Am I doing something wrong (laundry related!)

[alabasterangel]

Trying to cut down on our mega combined fuel bills of almost £200 p/m for a three bed terraced house. (trying to cut down/save money in all ways really, but thats fodder for another thread I think!). Several friends have commented that I seem to do a lot of laundry; I estimate for a household of me, DH, DD(4) and DS(1) I seem to do probably on average 3 or 4 loads a day. I don't think I over-launder, but friends with similar households all seem to say they only do one or maybe two loads max. Heres what I seem to do in a week and in () the loads of washing it creates:

Bedding for our bed, daughters bed, cot. One bed change a week each. (3)
DS's Grobags, prob has a clean one every third night, totalling (1) per week.
Bathsheet and towel each for me and DH, bath towel each for DC's, bathmat. Change weekly (3). Handtowels for both loo's I change twice a week, teatowels prob three a week, so totalling (1). Swimming once a week so 4 lots of swimwear, two grown up towels, two small towels (2).
PJ's and vest for baby (clean every day, so 7 lots) and PJ's for daughter who invariably gets breakfast down hers and it's rare she doesn't have a clean pair most nights, totalling (2). DS's daytime clothes, plus the invariable changes due to leaked nappy, spilt food, bibs etc (1). DD's non-uniform clothes, if shes going to play somewhere after school, weekend wear etc (1)
5 work shirts for DH, 5 t-shirts he wears under work shirts (cold office!) (1)
DD's school uniform, polo shirt, skirt, tights, vest, cardigan. Rarely a day passes where I don't need to wash the whole lot. She's only little and gets lunch on herself, or glue, snot, paint, etc! probably (2) a week although I do have to wash her burgundy cardis seperately as they run.
My work clothes, I have a clean top/blouse every day and try to make trousers last two days, so would guess (1) total a week
non-work clothes for me (wear two nights running, jeans and top for example), weekend clothes, and same for DH (2). PJ's for me, again I invariably end up with baby breakfast and am a bit fussy and change every second night. DH's PJ's once a week so (1). DH is also going a lot of work on the house and garden, and I seem to get a load of work clothes at the end of the weekend too (1)

So thats 21 loads, before anything "incidental" happens - bed accident (rare, but still occasional), changing cot sheets daily when baby has a snotty cold, someones coat needs a wash through, washable sofa covers if something gets spilt, matress covers need a wash, etc, etc.

I wash everything on a 30 minute fast wash where possible. I use a 40 degree slightly longer wash for bedding and towels, and do an extra 10 minute 1600 spin to get them as dry as possible.

And I know I'm a bandit for doing it, but 80% of all the above goes through the dryer too - so therein lies my theory that a significant portion of our fuel costs derive from the above! The dryer is often on for 2+ hours a day.

I'm tight as a wedge with the heating so don't want to start drying stuff on the radiators. Do heated airers work? I don't want another outlay of £30 odd when I really can't afford it unless I will be able to recoup that relatively quickly.

There must be something I can do to cut this back or significantly save money. Anyone got any bright ideas?

I think they've inputted the numbers wrong.

Is the boiler turned right up? Water stat set to.60?

Energy monitor showed me how much energy our tumble dryer EATS.

Now I dry everything on racks indoors and on radiator racks (don't care if we look like a laundry). Then I'll do a v short 'spruce up' tumble by putting the dry things I want de-creased in with a wet, rinsed out flannel. It works. For towels I put in a wet rinsed out tea towel.

sounds rather a lot.
4 people here too and we do:

• towels/ kitchen cloths/sponges 1 load every 2 weeks or so (change towels in between)
• bedding every week, alternate between adult and dc bedding
• darks, wash whenever basket is full
• jeans, whenever we need clean ones
• lights (don't have any pure white stuff)
• socks, get washes separately as we are a smelly feet family.

roughly do 5 loads per week.

have a 7kg drum and try to fill it well. no tumble dryer, dairer is at a drafty place on the top landing. no iron, just hang up things as tidy and straight as possible and fold

Fluffy - boiler is new, energy efficient, and the rad temp on the boiler is set to mid-way (three out of six) and tap water temp set at 'e' which is the most economical setting for the boiler. Thermostat in the hall on 18 and all radiators set about midway.

