Help needed

paradisiac · 1 Jun 2012 at 19:10

hi, ok so i got my first electric bill since living on my own, and was shocked at how much it was, as i wasnt using much more as a couple with 2 kids than i am now as a singleton.

i have found this but obvs its in $ (not sure if that matters. does anyone know of any uk versions that could help me estimate whats using it all.

cheers.

paradisiac · 1 Jun 2012 at 19:33

sorry, was doing a million things.
i work 5 days a week, so am only home home in the evenings and 2 days. my house is a lil 3 bedroom place.
bill was £236 for the quater (£78ish a month).
heating is gas, which was £44 of that for this quater (but my cooker hob is gas so most of it i imagine went on that too).
i must admit i had 2 pc's on 24/7 so maybe this was the cause for the high price. other than that i have the usual :
fridge/freezer - 24/7
microwave - 10mins say 7 times a week
cooker (electric) - probs say 1 hour 4 times a week
water boiler thingy - i switch on for 3 hours a week to heat water for bath
power shower - 20mins a day
tv - probs 5 hours in the evening and then my 2 days off for the kids 12 hours each
lights - well, only have 1 60w bulb in the front room on all evening, the others are just flicked on and off, and a low energy bulb on for 12 hours 3 nights a week for the boys

othat than that i cant really think of much else.

paradisiac · 1 Jun 2012 at 21:50

Jono said:
What you should do is get one of those energy monitor things. I'm surprised your supplier hasn't sent you one. See what the usage is when you turn things you think use power on/off. Can be quite surprising.

Power shower - does it heat the water too? 20 mins a day - that's quite a lot :O

im not sure if its a power shower, thats just what the lady at EDF told me it must be. its just an electric shower that heats the water. i have to buy a monitor from edf they dont do free ones apparently.

touch said:
I'm confused?
Do you mean gas hob with electric oven?
(if so, how are using the oven 4 days a week and the microwave 7 days a week?)

i have 2 days off where i eat twice a day, and on those days i have my 2 kids. but yeh, it probably does work out at more like 4 microwave and 4 oven (as the beans and stuff are cooked in the microwave if we are having them with an oven meal)
yeh the hobs are gas, but the oven is electric, which is annoying.

paradisiac · 2 Jun 2012 at 10:41

Monserrat said:
I can echo the comment about PCs. I ran 2 PCs around the clock for cancer research and the leccy bill was £40/month. Switched one of them off and it went back down to my usual £30/month.

yeh i think this might be my problem maybe. i had 2 low spec pcs on 24/7 as home servers. i have sold 1, and have now turned 1 off, so will keep an eye on the meter and see how much im using. dad said he had a plug that will tell you how much the socket is using i can have, so when i next see him i will grab it and see how much the pc is drawing.

paradisiac · 2 Jun 2012 at 15:32

my electric is £0.14 per unit, show is 7.5kW so yeh, when you put it that way it probs is a bit chunk of it.

paradisiac · 3 Jun 2012 at 11:23

is there any way of finding out how much electric my TV is using (without one of those energy meter plugs) as i checked when i got home from work (after cooking tea) and in the evening the only things i had on was the TV and front room light, and i used 3kW in like 4 hours, which seems very excessive.