How to reduce electric costs in a home…

[robj20]

Do you sleep with your bedroom door closed? That'll make condensation as worse as it can be.

I'd suggest getting a window vac to hoover off the condensation in the mornings.

Yes need to have the bedroom door closed for the heating otherwise the best will just disappear down the stairs.
Or I could turn the heating off and open the window.
Seems no way to win.

We do have one of those window vacs, but wife annoyingly continues to pile crap on the window sill so you can't access the bottom of the window.

 

[Armageus]

Big bay windows in our front living room and front bedroom really hurt us. You can feel the cold off them when you go near them and they're brand new so up to spec.
The condensation is doing my head in though every morning when it's really cold. What do you do leave the windows open and pay a fortune in gas.

Same issue in the bedroom. Thinking about opening windows during the day in the with the trv off. Can't see any other way

Do the windows not have trickle vents? (or can they not be fitted?)

 

[The1nonly1]

I hate using my tumble dryer due to the cost of it. Looking at how much I use per day in £, I can easily see what day it was used and even the hour it was used. I tend to hang clothes on a drying rack throughout the day and night with my heating on a schedule.

 

[Liquid_Entity]

Sounds like most issues here are caused by WIVES !!

 

[Simon42]

We use more electricity than gas and its mostly because of the home networking, CCTV, two servers, alarm system and even all those little IoT devices. I did check a lot of devices with a plug in meter and found a couple of surprises (microwave left switched on but not running and an older extra freezer) which helped and its worth checking.

Another thing we did, not for saving money initially was to get a dehumidifier designed mostly for drying clothes to augment the tumble dryer (condenser type so not very efficient). The reason for this was it can dry anything unlike a tumble dryer and we're lucky to have a spare room we can run it in and it's been fantastic at getting things dry in the winter which we always struggled with before if they couldn't go in the dryer.

However when I checked its power use versus the tumble dryer I found its very efficient and now we only use the tumble dryer for things it can do and we want fluffed up like towels.

 

[BUDFORCE]

Sounds like most issues here are caused by WIVES !!

Are you surprised?

 

[BUDFORCE]

To be honest our tumble dryer is at least 20 years old, I should probably replace it with an energy efficient one, but energy bills aside I'm not sure throwing out a working tumble dryer to buy a new one despite being more energy efficient would be good for the environment overall either?

 

[Liquid_Entity]

To be honest our tumble dryer is at least 20 years old, I should probably replace it with an energy efficient one, but energy bills aside I'm not sure throwing out a working tumble dryer to buy a new one despite being more energy efficient would be good for the environment overall either?

Donate it to someone else in need perhaps. Better than skipping it.

 

[sovietspybob]

Worth working out the actual wattage draw from any home sever type stuff, get one of those cheap energy meters that you plug in between the wall and the device and go to town on everything in your house, it'll drive the missus nuts for a week but it's well worth it, it saved me quite a lot realising what was worth turning off and what isnt.

After we got a smart meter about 18 months ago i realised my home server was drawing 130watts that really adds up being on 24/7, i replaced it with an ultra slim desktop with an external hard drive which brought the constant power draw down to 7watts. So before 130w contestant draw is about 65p a day or £20 a month now it's down to £1 a month which i can justify.

I'll echo though that there's no way to avoid dishwasher and washing machine being on pretty much daily if you have kids, there's just the 3 of us and it'll average out to the washing machine on being on at least once a day and the tumble drier. For us though as we have solar panels using the tumble drier in the summer is especially free as long as it's not really cloudy so we never really use the washing line. I wouldn't worry too much about short duration appliances like kettles, hair driers etc, sure they draw 3000watts but they're only on for like 2 minutes tops, lots less if its just for 1 cup of tea.

 

[dlockers]

After we got a smart meter about 18 months ago i realised my home server was drawing 130watts that really adds up being on 24/7, i replaced it with an ultra slim desktop with an external hard drive which brought the constant power draw down to 7watts. So before 130w contestant draw is about 65p a day or £20 a month now it's down to £1 a month which i can justify.