Called eon. They say if we switch all gas appliances off and watch the energy meter it should baseline to zero, thus proving there is no problem with the meter. Tried this, it works. She was pretty aghast at the usage and circumstances though! She is asking the team manager from the efficiency team to call me on Monday.......

All that aside, I shall be treating myself to that bottle glass of wine later, as I have managed to do only 2 loads of washing in three days, and even so the basket is by no means overflowing....... Hurrah!!!!

When I had my room thermostat fitted by plumber said to turn up all the radiators to maximum. That way the heating would actually be on for less time.

So room thermostat at 18 degrees. It is cold. Heating comes on, rads on full blast go on. Within a few minutes the ambient temperature comes up to 18degree. Rads turn off. Drops a bit - quick blast - turns off. Residual heat from hot radiators lasts.

If you have mid-temp rads then surely the effect would be:
Room thermostat at 18 degrees. Rads come on at mid blast.... heats the space and nearly gets to 18 degrees - finally does. Takes longer than full blast. Finally gets to 18degrees - goes off. Mid temp radiators cool - temp goes down....heating comes back on - mid temp radiators struggle to get it above 18 degrees...so heating on for longer.

I would seriously think about turning the rads on to max. Turn down/off those in rooms you do not use (though I would be tempted not to turn those down too much so they do not become ice-boxes which suck the warmth from the rest of the house). You may well find your heating bill goes down as it has to work less hard to do the same ambient temperature.

I may be talking out of my bottom though.... but worth a shot - as to be honest you cold not pay much more .

Are your bills based on actual readings or have they been estimating and done it wrong? Do you check your meter readings?

When we were with eon we had quartley bills of £900 for a one bed flat, where both occupants were out all day 8-4. They swore the bills were correct and basically said we were just high users. I used to open the bills and cry as we had no way of being able to afford nearly a £1000 per quarter.

Then we found that they had transposed the readings repeatedly, so reading day useage was recorded as night, this made it a huge leap and made it look like we had used loads when we hadnt.

In the end they got so tied up in not being able to read our meter properly, it was an E10 tariff, that we had no bill to pay for nearly 12 months.

Try turning appliances on one at a time eg turn the boiler on for an hour and see how much it uses for that hour on the meter.

I switch everytime we move as we always seem to end up back with eon and I refuse to hand over my cash to them.

Bills are based on readings not estimates. Our energy smartmeter communicates the live readings back to eon which are indeed correct (I.e. I have checked them on the physical meter itself against the smart energy meter thing and yes, they are correct.

If no luck finding a 'problem' somewhere then yes fishfingers I might well try that - or might do it for a day on the same timer settings and compare the kw usage.

Gas should not be this complicated and testing....!

When I was comparing gas prices etc for mil the energy companies based an average home on readings of 16000kwh for gas, I dont see how a terraced house can be twice that.

Somethings wrong, something is literally eating your gas.

If you go on money saving expert when you get chance they might have others on there who have experience of this.

Just a thought on the electricity bill.

Showers.

Our combined gas and electricity is GBP 50 per month for the 3 of us in a modern semi. We have a dishwasher and tumble dryer, probably a load of washing a day.

Dh is a bit anal obsessive, and has identified my daily hair wash shower as being a big cost, as I do linger a bit. Some of my showers were costing over a quid.

Shorter, cooler showers

I wish I got the chance of a long shower! DS(1) is banging on the glass and I'm lucky to get conditioner in my hair. If I shave both legs it's a good day. DCs share a shallowish bath every other day. Am a about to run their bath now, and DH have a shower after working all day, so ill watch the meter with interest but it doesn't show a peak at that time of day normally....

