How was your month?

Cautiouslyoptimistic

Sorry, that should have said 4,666 kwh 'per year' in the second paragraph not 'per day'. I cannot find however any kind of edit facility on this board otherwise I would have amended the post directly.   

Spoonie_Turtle

Cautiouslyoptimistic said:

Sorry, that should have said 4,666 kwh 'per year' in the second paragraph not 'per day'. I cannot find however any kind of edit facility on this board otherwise I would have amended the post directly.   

Welcome   you will get the edit button after you've been a member for a while (or maybe after a number of posts), it's not publicised anywhere though so I don't know how long/how many posts.

1hr a day for heating sounds extremely optimistic to me, when it gets colder - October has been mild.  Though if your log burner really does the job so none of you get uncomfortably cold, great!

MuckChucker

With the log burner, you might just get away with only 1 hour of gas heating per day. Really you'd only need the CH on in the morning as nobody want to be getting up in a baltic house, a fire in the evening could heat the bulk of the house. If you have a cheap source of wood, have at it. In saying that, I'm not so sure the current regular price of wood works out cheaper than gas CH.

Paspatur

End terrace where at this time of year the gable end and back of house get no sun (if there is any)
October electric 106 kwh - one fridge freezer, one freezer, no dishwasher, no tv, one laptop which I switch off and on during day when it's charged and switch off at night, washing machine 3 times a week, tumble dryer very occasionally, iron very occasionally, toaster 6 times a week but it's a minute, nothing on standby, kettle couple of times a day
October gas 841 kwh - GCH, hot water and all cooking
I am in the NE of Scotland so have not had the mild October weather being enjoyed elsewhere
I just found out I can get hourly data not just daily
Main gas useage is between 6am and 8am, the average outside temperature when I got up at 6am has been 8.8 degrees in October
From tomorrow I am going back to bed until 8am with a hot water bottle, my coffee and my laptop
I already go to bed early plus the front of the house gets afternoon sun (if there is any)
Live alone and semi retired, go to office once a week
Will be interesting to see what difference going back to bed makes for November numbers although of course it will also get colder

thriftytracey

Welcome to the log burner fan club!

Lovely and cosy last night, a bit hot at 25 degrees!  No more logs then and it cools down gradually to bedtime.

Cautiouslyoptimistic said:

First time poster so hello everyone

I'm a single dad with three teenagers living in a 4-bed detached in the NW of England. About 6 weeks ago my So Energy gas and electric fixed tariff 'So Cherry' came to an end and I was placed on their 'So Flex' tariff which is essentially capped at the October rates.  The estimated gas and electric cost for the year was £4,687.28 and approximately £3,000 of that was predicted gas use. I must admit I nearly passed out as the bill had doubled.  Anyway, I'm a Contractors Commercial Manager for a job so I don't mind interrogating the costs. So, I scheduled out all of last years gas and electric use and I was quite astonished. 27,500kwh gas used and 5,100 kwh electric. 24,000kwh of the gas was between October and March, so basically last year I had the gas central heating on permanently for 6 months.  Ridiculous. 

So, I've now put a spreadsheet together allowing maximum 1 hour a day between October and March and this will reduce 27,000 kwh down to 4,666 kwh per day. Just in october last year we used 2,048 kwh and this year that same use was 338 kwh. 

My plan which I've put into action already is to use my 5kwh log burning stove in the living room on cold days.  I've increased the log storage at one side of the property to 2,000 Litres in 3 plastic garden Keter boxes with hinged lids.  I get 2 builders 1 ton bags of chopped firewood logs delivered on the 1st of each month for £55 a bag, and he even throws in a large bag of kindling wood for that, so all in a month £110.00 or £660 for 6 months saving £2,340 of that estimated bill.  October has gone to plan and I'm not expecting to deviate. The log burner is great, it really warms up the living room and connected dining room and with the hall door open the heat trickles up the stairs.

I only bought the Blithfield Clock log burning stove 3 years ago as a bit of a feature to replace a 30-year-old gas fire, but what a life saver that has turned into.  Me and the kids love it, and it will save us a packet so much that we are now in a large amount of credit with our energy supplier having built up a credit balance over summer and I'm now going to ask for the majority of that back since we fully expect to manage until at least next April on a monthly payment of just £230 per month. 

We are always on the lookout for bits of wood locally, people having work done, skips, people getting rid of pallets etc.  Makes great kindling and I love chopping it up with my axe!  Never had to buy it.  Even picked up old dried bits of kindling from the woods whilst walking the dogs.

Mercedes55

I've really been trying hard to use as little gas and electric as possible.  We have a 4 bed detached house with 3 reception rooms and a conservatory downstairs and I just counted a total of 14 radiators in the house, which is a lot when there are just 2 of us in the house all day long and we are really only using the living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom!

Our useage for October was 8kwh a day of electric and 6kwh a day of gas.  I've got the room stat set at 16.5c for half an hour in the morning and this morning it actually clicked on and by the time we had come downstairs and checked our smart meter we had already used £2.50!  I struggle to get our electricity useage down any more, I only use the tumble dryer for an hour a week for towels as I just hate them being rough.  Dishwasher goes on about every 2 or 3 days.

We are £700 in credit with Bulb and at the end of the month we move over to Octopus and from what I have been able to find out online their variable tarrif seems more expensive.

Workerdrone

Alnat1 said:

@Workerdrone have you tried urning down the temperature on your combi boiler to 50-55C? The radiators are a little cooler. as is the shower water but you probably won't really notice much difference and it will make a saving on the amount of gas you use.