Ah snap. I have an ESXi whitebox in my mums attic that's been there for about 10 years. Maybe I should retire it - I've been blaming the pond pump/filter for a decade now

 

[Foghorn Leghorn]

Sounds like most issues here are caused by WIVES !!

The best solution I found for this was years back when we were both working. Transfer the utility bills to her, once the the first bill hit her account she soon went round turning things off and stopped winding the thermostat up to max

 

[Syore]

The things i find that helped reduced my overall energy cost was to get those extension sockets that had switches on each socket and i would go one by one and turn off any entertainment devices like the TV, soundbar etc... every night. I would soon ending getting those smart sockets once i find it too repetitive. This has save me around £30 a year which is better than nothing.

AFAIK isn't there a government grant for free loft and wall insulation? Maybe that would help save a lot of green in the long run.

 

[theone8181]

The things i find that helped reduced my overall energy cost was to get those extension sockets that had switches on each socket and i would go one by one and turn off any entertainment devices like the TV, soundbar etc... every night. I would soon ending getting those smart sockets once i find it too repetitive. This has save me around £30 a year which is better than nothing.
AFAIK isn't there a government grant for free loft and wall insulation? Maybe that would help save a lot of green in the long run.

The problem with that (as my parents do this), is that some devices doing lime being turned off all the time. Their oen clock now no longer works (only 3 years old) from being flicked off every day. I'm sure they have something else with the same problem, i'd bet that leaving stuff on standby like tv's must use less than a fiver of leccy a year.

 

[BigBoy]

under EU regulation all TV and TV equipment has to maintain a standby usage below 10 or 20w per hour (cannot remember it totally but something along those lines). so unless you have 6+ Tv's on standby constantly then you are not loosing that much tbh.

 

[Maccapacca]

Sounds like most issues here are caused by WIVES !!

Sundays make me cry. Washing machine on all day, tumble dryer ditto. She will iron for hours on end I’m sure she has a problem. Oven on at least twice with dinner and often my daughter baking, then the dishwasher at least three times plus anything on the hob.

Plus every single light on.

I get called grumpy for having a moan

 

[UTmaniac]

Only boil the kettle above the minimum line what you need and then refill to anticipated requirements on next boil straight after, using heat in element to warm up freezing cold water to room temperature in winter.

If electric only, immersion heaters eat electric, after all they are giant kettles. If you have Economy7, set the timer to heat the immersion for the last ~45mins of cheap rate night electric, unless you have asbestos skin and demand boiling baths you probably won't need to warm up immersion water for a bath from late afterboon onwards.

 

[Martynt74]

Sundays make me cry. Washing machine on all day, tumble dryer ditto. She will iron for hours on end I’m sure she has a problem. Oven on at least twice with dinner and often my daughter baking, then the dishwasher at least three times plus anything on the hob.

Plus every single light on.

I get called grumpy for having a moan

Could be worse, you could have to do your own washing and cooking

 

[Mysterae_]

I used to use a Wattson by DIY Kyoto before it stopped working. It was very good at showing the household just how much we were paying for electricity in real time. It was good for reducing the parasitic consumers in the house, in fact I managed to get the house ticking over on less than 200Wh. Thought the thing was going to explode when I had the tumble dryer, kettle, oven and immersion heater all on at the same time for experimental purposes - easily over 10kWh.

 

[Semple]

I used to use a Wattson by DIY Kyoto before it stopped working. It was very good at showing the household just how much we were paying for electricity in real time. It was good for reducing the parasitic consumers in the house, in fact I managed to get the house ticking over on less than 200Wh. Thought the thing was going to explode when I had the tumble dryer, kettle, oven and immersion heater all on at the same time for experimental purposes - easily over 10kWh.

There's quite a few of these devices on the market now. Some are shockingly expensive for what you could build similar for about £5-10 in parts.

 

[psd99]

drying clothes without a dryer is crazy long
They have been on a rack for more than 2 days now and need a few more hours

tumble drier would have had them dried in a few hours. Also still thinking about the nas…. 24/7 must cost a fair bit of energy but someone pointed out the hardware costs of hdd’s being constantly turned off and on