Understanding electricity and gas usage

[lisalisa]

Hi All ,
does anyone know to where one might turn to understand the most greedy appliances in the home and what contributes the most to energy usage ?
By way of background our energy usage more than doubled last month for no apparent reason that I can discern - in fact we are actively doing what we can to reduce usage such as not using tumble dryers .

I don’t refer to the actual costs of the energy used as I know those are increasing all the time ; I refer here to the actual units of energy jumping wildly .
We have a normal ( not smart ) meter for both .
All ideas / help greatly appreciated

Oh . No - one ?

Start with anything that heats (kettle, electric fire, tumble dryer, washing machine, dishwasher etc) and anything that cools (fridge, freezer etc.).

@lisalisa it probably doubled last month because the outside temperature dropped so much. That means your central heating system has to work harder to keep your home at the temperature on your thermostat.

Do you have your heating on constantly, or just at certain times of the morning/evening? And where do you keep your thermostat? Is it fixed or movable? We cut down our usage significantly by only having it on for half an hour in the morning then 4-10pm in the afternoon/evening. We turn off all the radiators except in the rooms we're actually using - the downside of that is we have to keep the doors closed, but we've got used to that. We put the thermostat in whichever is the coolest of the rooms we're using. We set it to 18 degrees, which is fine for us - cool but comfortable if you're wearing layers.

We only turn all the radiators on if we have visitors. We live in a solid brick house, with no cavity wall insulation, so we've put reflective foil behind the radiators to help minimise heat loss.

Ours shot up once we started to use the tumble dryer rather than line dry, it's gone back on the airer with a dehumidifier to reduce usage. When DD2 left the freezer door ajar one night our usage was horrendous. She's not done that since.

Is there a reason you don't/can't have a smart meter?
When you say your energy usage doubled do you mean the cost or the Kwhs?
If you get a smart meter then you can track each and every item to see where your usage is higher.