My Energy use Diary

Jenny,

Apologies for not posting sooner.

I have few appliances in the house.

Kitchen: I have the oven, washing machine, fridge and kettle. A microwave or slow cooker might be useful though.

I defrost everything in the fridge before cooking. This keeps the fridge cooler and uses less electricity to cook. Most of my cooking is batch cooking generally I will cook everything in the top oven or batch cook using the hob.

Potatoes and other root veg I slice thin, about a centimetre for potatoes and turnip, as it is quicker to cook that way. Pasta and potatoes I do enough for two or three meals. Potatoes will keep well in the fridge for a day or two. Pasta will keep in water. I am told pasta will keep for up to a week in water so long as you change the water daily though realistically I don't keep it that long.

I saw a tip on pasta recently that I have yet to try out. Boil the pasta for two minutes and leave to stand for the recommended cooking time. I think a teapot stand and a couple of clean tea towels - one underneath and one on the lid, should do the job. This leaves the hob free for other cooking eg batch cooked bolognaise. As I say I have yet to try it though and have tried pasta in the flask before which can be tricky.

I flask any hot water form the kettle as the minimum is 1/2 a litre. Too much for one person. I also flask about 1/4 to 1/2 litre of water from the residual heat on the hob.

I know the fridge takes just over 5 kWh a week from summer measurement and about 3.5 kWh in winter when I was away for two weeks xmas before last. I haven't got round to living without a fridge and am not sure it would be practical.

I only have a laptop, radio and stereo in the living room. I know the laptop battery is rated at 70 Wh and lasts two and a half hours so uses around 0.028 kWh. So quite a difference to a PC.

Most washes are done on 30 C and bedding at 40 C sometimes I go for a 60 C but rarely. I line dry as much as possible but sometimes but a clothes rack in the south facing part open communal close if the weather is changable. I've found clothes will also dry in freezing weather too. Just put things like jeans upside down so snow doesn't settle and melt on the waistband.

Not sure what you do about the hair stuff I imagine it would take a bit of negotiating which is a massive understatement. Not sure if partial drying is an option - maybe hair is damaged more if it is overdried. A towel wrap was an OS way not sure if that would cut down on hair drying much - time permitting. Might take more straightening though.


EDIT: :eek:

I didn't think about doing it for potatoes too. Thanks for that I will give it a go when I've finished this batch of tatties.

I found the timing for pasta in a flask a bit awkward might try that again too.

2 C's for last week.

This week has gone totally pear shaped. The new water tank meant pressurised hot water. Wonderful for the shower, not so wonderful for the old hot feed pipe for the washing machine in the laundry room that has sat quite happily for years since the machine changed to cold feed only. Now under pressure it developed a drip unnoticed till the carpet was soggy. Fortunatly hubby in carpet cleaning business and had all the gear to sort it out. Unfortunatly my readings this week have jumped up by 80kwh with all the extra heating, fans, dehumidifier :eek:

I'm still not making much of a dent on the elecricity used, I was hoping that the lighter evenings may have made a difference but there didn't appear to be much change in my weekly electricity reading

Gas 32 kWh (down 31 kWh on last week)
Electricity 70 kWh (down 3 kWh on last week)

Ratings A+ / A+ MSE Carbon Club 3/62