My Energy use Diary

Decola

A_fiend_for_life wrote: »

I'm on a B for all users and a C for low rise flats. Ooops. Not surprising as I am ground floor single glazed.

I'm just coming out of my sulk from slipping 18 to 22 kg and 13 to 18 on the graph.:D

Your consumption figures are really good though - and 22kg is great - especially when compared to the general population.

Trouble with imeasure is that as we all get better at economising, our comparative carbon scores are adversely affected - only our consumption scores drop.

I'm ground floor too but in a small 60s semi detached bungalow - and maybe like your home, the concrete floor of mine is uninsulated and really robs the place of heat. Poor housing design and construction has a lot to answer for in the UK.

A_fiend_for_life

I'm very happy with my usage. Agree with the national usage a comparison for typical houses nationally would be a good comparison.

A_fiend_for_life

Concrete floor sounds cold. What fixes are there for concrete floors? Thick carpet and underlay seems the obvious not sure about floorboards or laminate.

This flat has a cavity underneath and airbricks not sure what that does to thermal efficiency better than concrete I'm sure. It does have a thick carpet and underlay so that helps a lot. Don't think it has insulation underneath somehow.

cw18

I'm in a "new build" (2002 detached), and we have concrete floors downstairs as well - as did my last house (1952 terraced) and my first house (1982 semi)

So it seems pretty commonplace

Decola

More recent 'solid' concrete floors have some form of insulation built in, but my home has just a thick concrete slab with damp proofing, but no insulation. As the water table here is quite high, it tends to cool the underside of the slab too.

Fiend, you mentioned that you have a cavity under your floor - that might mean it's build from suspended concrete beams, which can have insulation added below, as well as your thick carpet and underlay on top.

Most modern houses I've visited with concrete floors have been lovely and warm, and more importantly, quick to respond to the heating being on. Timber frame construction is excellent in this respect, the thick insulation in the walls keeping the heat in nicely.

By comparison, the cavity wall of my home is built of brick and brick instead of the more insulating brick and thermal block. That means that it takes a day or so to get the fabric of the building warm - not cheap with an older boiler like mine, so I just didn't bother this year, and wrapped up warm.

chivers1977

We're a 3 bed mid Victorian terrace with 2 adults and a 3 yr old and consumption showing as 26 kg and at spot 26. Pleased with that. It is skewed higher by the PC being on I think as it is on a lot of the time....

Frugaldom

Hi guys, I have switched off my storage heaters, so that should cut my use by quite a bit. However, I still need to live, work full time, cook and wash from home, so I still won't be able to reduce my power consumption to the miniscule amounts some of you guys manage. Fingers crossed for April and the better weather.

Re: the non-active members in the carbon club, perhaps it's just the novelty wearing off? I almost gave up when I moved house and the i-measure system wouldn't let me update my details to reflect my new meter, so I had to re-register, start all over again and then remove original username in favour of a new one.

Decola

Last week I used:

3 cubic metres of gas
17kwh of electricity.

That's 19kg of CO2, and a B carbon rating.

Must admit, I'm not happy with the current state of imeasure and can understand why others have given it up. I miss the written results, and prefer them to the graphic representations, each of which is in a different form.

Frugaldom

I'm thoroughly confused and the new imeasure site just doesn't like me. I'm showing as an 'E' rating and it says the following:

How much have I spent? (£s)

Your household's total energy spend over the last 17 weeks is £42,485.64. :eek: :eek: :eek:
For week ending 5th April, 2009 your household spent £1,755.94 in total.
Electricity A Rate: £1,069.04
Electricity B Rate: £256.96
Electricity C Rate: £429.94

I'm assuming there's a glitch somewhere, again! :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Edited in: they appear to have changed the formatting of the price per kWh/unit into £s from pence. If anyone else has same problem, go and edit the prices, I changed my 12.88p to 0.1288 and it looks closer to reality but there's still no place to add in the standing charge.

cw18

just been to see what's happening on the site - my readings aren't due until tomorrow - and I'm not sure what to make of it !!

I like that I now have a badge against all members as well as the club (a C in both), but my CO2 figures look wonky! At the top of the results page it says I we emitted 71kg last week - which for a 2 person household is 35.5kg each. The badges declare 35kg per person (fair enough with roundings), but the text alongside them says 39kg per person

(ETA: I've figured this one out now - the 39kg per person is the average for the group it's comparing us against. So we're a little below average for all users - 35 against 39 - and well below for all g&e detached properties - 35 against 46 :T )

In terms of financial cost, i-measure is LOW for us !!

Your household's total energy spend over the last 27 weeks is £362.50.
For week ending 29th March, 2009 your household spent £11.82 in total.
Gas meter (cubic metres): £5.52 - Main electricity meter: £6.30

But my spreadsheet (which does include vat, and I'm on a no standing charge tariff which means some units are a higher price) says spends for that week were £14.55, with £7.29 on gas and £7.26 on electricity. And for the last 27 weeks my spreadsheet gives a total spend of £458.96 !!! I used to find the individual gas & electricity figures slightly 'off' in i-measure (gas was slightly low, electricity slightly high), but the total spend was always pretty close as they balanced out... so something's changed in their calculations by the looks of things !

And according to my spreadsheet and my first post on this thread, I started weekly readings 31 weeks ago -- so what's happened to my first 4 weeks??????