Our gas and electricity usage this week..

[Cosmos123]

Family of 4.
Supplier octopus
Have tried to see if we can cut usage recently.
I.e turned off spare freezer which was not been used.
Shorter showers
No tumble drier
Nothing on stand by
No heating yet.
Got a carpet sweeper so need to hoover as much.

Here are our results. Anyone else got results?

Was lot higher . Note the previous week we had already started to cut down so not a comparison.

Why not go to money saving expert energy forum?

forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/energy

Nice, looks like you're saving a good amount on electricity!

We've been trying to get an extra wear out of some clothes, so using washing machine less. Doing less hoovering. Only ironing essentials. TV only on if someone actively watching. Our daily usage averaged 6kw for two people last year. It's now 4kw daily - guess it might tip 5kw some days in winter, but even so that's easily £3 pw saved.

Well, we bought a hygrometer and the humidity in the house was horrific. Have mould on bathroom walls and bedroom window which was never an issue before.

wish l could put the heating on tbh.

Interesting - we have cheap thermometers, and it shows the humidity at about 50% which I think is about as high as it should be. We have got down to about 80-90kwh electricity and 55kwh of gas per week. That's four adults, working from home and using a lot of tech in the evenings. No heating or tumble drying yet. Can't seem to get it much lower.

Wow 50%. I’m jealous. It takes 2 hours of a dehumidifier to get that in our house.

We have had problems with damp before, but have tacked it with trickle extractor fans in bathroom and cellar. I haven't had to dry washing indoors yet, and we have been able to open all the windows for a couple of hours over the weekend.

I have a dehumidifier that we used to use in the evenings in winter, and I had thought I wouldn't need it this year. But I'm going to use it overnight for a couple of hours when I have to dry washing indoors in a bid not to use the tumble dryer, as that will rocket our electricity cost..

Please, please get an electric dehumidifier. This is absolutely horrendous and a real health hazard. Its just not worth it. Dehumidifiers aren't too expensive to run.

I can’t quite get over your electricity use! I’ve audited and reduced mine as much as we can but for family of 5 we are still at 65kwh. Approx 20kwh of this is teens gaming.

That same week we used 71.45 kWh 😭😱
family of 4, one of us WFH 4 days a week.

no idea how to not use that much, apart from no showers or hair drying or cooking 🙈

will definitely try harder this week, it’s not easy though!

Have you tried the following
Switch everything off from standby
Freezer must be full
Wash on economy wash with a scoop of vanish (lidl cheaper version). Full load only.
Use a manual carpet sweeper instead of hoover
Batch cook and freeze
Do multiple meals in oven and freeze
Turn fridge temp down
Led lights everywhere
No heating yet. Blankets and layers if needed
Short showers 5min
Only fill kettle for what is needed.
2 of us working from home
TV on only when someone actively watching

With these things usage went down to about 38 kwh for a week. Family of 4.
Expect this to rise in winter.

So far this week

And gas

2 wfh 4 days

Use gas hob to cook meals where I can as cheaper.
Also defrost frozen meals rather use microwave to defrost
Have air fryer but not really found it useful so rarely use.

Hi OP, are the 2 people who work from home claiming their tax relief for this ? (It’s not an awful lot but every little helps!) you apply on the gov.uk website.

Thanks for the tip.

That’s great. So the last 2 weeks we are down by almost 70kWh from normal two week period, maybe a little more as some months previous are much higher and we started reducing a few months ago. But the main things we have done are, using a heated airer and dehumidifier instead of tumble dryer, reduced our dishwasher by at least 2 sometimes 3 loads a week, and we are strict with oven use, only 2-3 times a week and when we do we do a few things, bake some cookies or something as well. We have an instant pot we’ve had years so that helps. We cook every meal at home so oven use was probably a bit more than most. We didn’t turn standbys off or anything. It could mean we don’t need the full £67 grant though so we are thinking of donating to the charity that does free plumbing services for people who need it. We aren’t on gas, we have an oil tank and that went up a lot but we already have enough to last for winter and have a fire so more sorted than most.

Got one child gaming.

Therein lies your problem (and mine). It's not just about how many people in the house, but who they are. When my kids were younger, it was soooo much easier to reduce usage. For a start, they were in bed in the evenings. And they wore smaller clothes. No way my 30something kids are going to be in bed by 9.30pm and wearing 11-12y clothes, so never going to get down to what we would have done in the past. Ours is also inflated by us all working from home, although we are all saving on petrol, and clothes can be washed less often now I don't have a pile of white shirts every week. But we all have two screen set ups and that adds up over a week.

Still no heating or tumble drying, but I have used the dehumidifier to help get everything properly dry. I put in on this morning when the room was 16 degrees and humidity was 65%. Fifteen mins later 19 deg and 53%.