH/year - you may not have much of a choice to lower this - our 3 kids are now all grown up, but trust me, washing machine and dryer could easily be on twice a day ! 

Let us know how you get on

Robin9

Has BG installed the Smart today ?   They will have left the reading from the old meter and using that plus a previous Actual reading should give you an accurate usage.

Can you share those readings with us please and the results your detective work.

Mstty

I wonder if they have found the hidden heated swimming pool and second aga in the basement?🤣🤣

littlemoney

Heat and all live in one family living/dining room is a thought.

gazapc

merchcon55 said:

As mentioned above, tumble dryers can be a biggie ! As you have 2 young children, I can easily imagine you doing a wash a day and using the dryer say once a day (perhaps not in the summer months).

Say you used the dryer 250 days of the year x 5KWH per use = 1250 KWH just for one appliance.
Washing machines running high temperature washes - I'll estimate 2KWH per wash x 365 days = 730 KWH

To round numbers, say this is 2000 KWH/year - you may not have much of a choice to lower this - our 3 kids are now all grown up, but trust me, washing machine and dryer could easily be on twice a day ! 

Let us know how you get on

The OP said they had as a new heat pump dryer. My dryer per reasonable load uses about 0.8 kwh.  So way less than your 5 kwh.



Honestly, the OP needs to stop faffing around with minor appliances. A freezer as mentioned above is not going to be using that much electricity or gas.

Concentrate first on the big loads, which is anything to do with heating. And yes, check for faulty meters but don't expect them to be wrong.

Robin9

OP's bill even at last years rates would have been scaring me and I would have been asking questions a long time ago.  Today should have been a big day with his brand new Smart but he's been very quiet.. Quite why the meter had to be Smart so that he can read it I don't understand.

fezster

Jonesy_40 said:

What_time_is_it said:

If you are committed to staying there then I would advise on getting as much insulation as possible/appropriate. Get your boiler services regularly too of course.
In winter, do you need to heat all the rooms?
And there must be ways you can get that electricity bill down too.

Thanks for the response.
No, we only heat rooms we are in and the the bedrooms at night. Although the radiator in our room was broken all last year, so only 2 bedroom radiators at night.
The roof is well insulated. All the windows were fitted with internal Storm secondary glazing windows in 2020 so we shouldn't be losing too much heat this way. The boilers are both Vaillant  Eco Tec Plus 838's installed in 2018 - I'm not sure how efficient they are.
Trying to figure out why the electricity is so high!

Two 38KW boilers is insane. Keep in mind the average heat loss in a house is around 10KW and boilers are usually oversized for HW requirements only.

I'd recommend doing a whole house heat loss calc or paying someone to do it for you. Something like heatinghub or a local heating engineer who understands how to do the calcs properly and can offer you expert advice on sizing radiators, boilers, control systems, insulation etc etc.