Low energy lifestyle - in case it helps

Planeteer

We're a youngish couple, no kids, in a detached house in central London with annual electricity use of 1050 kwh and gas use of 5050 kwh, and no water bills for a half-year. As this seems low compared to typical numbers, I thought I'd share some of our lifestyle choices allowing a lower energy and therefore carbon footprint:

1. No car. I have a bike which allows me to get to work and about town.
2. No dryer. We use the garden whenever possible to dry laundry.
3. No standby. We switch off all gadgets at mains except fridge, freezer and Skybox (this has an eco setting for night time).
4. No tea/coffee. We've never drunk either, so no need for the kettle.
5. No toaster or airfryer. Prefer German or French breads, which don't need toasting.
6. No baths. Always use the shower.
7. No Aircon. Judicious use of curtains and windows to maintain natural cooling on warm days. 
8. Low number of showers. I mainly shower at work on weekdays as I cycle to work, and at the gym on weekends. 
9. Low water temperature for boiler. Reduced to about 37 C to get warm water to shower and taps, without having to heat water higher to then mix with cold.
10. Less clothes. we carefully separate outdoor clothes from indoor clothes to avoid germ contamination (pandemic habit). Conversely, for the winter i keep fleece tops and bottoms, nice n cosy.
11. Less time in the UK in the winter. Our savings allow us to be abroad for a few months every winter, so less gloom and lower energy consumption. 
12. Only energy saving lamps in the house: I don't have the latest LED bulbs yet so still using up the previous type - all from 5-10 years ago.
13. Outdoor fitness: I love fitness and the outdoors, so do as much as possible outdoors. This keeps the temperatures lower and less equipment or dirt indoors.
14. Invested in a new German combi boiler that has a lot of intelligence built into it - hoping it will result in lower gas bills.
15. Considering investing in solar roof panels,  so would welcome any tips or recommendations of reasonable installers in London?
16. Last week switched to Octopus Tracker to secure prices for next 12 months at near new SVT tariffs - only made aware of this thanks to this forum's very helpful members.

Hope this gives people some basic ideas for what's bound to be a difficult winter. 

[Deleted User]

Abroad for a few months each winter - yes, no wonder your energy use is lower than many.

Planeteer

Every bit helps.

Speaking of which, I now shop more at Lidl than Tesco.

brewerdave

Lucky that you have facilities to shower at work -many don't. Also you are fortunate that you can use a bike - a lot of people wouldn't be able to manage a daily commute because of distances involved. Presumably you are also fortunate to have a Lidls within walking distance ?

ariarnia

i think you've missed an important and significant energy use from your calculations. unless you walk to get abroad each winter then you really should include the energy of the car/ferry/plane plus what you use for the several months when out of the country? offsetting cost (paying for a long holiday rather than winter heating) isnt quite the same as actually being low energy/low cost all year round. 

but how has not being able to do that for the last couple of years impacted your bills (genuine question)?

if you are used to sunny and warmer weather then i would have expected you might have struggled to maintain your good habits over the winter while so much outdoor activity was limited. could be some interesting information there for people who will have their activities limited by cost (of activity or energy) this year. hard to argue curling up in front of the TV with a movie is going to be the cheap option... 

Planeteer

So buying one airticket abroad for a stay of 1-4 months is much more carbon friendly than short-stay flights. Also, depending on your destination, you can get tickets near the winter heating difference. Your sustenance costs will be needed either way, wherever you live. Energy costs in winters abroad always without heating, hence cheaper.

For the winter months here, I did make do with indoor activities. Luckily, our council also offers free gym and swim on the weekends. 

EssexHebridean

*err is a huge amount of privilege in your post OP, and most of it unacknowledged. 

You live in a large city with excellent and reasonably priced public transport. For the vast majority of people this is not the case. 

You are fit and healthy enough to be able to choose to use a bicycle rather than needing to account for the cost of additional transport - a huge number of people cannot do this.

