General Chat

Bob, yes I have a washing machine/tumble drier but never use the drier, a dishwasher that we run every two days and sometimes that is on quick wash, a fridge and a freezer.

Ann
glos

OMG we pay currently £217 a month for both electricity and gas! Not very pleased with our supplier as they never read the meters in time for the statement so it's always estimated. When I get round to it I'm going to switch back to quarterly bills as I find it easier. We do live in a big house and have 2 gas boilers as we have a self-contained annexe.

OMG we appear to be really lucky!!!!

We've a four bed town house, tho we are terraced. Four kids so lights on all over the place however much we nag them to turn them off. We also have a washing machine used every day, and a tumble dryer also used a lot. Cook by gas, heating also gas.

Elec is appox £40 a mth, and this is via a key meter so not the cheapest way. Last gas bill ( couple of weeks ago) was £79.

Heating not been turned on yet this year.
And it makes a great difference that we're middle terrace, as my sis who has exact same house but end of terrace has her heating on loads more.

A lot of recent media comment about switching things off to save electricity has been misleading to say the least. It has tended to concentrate on AV equipment i.e. PC's TV's DVD's phone charges, which actually use very little electricity. What they should have concentrated on is the real fuel guzzlers, which is where the real savings can be made.

Electricity consumption is measured in killowatt hours, where one killowatt is a thousand watts. We typically pay around 18 pence for each killowatt hour we use.

So, for our 18 pence we can have a one bar fire on for one hour, or a hundred watt light bulb on for ten hours - same energy use, same cost.

Typical energy usage in watts is

Tumble Dryer .........4000
Vacuum Cleaner ....2000
Kettle.....................2000
Hair Drier................1500
Clothes Washer........500
Hand Blender............400
LCD TV....................120
100 Watt bulb...........100
Refrigerator...............100
Lap top PC.................75
Low energy bulb..........11

You might think you're saving money by switching to energy-saving lamps, or plugging out equipment on standby, but this chart shows you that's not necessarily true.

They might use only a fraction of the electricity that other appliances use, but at 4000 watts (4 kW), a clothes dryer uses energy 360 times more quickly than an 11 watt low energy bulb. Lights are usually on for much longer, but even if you use a lamp for ten hours and a clothes dryer for only one hour, the dryer still uses 36 times more energy!

thanks gremlin, do you have the figures for a dishwasher that heats from cold?

We took advantage of the fix price option on British Gas some 3 years ago for a 5 year period to 2010. We had JUST done it when read in the financial pages of Mail on Sunday that it wasnt such a good deal!!.
Well it has been for us, we pay £48 per month for electric and £28 per month for gas.#
We have gas for the warm air central heating and water via a multi point unit. We have the two part tariff on Electric so I DO try to set things up like washing/drying on the overnight cheaper rate..We cook on Electric but I use the microwave and a steamer more than the cooker.We live on Salads.cos we like em lol!! during the summer with a jacket potato done in m,y all singing all dancing microwave, We dont stint because of the cost its just we like salads!!
We live in a 1960,s terraced house that is well insulated. we both now pensioners so every little helps!!
Shirley

Ann,

Dishwashers are rated at around 1000 watts. Obviously if you use the low temp economy wash it will be heating for far less time than is you use a high temperature one.

Another thing that people can consider. If you are charged at a lower rate off peak, consider running those appliances you can overnight. That will virtually halve your energy costs for those items.

I just noticed a typo in the price per kwh I quoted. approx 10p per kwh is what wee pay, but there will be those who are on higher tariffs, so check your bull for the rate applicable to you.

Thanks Gremlin.

ann
glos