Energy bills - in deficit already (no Summer credit)

[OneFrenchEgg]

Four bed house, five adults / teens. Gas central heating. Already £150 in debt (payments set at £200 a month). I switch lights and plugs off all the time. On a variable tariff.
Anyone else not building up the usual Summer credit this year?

Air fryer and slow cooker a good idea, air fryers especially so if people are in the habit of cooking a few fish fingers or similar. Things charging are less of a worry, the usage is tiny.

Showers could be costly, especially if you have an electric shower and anyone spends more than a few minutes in there.

Our electric shower has a rating of 10.8 kW. At price cap rates, that's about £3 an hour. If five people each have a single 5 minute shower a day, that's nearly £40 a month, just on showering. If anyone has more showers, or spends longer in there, obviously it gets more expensive.

But you need to have a proper conversation with the rest of the family if they're not being careful with usage. Make it clear how expensive it's become and how it's not affordable.

Aren't the teens all interested in saving the planet anyway? Surely that should have them turning lights off, keeping their showers short and not putting clothes in the wash because they wore something for half an hour then dropped it on the floor?

We’re not in credit.
We’re paying £120 per month and I take a meter reading every month to track. We’re currently paying for what we use.
3 people at home but it’ll drop when youngest goes to uni.
The biggest consumption of electricity for us is electric showers. I think I calculated it at about £2.50 an hour. If one person spends 15 mins a day showering that’s 60p or £200 per year per person. So potentially £600. By cutting that to 3-4 mins you can save loads.

@OneFrenchEgg how long are peoples showers ? Do you use dishwasher / tumble drier ?

Showers I think, have banned tumble dryer for sometime now, dishwasher a lot - probably because of the meals.
Just a shock really because usually we would be in credit and to see a debt before we even put the heating on is scary.

We have a simple shower timer. Just sticks to the wall and you press a button. It beeps after the time you want.

With 5 adults, it will add up.

Take a look at this thread

www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4600620-the-true-cost-of-running-electrical-devices-a-useful-guide

I'm tumble drier queen in the winter months. I'm going to have to get really good at drying indoors.

It's quite possible to cut down drastically - no dishwasher /once a week .5 min showers , no tumble drier . Our usage was 13kw a day it's 6 now

Oh that's a helpful link thank you. We have a timer when I cracked down on water waste. Unfortunately clothes get worn once and then dumped in the washing bin - am trying really hard to crack this habit from them.

We are in credit, paying £200, using about £110 combined for a 4 person household. Both WFH, several TVs, electronics etc. BUT no dishwasher, heated towel rail or underfloor heating. We have a non-electric shower, tumble dryer only gets used to finish off drying as an absolute last resort. Everything gets washed on cool and line dried. Most appliances get turned off at the wall after use and very careful to only turn on necessary lights (ie single lamp rather than multiple-bulb lights). Disabled so unavoidable medical appliance usage but let it run on battery rather than continual power, and lots of clothes changes. I’m an eternal scrimper though so I think probably on the lower end of the usage scale anyway.

Tips on how to dry clothes in winter without the heating on and without using a tumble drier? Everyone will have damp and mould in their houses!

I was just reading about that on an energy thread in the group someone linked. I'm thinking maybe paying the launderette big machines once a week to control costs. I don't know if that would work but I don't like the unknown.

I’m nearly 2 months in credit, and happy to be there with what is predicted to happen.
My offer is £500pm, I don’t think so !

Anything that heats like shower, washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, kettle will use more energy than charging, tvs, lights. So those are the areas to focus on.

showers - ask teens to reduce time per shower. if you have some taking 10-15 minute daily showers v 3-5 min it will make a huge difference.

the temperature thing is why they say use a lower temp on washing machine or dishwasher if possible.

one cup type kettles. It only then heats for the actual water used rather than full kettle at a time.

immersion water heater. Ours is electric, old and uses the most electric of the whole house. There’s no way to control it. It’s being replaced soon

I feel like we have showers under so tell. The washing machine and dishwasher are used twice a day though. Blenders, pans, general crockery - we haven't had typical family meals for years. I don't know if hand washing is cheaper?

I saw a TikTok about how your internet router uses lots of electricity, and how we should be switching it off at night. Anyone know if it’s true ?
DH insists on leaving our router and Sky box on 24 hours a day, says it causes problems by turning it on and off all the time.

EDF in their "wisdom" asked me for a reading, paid me my credit balance back then tried to put my dd up by the amount they'd just credited! It wasn't a huge credit - £65 - but still..

Routers don't heat anything, so I wouldn't have thought they use lots of electricity.

On my internet router it says 12 V, 1.5 A, which should mean (remember Ivy Watts?) a power consumption of 18 W or 0.018 kW, so in a year would use 0.018 x 24 x 365 = 68 kWh per year if you never turned it off, which at 0.28 per unit is about £20 a year. So barely noticeable and probably not worth turning on and off if it upsets the settings.

Are you using them on the eco settings? We have switched dishwasher from intensive to eco washes. It goes on every day but only once. The washing machine also will make a big difference. I do the washing at the end of the week and can see the energy use jumps higher on those days.

Twice a day for washing machine and dishwasher will be very expensive. Hand washing pans will be cheaper, and all eating the same meal so you only have to cook once. There’s only three of us in our house but we only use the washing machine twice a week and dishwasher every other day.

I now double spin my washing before drying it to remove as much water as possible. I have a dryer that uses a sensor to know when to stop, this is more economical than just guessing with a timer.
I agree, leaving damp washing around the house in winter is a bad idea!

I don't know if hand washing rather than dishwasher is significantly cheaper because it uses so much more water especially as if you have a combi boiler, you often have to run a lot of water before it gets hot.

Our dishwasher on the eco setting uses about 0.8 units per cycle, so I'm happy with the cost to not have to wash up. Just make sure it's full before using it, but don't fall into the trap of leaving it to fill up and needing to hand wash something that's dirty as that uses extra hot water.

How many live in your house? If you just put crockery and cutlery in the dishwasher, and hand wash big items (not under a running tap) you should be able to run the dishwasher less often.

I did that calculation too!

I got our house 'background' usage down from 40 watts to 30 watts by altering a setting on the set top box - so it's in full eco mode now. It just takes longer to start up. I could get it lower but I don't want to turn off the router - there is a lot of discussion about whether that's good for it or not.

I don't get too excited about turning things off at the wall. I don't think that makes too much difference.

That's a good point about hand washing big items. And switching to eco. We have a mix of disability and working patterns in the house meaning some sensory issues and rigid diet for one, night shifts for another and don't eat family meals as a result.

We're in a four bed house. Pay £229 combined DD. Currently sitting £475 in credit - am hoping with the £400 payment and any more credit we can build this and next month, we might be okay.

I've stocked up on wool socks, oodies and vest tops for under clothes in the hope we can limit our heating to a timer rather than 'On' for the majority.