Will post something on MSE later, thanks for that idea.....!

Am mighty jealous of the £50 a month bill!!!!

you dont use much more than we do on electric (5341 compared to your 6236) but your gas seems horrendously high (18033 compared to your 33,000). What gas appliances do you have/use and for how long/how often? There must be an issue with something as the figures just dont seem correct.

p.s. we dont run a tumble drier like you do so the increased electricity consumption would be explained by that.

Only the boiler (combi, new, efficient) and the hob on the oven ( oven is elec, hob is gas).....gas is only used for water on demand (no tank) and heating radiators.

Heating is on a timer, on for prob 2 hours a day till now, upped that to 4 hours yest, and today overrode that for another hour early afternoon today as it was really chilly. Even on an extravagant day I'd say 5 hours max as the fires take over heating in the eve as soon as the Dcs are in bed......

5 hours a day in a 3 bed terrace can't use 33,000kw? I don't think 24/7 in a 3 bed terrace could use 33,000 kw!!!!

Has your meter been changed recently - were the figures checked to see if they were correct (replacement meters are often refurbished old ones and will have a starting value on them rather than starting from 0 again)

From online here:

Check your bill to make sure it's correct. Mistakes include:

*an inaccurate meter reading has been used by mistake ? check the reading on your bill against your meter
*you have been billed for the wrong property ? check the address on the bill
*you have been billed for the wrong meter ? check the meter reference number (also called MPR or MPAN) on your bill against the reference number on the meter itself
*you have been billed for the wrong kind of meter ? check whether your meter is imperial (four digits) or metric (five digits), and that your bill shows this correctly.
*If any of these apply, tell your supplier and ask for a new bill.

our heating is on for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening so probably about 9 hours a day. We have the thermostat set about 18-20 degrees so the heating will go on and off as required to maintain that temperature. Our only other gas appliance is the hob.

Oh, it's an actual Smart Meter?

If I understand correctly, the physical meter in your cupboard (or wherever) is a Smart Meter - the separate display it just shows what the Smart Meter tells it. If one's wrong, so will the other be.

There have been problems in the US with Smart Meters overcharging 1600 people, because of a design fault. Though that may have been a different design from yours.

But it's a new technology and the faults may not be well understood. I wouldn't be too confident that the guy you called out to check the meter can definitely say it's not faulty.

There's certainly something wrong somewhere.

Oh dear. Smart Meters overcharging in Australia, too.

Home Heat Helpline

More linkies here

Hmmmm, not showers then.

It took us a smart meter, and quite a bit of meter watching and being really really careful to get our bills down to that.

We did have a head start in that it is a well insulated house, and we have taken care to always replace appliances with efficient ones when any of them dies, even if it cost a little bit more in the short term.

I don't dry heavy items in the machine, they are put on an airer on the landing, you don't need a radiator on, they will air dry as long as it's not freezing in there. Even if you put towels, jeans, jumpers etc on the airers overnight and then popped them in the drier to finish it would save alot of electricity.

I have a washer dryer and the dryer takes an hour to dry 4 adults T shirts so only light stuff does in there. We are a family of 6 and I do 2 loads a day, would probably do 3 a day if I could get it all dry. When there were 4 of us I'd do 2 loads a day, 1 light, 1 dark and extra washes at the weekend for towels and bedding so probably 16 loads a week back then.

Don't know if this has any relevance in the UK, but this thread about the Australian Smart Meter probs has a v useful post by someone who works in the industry (T Bone at 2011-Jul-29, 6pm AEST):

"One very common problem is the Meter Program Structure is setup incorrectly by the network & you end up registering off peak consumption twice. This can be very hard to prove without an installation inspection."

He details how to force an Australian energy company to check properly and admit an error. God knows if that is of any use here.

Sorry, not what you want to be doing.