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

FreeBear

sniffydog said: 10-15 year old gas condensing boiler for central heating and an ancient cylinder which heats up for 3 hours a day for our youngest's bath every day and washing up etc

Quite a few are making the assumption that the water tank is heated by an electric heater.... If it is turn the darned thing off.

You should have a thermostat on the side of the tank - Turn it down to 50-55°C. This will be hot enough to kill any bugs, and still give you plenty of hot water.

Have a look at fitting a programmable thermostat (in the hallway ?) - You can then set different temperatures throughout the day/week. With a bit of tweaking, this could potentially save you 10% or more if the temperature is kept relatively low. In conjunction with a new thermostat, get TRVs fitted on all bar one or two radiators. Normally, a TRV is not fitted to the radiator closest to the thermostat, and the radiator in the bathroom is often used as a heat dump (so no TRV). Get the radiators balanced properly when you have TRVs fitted.

nadsat

Your house and energy use is very similar to ours. We are also in a 5 bed Victorian semi with double glazed UPVC windows. There probably isn't that much you can do.

Switching off one of the fridge-freezers is a possibility - we have one large freezer and one large American style fridge-freezer but both are fairly new so I think they are reasonably energy efficient. Even so I'm thinking we should decommission the separate freezer for now.

We are lucky in that we have two showers, one electric but the other fed from the hot water tank heated by gas. It is useful to have an electric only shower when the boiler conks out or if we get into gas supply problems but I'm trying to get everyone to use the other shower.  

Laundry/dishwasher - these are on too much here and a battleground between me and wife. Electric oven too as we have a gas hob. 

But heating is the big one and I can't see any alternative to using gas central heating as you do and using electric heaters to keep home office(s) tolerable (I can though deduct some heating costs against my company tax bill). Also weekends, holidays with kids at home means heating on more. 

chris_n

nadsat said:

But heating is the big one and I can't see any alternative to using gas central heating as you do and using electric heaters to keep home office(s) tolerable (I can though deduct some heating costs against my company tax bill). Also weekends, holidays with kids at home means heating on more. 

If the home office is in the house it makes no sense to heat the room (2 in this case I believe ) with an electric heater. You can heat 3 rooms (6 in ghis case) for the same cost using your central heating. This will help to keep the fabric of the building warmer and make the whole house more comfortable. 

EssexHebridean

It might even help to even out the peaks & troughs of your current use of the GSH - keeping the place less warm for more of the day might well end up being more energy efficient than heating it to tropical, then letting it go back to cold, then back to tropical again! 

ariarnia

chris_n said:

nadsat said:

But heating is the big one and I can't see any alternative to using gas central heating as you do and using electric heaters to keep home office(s) tolerable (I can though deduct some heating costs against my company tax bill). Also weekends, holidays with kids at home means heating on more. 

If the home office is in the house it makes no sense to heat the room (2 in this case I believe ) with an electric heater. You can heat 3 rooms (6 in ghis case) for the same cost using your central heating. This will help to keep the fabric of the building warmer and make the whole house more comfortable. 

there might be something weird like you can only claim back heating costs for the office if you can prove usage and the radiator is easier to work out or you can use a plug in energy monitor (i think someone we no keeps a monthly record of kWh in a chart that there accountant uses at end of year for deductions). ive got a little 750w oil radiator under my desk here in the office (aka spare bedroom) but that doesn't heat the hole room. enough to keep me warm while i'm not moving around much and the area under my desk a good cat sleeping place

Alnat1

Heated throws wrapped around your lower body and legs would keep you toasty warm when working from home and wouldn't be seen on team calls. Work out much more economical than electric heaters.

ariarnia

Alnat1 said:

Heated throws wrapped around your lower body and legs would keep you toasty warm when working from home and wouldn't be seen on team calls. Work out much more economical than electric heaters.

might be great for the op but for me that wouldn't work. we do have heated throws but i wouldn't want to wrap in them and have the cables running around the base of my (swivelly) chair. right now the little radiator is tucked at the back under the desk and the cable runs safely along the wall. i know it sounds weird but i dont really like my legs being tangled. i had a bit of a fall a few years ago and its made me one of those people who clings to banisters and avoids hights. OH is trying to convince me to try one of those heated gillet things but its really my feet that get cold. maybe i need to put my feet on a hot water bottle? but really i don't use it very often at all. only on the coldest days. i prefer to try and take my meetings on my work mobile so i can walk around and keep the blood flowing that way. 

