Energy Usage Double the 'Average' Am I missing something?

Merlin139

How big or small is your Cylinder? We have 170 ltr and that provides 3 showers for adults.

Uses about 7 ltr a minute. When its heated by the boiler (most of the year by I-boost from Solar Panels) its on for an hour and provides a full tank of water for showers and more than enough for washing up.

Apodemus

No-one has asked where you are in the country.  The heating season (and heat-loss from the building) varies quite a bit across UK and makes a big difference to any assessment of whether your use is above or below "average" for your area.

TheGardener

Does anyone in the household have a gaming computer (not a console but the big neon-lit things that serious gamers have)...killer usage. Also, halogen bulbs of the sort where folk have a dozen in the hallway and kitchen - also killers...
Experience on this forum has shown there is rarely one smoking gun - its a combination of things. 

ariarnia

we found that consoles are also big energy drains (the combination of the console and tv and soundbar). son is the main gamer and screen time is limited (the console is in the lounge) but we can definately tell on the app when he's been playing for a few hours. and we didn't realise until recently that the console has different sleep modes (that wake it up faster) so spent a while going through the settings looking at the different options. 

Spoonie_Turtle

If it's at all tolerable, using the electric shower in eco mode should probably halve the consumption - but that has to be balanced against whether the reduced flow means taking longer or not.  Although even you can cut each shower's consumption by a quarter, that will make an impact with 4 every day!  Our lowest usage month ever so far came after the main change we made was using our shower on eco as it was warm enough - yes it was summer so we didn't need electricity for heating and not much for hot water, but compared with previous summers' usage the difference was noticeable.  We have one person that showers every day, one that showers twice a week on average, then two others who mainly shower only in the summer (which they did more often this year, especially with the heat wave).

My only experience is with electricity but if you can make sure the 4th bedroom has some form of insulation somehow that should help make a difference to your gas usage.  You might have to be creative within the bounds of what your tenancy agreement allows and what would be tolerable - the thought briefly crossed my mind of 13.5tog duvets on the ceiling if it came to it!  And also whether laying thick underlay is possible if it isn't there already.  If not, rugs might be some help.

Turning the thermostat down will likely make the biggest difference, but obviously anything else you can do to help in smaller ways will be useful too.  Things like making sure draughts are stopped as much as possible, lining curtains with fleece blankets, etc.

xeny

sniffydog said:

Thank you for all the responses. We do run a dishwasher daily but don't have a tumble drier. Unfortunately yes the electric shower is one that heats the water. Otherwise it would empty the small cylinder in minutes. The big appliances aren't particularly new or efficient as they came with the house. I've already turned the thermostat down to 19 (with much complaining from everyone), insulated the cylinder better etc  But some things that we can do - shorter showers, run the hot water cylinder for less, layer up and use the electric heaters less in the day.  Thanks! 

You may find labelling the thermostat like this helps acceptance:

https://twitter.com/NoContextBrits/status/1585239982285148160

Check there's adequate ventilation around the fridge freezers to allow the hot air they generate to easily escape. If they make the space they are in warm, they have to run more to keep the contents cool.

RobM99

In summary - if it produces a lot of heat for a long time - it's £££. 

A gaming PC  -  found out that  can use 0.5 KwH - if that's on 4 hours a day...
Kettle? Only on for 2 minutes, costs me 3p for a kettleful (which I think is still a good deal!).
BIG fridge/freezer  - not got one but I imagine they can use a lot.
Electric heaters  -  could cost up to £1 an hour. Ouch!

deano2099

If you've got electric showers and a dishwasher, you certainly shouldn't need to heat the cylinder for 3 hours every day just to bathe a baby. I'd start with experimenting with this and what's the smallest amount of time you can get away with. If you've already done that, then it does sound like something is wrong somewhere.
For reference we heat ours for one hour a day and that's enough for at least 3 showers and some washing up. We've never actually run out of hot water so we can probably bring that down a bit more.

dunstonh

A gaming PC  -  found out that  can use 0.5 KwH - if that's on 4 hours a day...

With many gaming PCs, it can have a running rate, of over 0.5kW.  Especially on graphically heavy/3d games or cpu/gpu intensive games.

BIG fridge/freezer  - not got one but I imagine they can use a lot.

Efficient American F/F about 0.68kWh per day.   Inefficient ones closer to 3kWh a day.

EssexHebridean

deano2099 said:

If you've got electric showers and a dishwasher, you certainly shouldn't need to heat the cylinder for 3 hours every day just to bathe a baby. I'd start with experimenting with this and what's the smallest amount of time you can get away with. If you've already done that, then it does sound like something is wrong somewhere.
For reference we heat ours for one hour a day and that's enough for at least 3 showers and some washing up. We've never actually run out of hot water so we can probably bring that down a bit more.

Ours runs overnight a couple of nights a week (we're on E7 electric so a slightly different set up to the OP) on days when we know we will want to do washing up & MrEH will be shaving first thing, then on the intermediate days we pop it on for 20 minutes at most - that would give water more than warm enough for bathing a child - indeed, you'd need to add some cold to it.