Off Topic HOUSEHOLD ENERGY TIPS FOR WINTER

We must all be concerned about the cost of Gas and Electricity this coming winter.

The Government have capped costs and are telling us that the average price will be roughly £2,500 per household.

So yesterday I received an e-mail telling me that on present consumption my combined bill for gas and electricity will be nearly £3,100 per annum......that I assume includes the £400 we have all been given...(am I right in thinking that)

That is a concern......electricity is about 55% of that bill...so of course my gas is 45% of that total.

We have always been frugal with our gas central heating....we do have insulated exterior walls...so temperature wastage is quite acceptable.

Our problem is electricity....we have an electric oven (new and efficient).....we have no gas piping anywhere near the kitchen....our gas boiler is the far end of our bungalow and in the loft......lighting customs will have to change....we do like plenty of light around the place......I think when I got married...I rebelled at my parents attitude of only having lights on where you are at the time....you could always tell were my mum was in the house...if you were watching from outside.

I do think as only two people in a three bedroomed detached bungalow we do act responsibly....so properties with three/four/ five/six people in ?....what sort of bills are they looking at ?

Other than our lighting rebellion I think the only real saving we can do....is how we cook our meals.

How do you see the coming winter and how you can you be more efficient.....please share with the rest of us.

 

My advice to you would be not to necessarily trust the figures your supply company are giving you. Mine did an estimate previously of a reading when I have a smart meter and it was so far off the scale to be rediculous. I had to keep pushing them and finally got them to admit the figure was basically made up. They tried to tell me I was around £600 in debt. Eventually when I made them do it properly I was almost £500 in credit. My latest bill they gave me a refund even though I didn't want it of £495 credit. They told me originally my DD should be something like 3 times what it was. The credit I amassed was due to me doubling my DD not trebling it. Do NOT trust them and work out what your bill is likely to be from previous bills and the new tariff. It really aint hard to do.

The cost of running a heater for one person in a house is the same as for six. The heater doesn't know how many are sat around it.

 

Not quite true....one person doesn't have six baths...that's six people having one each.....one person can adjust their heating for the rooms they use....now six people could be all over the house needing heating in many places.....and those six people could be.... maybe four children who obviously aren't bringing finance into the house to pay the bills.

So the question still is.....How do you see the coming winter and how can you be more efficient.....has anyone else any ideas that they have put into practise in previous times ?

 

Partially true however you cut it. A heater is a heater and if you are that hard up then you wouldn't allow the kids to spread out around a property and heat it all independantly. If you cook a meal for one or six you are still using the cooker. You don't need 6 baths a day for a family. You'd like it but don't need it. The light bulb doesn't count how many people are sitting under it. It is just not true that a family of 6 would necessarily use numerous times more power. The problem that exists is the cost of the power you use and the lack of finances of many to afford it along with food.

 

You haven’t mentioned draught exclusion or insulation. You’d get a quick payback at today’s energy prices.

Do you have a hot water tank? If so. Is a modern one which is covered in insulation foam?

If so, do you have a choice whether to use gas or electricity to heat the water? Chose the source with the lower cost per kilowatt hour. It always used to be gas (by a factor of 4) but all that may have changed. Your gas supplier may charge you per cubic m, in which case you need to multiply by the calorific value which should be shown on your bill.

When cooking on the hob, boil water in the kettle not the pan. It’s quicker and wastes less heat to the room.

How do you run your heating? Ours is admittedly a late Victorian pile without cavity walls but with double glazing. When we moved in, I ran the CH as I had in newer properties we’d had before ie a burn in the morning and evening, off during the night and workday hours. That doesn’t work for an older house: it encourages condensation and damp. So I run it all night with a modest thermostat setting (say 6 pm until 8 am weekdays and 19 degrees) in the autumn and spring) and all day in the deep winter months. Surprisingly, it doesn’t use more gas because I’m not repeatedly heating a house up from stone cold. But you should take your own meter readings to see what’s happening for you. I should say we light a fire in the living room almost every day, so 19 degrees is OK for the other rooms. It may not be enough otherwise.

 

Draught exclusion.....quite good.

Hot water tank.....no hot water tank .

Gas or electricity.....The place is set up for only gas water heating......we saved space in the bungalow by moving the boiler to the loft....which released a large hall cupboard to be used for other things....in hindsight we have found that with the boiler now in one end wall in the loft....it can take awhile for hot water to reach the kitchen which is furthest away.....the en-suite bathroom is nearest and the shower room is mid way.....so if one of those is using hot water....the kitchen water is flowing very slow....(the old boiler was a monster probably usable to power the Titanic.

Oven/Cooker...........Induction hob and double oven set up.....the induction hob only works when you have a sauce pan etc in contact with it.....the ovens do not leak much heat...but still expensive to use. We have no micro-wave oven.

Heating......................Couple of hours in the morning...mainly for bathroom use by Mrs Plym......we only use it in the evening if we feel it is necessary....with insulated walls the heat loss is quite efficient.......thermostat never higher than 70f/20c.

Towel rails................The bathroom and shower room both have oil heated rails.....which we never use.....but have been experimenting with this week....just to see if it might be better than turning the C/H on.......haven't proved either way as yet.......we do have a smart meter which I didn't want.....haven't learnt to "drive" it yet.

 

Probably none of that works for you then!

I still think you should experiment with not switching your heating on and off in short bursts, especially when we get into the proper winter months. I know it's counter-intuitive but certainly in a place like this it's better to keep it running fairly constantly, and surprisingly, maybe even marginally cheaper. It's certainly more comfortable: just enough to be "not cold" rather than actually hot.

 

Quite often throughout the winter months we were surprised how you could feel an amount of warmth still as you came back indoors.....wall insultion does seem to be worth having....it was already installed when we bought this property.

 

Is that inside the wall or outside? I believe both are possible.