Money saving ideas /Energy prices

[Smelly32]

Does anyone have any ideas about money saving they could share?

Maybe switch to a cheaper brand/shop when grocery shopping. Money saved could go towards the cost of energy bills.

Any others ?

@GeneLovesJezebel

Soontobe60 - glad you said that about turning radiators off, it is false economy. I’ve seen it on here a few times.

I'm not sure I agree. We have Evohome which means the rads in every room are controlled independently; they have their own schedule and their own temperatures. We have unused rooms turned off (or very low temp), with the doors closed, and draught excluders under the doors. Our gas bill is low compared to other people with similar sized or larger houses.

I agree if you're open plan or doors are open, there's not a lot of point though.

Also interestingly (at least to me) I did some calculations based on our washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher. I was thinking of line drying stuff to save ££. Turns out it wouldn't help much.....

We have a heat pump tumble dryer, which (based on the manufacturers info, which I appreciate may not be entirely accurate) it costs us 31p per cycle (was 22p pre today's price rise). So if we used it 5 times/week, every week of the year, it cost a total of £79.53. So yes it would save money not to use it, but then I'd have to factor in re-washing sometimes when a bird poos on the washing (we have a lot of trees) so I wasn't sure it was really worth it.

For comparison the washing m/c was 34p per cycle (it's a 10+ year old machine) and the dishwasher 26p per cycle.

I based my calcs on 5 machine washes & dries, and 10 dishwashes/week and overall it cost £304/year on the new prices from today.

I was disappointed that line drying wasn't the answer I was looking for! Some saving yes, but not as much as I was hoping for.

Of course these are based on whatever the most efficient cycle is, for the manufacturer to base their stats on, but might be helpful to people.

The anger at the cycling suggestion is hilarious, why so angry? And it’s a class indicator now?!
I’m not a cyclist btw, it wouldn’t work for me but I don’t get angry at people who suggest that it works for them.

I also don’t have a slow cooker so I’m angry that people are suggesting it and think that is a typical middle class solution

Can anyone explain why electric showers are so bad - the chart scottishnames linked to is really helpful, but dearie me, the electric shower!

@darlingdodo

Can anyone explain why electric showers are so bad - the chart scottishnames linked to is really helpful, but dearie me, the electric shower!

Electricity is more expensive per unit than gas in the first place; and heating anything with electricity is much less efficient. A 10 kW shower uses approximately one kWh of energy in six minutes. Which adds up if you have four or five people in a household each taking a shower every day, especially if you’ve teenagers who spend forever in there.

Which adds up if you have four or five people in a household each taking a shower every day, especially if you’ve teenagers who spend forever in there

Totally

We have a shower timer to help

Luckily there's only two of us using the shower and we don't stay in there for hours! It just seems such an extreme amount of energy - I always thought that kettles, ovens, electric fires and the like would have been higher, but they use less than half the energy.