You have the ability to do a significantly high cost activity - showering - at someone else’s cost - the majority cannot do this.
youngave a garden which helps with drying clothes - that is an advantage that huge numbers of people don’t have.
You clearly have a decent income/savings that allows you to travel abroad at a time of year when the majority of Brits are sitting here shivering. That decent income also allows you to consider things like solar panels, a state of the art boiler and German or French breads that “don’t need toasting” (spoiler alert - toast is a cheap, tasty comfort food for huge numbers of people, it’s far less about whether the bread needs toasting and far more about “mmmmm….toast!”). I would wager than almost everyone reading your post is not in the same position financially as you appear to be. 

In theory there are some good ideas there - but that they are presented in a way that suggests that they are accessible to the majority is problematic. Your choices aren’t “lifestyle choices” that most are able to employ simply because most are unable to fund your chosen lifestyle the first place, sadly. Some acknowledgement of that would have gone a long way to making your post far more helpful.

pochase

I also was shaking my head when I saw some of the suggestions @Planeteer listed in his post.

But to be fair you don't have to do all of them, maybe even can't or don't want to do most of them. But I think almost everybody should find at least one or two points that could be valid money savers for their situation.

I am talking less about the regulars here in forum, who have seen a lot of it in the recurring "energy saving" threads, but about the high numbers new users currently joining. And somehow thread with many suggestions in the first post might be more appealing to some, than to read through 5 plus pages.

ariarnia

Planeteer said:

So buying one airticket abroad for a stay of 1-4 months is much more carbon friendly than short-stay flights. Also, depending on your destination, you can get tickets near the winter heating difference. Your sustenance costs will be needed either way, wherever you live. Energy costs in winters abroad always without heating, hence cheaper.

For the winter months here, I did make do with indoor activities. Luckily, our council also offers free gym and swim on the weekends. 

yes the price of tickets can be near the winter heating costs and you do need to pay to live wherever you are. that's why i said you should include those costs in your figures above and not leave them out to suggest you were an unusually low energy user by comparing your costs for 8 months to someone else's costs for 12 months. 

for the winter months here you did indoor activities, so can you share what your energy bills were for those months and compare them to the costs of flying to somewhere hot and living there for those months? i'm wondering do you actually make a saving or do you about break even.

i know a few people (mostly older) who used to do something similar and it worked well for them (more because of the lifestyle not because it saved money) but generally it was only after they had taken early retirement and paid off their mortgage as most of us can't take months off and expect a job to be waiting for us back home. i did know one person who did it in his 20s but that was becayse he worked like a dog in seasonal work and only lived in rented accommodation with the bare minimum of stuff because what he earned during the summer paid for his winters traveling and he'd store his stuff at a friends house (i also knew someone who did almost the opposite and worked all kinds of jobs over winter to pay for them to go to festivals all summer). again that was great for him but i wouldn't want that lifestyle myself. not enough security for me. 

Planeteer

@EssexHebridean @pochase thank you both for your thoughtful responses. I can see that there's advantage (if not privilege - loaded word...) implicit in some of my suggestions. To be fair, I was merely sharing my lifestyle, not speaking Gospel to every Briton.  Maybe I will delete this post if it strikes a wrong and unnecessary chord for people. No harm intended...

ariarnia

Planeteer said:

@EssexHebridean @pochase thank you both for your thoughtful responses. I can see that there's advantage (if not privilege - loaded word...) implicit in some of my suggestions. To be fair, I was merely sharing my lifestyle, not speaking Gospel to every Briton.  Maybe I will delete this post if it strikes a wrong and unnecessary chord for people. No harm intended...

its your post but hearing about how other people live is interesting and can be useful. i would honestly be interested in hearing more about how you make it work and if you think you have to make any compromises to make ti work that are maybe balancing it. after all different people make different choices that are right for them to suit their circumstances so not all choices are going to be right for all people but you can only know if the choice is right for you if you have the information to make a full decision (which means both the good and the bad, not just part of the picture).