(and they say sitting on it/folding it can damage the wires which i dont know how true that is and theyve held up to the kids for a year now so they can't be that delecate )

nadsat

chris_n said:

nadsat said:

But heating is the big one and I can't see any alternative to using gas central heating as you do and using electric heaters to keep home office(s) tolerable (I can though deduct some heating costs against my company tax bill). Also weekends, holidays with kids at home means heating on more. 

If the home office is in the house it makes no sense to heat the room (2 in this case I believe ) with an electric heater. You can heat 3 rooms (6 in ghis case) for the same cost using your central heating. This will help to keep the fabric of the building warmer and make the whole house more comfortable. 

Well we have 17 rads in the house - I suppose I can go round turning some off but it's a bit of a chore. My office is fairly small and doesn't need much to make it comfortable. I do though run the GCH for a bit during the day when it's very cold to stop the house getting too cold. Also, leaving the hot water on permanently has a side-effect in heating a big rad next to the boiler in the kitchen/diner and so that room is warm and it's also a garage conversion with great insulation. 

ariarnia

nadsat said:

chris_n said:

nadsat said:

But heating is the big one and I can't see any alternative to using gas central heating as you do and using electric heaters to keep home office(s) tolerable (I can though deduct some heating costs against my company tax bill). Also weekends, holidays with kids at home means heating on more. 

If the home office is in the house it makes no sense to heat the room (2 in this case I believe ) with an electric heater. You can heat 3 rooms (6 in ghis case) for the same cost using your central heating. This will help to keep the fabric of the building warmer and make the whole house more comfortable. 

Well we have 17 rads in the house - I suppose I can go round turning some off but it's a bit of a chore. My office is fairly small and doesn't need much to make it comfortable. I do though run the GCH for a bit during the day when it's very cold to stop the house getting too cold. Also, leaving the hot water on permanently has a side-effect in heating a big rad next to the boiler in the kitchen/diner and so that room is warm and it's also a garage conversion with great insulation. 

its probably a question of cumulative gains versus inconvenience. shutting off or down some radiators and putting away the electric rad will save you money. how much money we dont know unless your willing to try it. might not be much. might be a surprising amount. and it might be that when you try it you dont find you like it and decide to switch back or its not much of a bother either way so may as well stick. you started the thread asking why you were using more than average. and its probably not going to be one big thing. if you dont try this then there are other things you could try. but if all the little things are too insignificant for it to be worth you doing then thats your answer to the question in your op. after all as martin used to say 4 a day buying lunch at work is more than 1000 a year  

nadsat

ariarnia said:

its probably a question of cumulative gains versus inconvenience. shutting off or down some radiators and putting away the electric rad will save you money. how much money we dont know unless your willing to try it. might not be much. might be a surprising amount. and it might be that when you try it you dont find you like it and decide to switch back or its not much of a bother either way so may as well stick. you started the thread asking why you were using more than average. and its probably not going to be one big thing. if you dont try this then there are other things you could try. but if all the little things are too insignificant for it to be worth you doing then thats your answer to the question in your op. after all as martin used to say 4 a day buying lunch at work is more than 1000 a year  

Not my thread - I chipped in because our house is similar. I don't think there is much to be done with heating other than do without for longer on GCH and also be sparing with heating an individual office with an electric heater. 

All the rooms in our house are in use everyday bar one bedroom and a small storage room so I guess I could turn these two rads off. I don't like leaving rooms in our old house for long periods without heat though as there's potential for condensation/mould.