My Energy use Diary

SuiDreams

belfastgirl23 wrote: »

I have also noticed that when compared to people in similar households (2 people, detatched) we have about half their carbon emissions and are using a lot less gas than them (about half as much) although we are about evens on electric use. Which came down a little bit this week by the way, I made my 9kwh per day target bang on

All I can think is that a lot of people with even worse boilers than mine have started using the site .

I was shocked by the amount of gas being used by the households I was being compared with. Our Boiler is at least 12 years old and breaks down a lot. In fact I think its the most rubbish boiler in the world. In fact it looks like people are using more in a week than I used in a month last winter. Feeling very confussed, maybe some people have gotten their readings wrong.

A_fiend_for_life

tee hee that is unfortunate guess I'd better get the solar oven out and prey.

hmm an Aga is energy neutral if your using wood, and especially local wood, and I suppose a bread maker is more energy efficient.

Perhaps a lean week followed by a feast?

SuiDreams

Nearly gave up and put the heating on yesterday, but OH stopped me. Glad he did as the house did eventually warm up and its a much warmer day today despite the strong winds and the rain this morning. Mind you it looks really sunny out now. I'm actually starting to think that we're going to make it to November without any heating now. Mind you i think its been a lot milder than last year so far. Starting to make up for having to have the heating on till end of april/beginning of may this year. (heating normally gets switched of in march).

A_fiend_for_life

kje wrote: »

I went to Wilkinsons yesterday and bought a couple of cheap buckets. The long power showers are going and it's going to be a case of running the boiler for a few minutes to half fill the buckets and bucket washing for me from now on.

Thanks! Sounds a good plan I'll try it out on my next shower day. That will shift my electricity consumption a little bit.

Magentasue

Oh dear. We're a large family with a combi boiler and no shower (yet). We also cook by gas.

Over the summer, we averaged 26kwh gas a day. What's that - about a £1 a day? I'm more than happy to pay that for us al to have a bath and do whatever washing/washing up in basins and bowl that needs doing.

I'm not criticisng anyone's choices and fair enough if you can't afford it, but washing in buckets seems a bit extreme - there must be easier ways to save that £1 a day. And £1 a day is for six of us - in 1,2,3 or 4 people households the savings must be less.

SuiDreams

Magentasue wrote: »

Oh dear. We're a large family with a combi boiler and no shower (yet). We also cook by gas.

Over the summer, we averaged 26kwh gas a day. What's that - about a £1 a day? I'm more than happy to pay that for us al to have a bath and do whatever washing/washing up in basins and bowl that needs doing.

Just to compare we're 2 person household, also no shower, 12+year old boiler (not combi) with gas hob (oven is electric) and we used between 9 - 13KWH per day without heating.

belfastgirl23

For a 2 person household the very least gas kwh per day we've averaged is 10.5 - that's pilot light etc and a daily shower each - our hot water needs are pretty minimal beyond this.

We are currently on 56 kwh per day which allows for probably 2-2.5 hours of heat per day. So I'm guessing around 20kwh per hour for heating. So it's about £1 an hour once we get past the first 2000 units when it's £1.60 an hour...

Makes ya think hard about how cold you really are

**edit** just checked my records and our highest use was in January last year, probably when I was off work, a whopping 157kwh per day!! won't be happening this year! at current costs that would be £250 a month or £8.50 per day!

SuiDreams

Just to add we have a very small three bed semi built in the 1990's so modernish. Last winter we used 38KWH a day for gas as our highest useage and 58KHW a day the year before (when we had the back door open a lot for our then puppy).

cw18

I've only got records back to May 2006, but the highest daily averages we've ever had in that timespan were 19kWh/day for the electricity and 39kWh/day for the gas -- both on the late Nov '06-mid Feb '07 bill. (3 people in a 4 bed-detached, built in 2002, with 2 of us at home 24/7, and the third at school so includes the fortnight break over Christmas as well as weekends)

The closest comparison period I have for the same period a year later is early Dec '07-early Feb '08 when they were 16kWh(e) and 35kWh(g) -- again the highest in the 12 month period. Interestingly, all 3 of us were home 24/7 for this one..... meaning DS had his PC on for around 14-15 hours a day every day instead of approaching half the days -- so I would have expected the electricity to jump up. I did swap my desktop for a laptop in August 2007, but I really can't think what we did differently to actually bring it down

The latest comparison I can do year-on-year is 31/8/07-5/10/07 (13kWh(e), and 11kWh(g)) against 29/8/08-6/10/08 (same 13kWh(e) - which is a bit worrying as DS started college 2 weeks into this 5.5 period - but down to 7kWh(g)).

Won't be able to get another like-for-like comparison until 15th Dec, as my bill last year ran 6/10/07-11/12/2007.

A_fiend_for_life

hmmm dug a bill out for 7th Dec 2005 to 10th Mar 2006. Electricity was 9.2 kwh per day and gas was 75 kwh per day.

That cost me £239 and would cost me £430 today.:eek: I think we got about 8" of snow that February too.:j:j:j