Also try to get all the family on board with washing your hands using the cold tap, rather than firing the boiler up each time. Many of us on here realised this was what we did, hot tap on, wash hands, it's just getting tepid when you've done, all the hot water is in the pipes going cold again.

Its a good point but as my system is Honeywell Evohome with the opentherm bridge the flow temperature is already controlled by Evohome to keep the boiler in condensing mode it modulates down to the minimum burn via the opentherm bridge. I have already turned my shower water down to minimum and use cool showers plus I keep and eye on how long the kids are in for. I already hand wash in cold water, not sure about the rest of the family.

Nights are a little colder now so I put the heating on when it gets dark and only really heat the lounge. I have 4 small rads, two in the hall are on TRV's set to 2, one small in the downstairs toilet and a bathroom towel rail to get towels dry which are just open on the circuit so they warm while the lounge warms. I've just done my working estimate for the month and Im at around 40kwh a day gas and now back up to averaging 10kwh electric. Not too happy about that. Works out at £190 a month after government rebate. Ive got £500 in credit on the account and another £1100 stashed away in the offset for heating so will be ok.

I've not used the oven in months. I tend to use the slow cooker on low a lot and a little cooking on the gas hob. Daughter has incontinence problems so afraid that's a lot of washing and some items my wife insists on using the tumble drier for (towels, underwear etc)

My biggest problem is my radiators in most of the house are largely older style either none convection or double none convecting, I put a big double convector in when we did the kitchen and that heats the room fast, but the lounge and bedrooms still have old style and take too long to heat up meaning the boiler is firing longer than I'd like. I like big rads for low flow temperature use. Trouble is they're not standard sizes so I can't quickly swap them out without having a plumber to change the pipework. Was quoted £450 to change the lounge one. The rad itself can be had for £200. ho hum :-(

Workerdrone

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Cautiouslyoptimistic said:

Sorry, that should have said 4,666 kwh 'per year' in the second paragraph not 'per day'. I cannot find however any kind of edit facility on this board otherwise I would have amended the post directly.   

Welcome   you will get the edit button after you've been a member for a while (or maybe after a number of posts), it's not publicised anywhere though so I don't know how long/how many posts.

1hr a day for heating sounds extremely optimistic to me, when it gets colder - October has been mild.  Though if your log burner really does the job so none of you get uncomfortably cold, great!

That is awfully low. I find first thing in the morning after Ive warmed the 3 bedrooms and kitchen up to 19 and had a shower I'm already up to 10-12kwh of gas use. It's 14 degrees outside now and we are double glazed and insulated but still the bedrooms drop to 15, 16.5 and 16 on a day when there's no sun for thermal gain. Last February I was using 58kwh of gas a day average and on some cold days 88kwh. After cutting down on all my heating times I did my spreadsheet and aimed for 40kwh a day. It seems I am going to overshoot that target. With reduced heating times, the fabric of the building isn't warming up enough so every time the heating comes on its having to work harder to get each individual zone back up to the 19 degrees Ive set it to :-( Kind of blowing the budget.

MuckChucker

Workerdrone said:

Alnat1 said:

@Workerdrone have you tried urning down the temperature on your combi boiler to 50-55C? The radiators are a little cooler. as is the shower water but you probably won't really notice much difference and it will make a saving on the amount of gas you use.

Also try to get all the family on board with washing your hands using the cold tap, rather than firing the boiler up each time. Many of us on here realised this was what we did, hot tap on, wash hands, it's just getting tepid when you've done, all the hot water is in the pipes going cold again.

My biggest problem is my radiators in most of the house are largely older style either none convection or double none convecting, I put a big double convector in when we did the kitchen and that heats the room fast, but the lounge and bedrooms still have old style and take too long to heat up meaning the boiler is firing longer than I'd like. I like big rads for low flow temperature use. Trouble is they're not standard sizes so I can't quickly swap them out without having a plumber to change the pipework. Was quoted £450 to change the lounge one. The rad itself can be had for £200. ho hum :-(

Yeah some of our radiators are old imperial sized models. I had planned to change them out when renovating bedrooms but in the end only actually swapped one (and I think I went too small with that one) so it's still a project on my list. I did measure them all up and with some extended tails I should be able to do the lot myself, moving pipes would be overkill for something that nobody will notice. 

Workerdrone

MuckChucker said:

Workerdrone said:

Alnat1 said:

@Workerdrone have you tried urning down the temperature on your combi boiler to 50-55C? The radiators are a little cooler. as is the shower water but you probably won't really notice much difference and it will make a saving on the amount of gas you use.

Also try to get all the family on board with washing your hands using the cold tap, rather than firing the boiler up each time. Many of us on here realised this was what we did, hot tap on, wash hands, it's just getting tepid when you've done, all the hot water is in the pipes going cold again.

My biggest problem is my radiators in most of the house are largely older style either none convection or double none convecting, I put a big double convector in when we did the kitchen and that heats the room fast, but the lounge and bedrooms still have old style and take too long to heat up meaning the boiler is firing longer than I'd like. I like big rads for low flow temperature use. Trouble is they're not standard sizes so I can't quickly swap them out without having a plumber to change the pipework. Was quoted £450 to change the lounge one. The rad itself can be had for £200. ho hum :-(

Yeah some of our radiators are old imperial sized models. I had planned to change them out when renovating bedrooms but in the end only actually swapped one (and I think I went too small with that one) so it's still a project on my list. I did measure them all up and with some extended tails I should be able to do the lot myself, moving pipes would be overkill for something that nobody will notice. 

It is a bit of a curiosity that when we moved from imperial sizes to metric they didn't keep radiators at physically the same size.