Units of electricity a day…

[Mummy289]

Hi, ever since moving to our house we have used double the electric 🤣.
Just wondering what you think, does this sound right. We do use a lot I know, it’s just so expensive 🤣.
4 kids in a 3 bed house. (3 eldest have asd so we have more washing than normal).
We use 18 units a day on average.
-tumble dryer on 3 times a day
-washing machine 3 times a day
-dishwasher once a day
-hubby works from home.
-electric oven
-solar panels 😬.
-kids charge iPads and have Xbox.
Does this sound right? I’m assuming it’s the tumble dryer?

That's around what we use - there are six of us in the house and we do two loads of laundry a day, and at least one of those goes in the tumble dryer. The dishwasher is on twice a day. Plus the oven and other normal life stuff.

Well, I know my iMac uses a lot less than my son's beast of a gaming laptop. And the PS5 is as and or worse. But even my iMac is connected to a monitor, as is my work laptop, and while they may not draw huge amounts of power compared to an iron or tumble dryer, they are on for several hours a day five days a week. All adds up! So while they may not make a huge difference on their own and used occasionally, they can be expensive if you them all the time.

That said, I no longer have to fill the car up every week ...

So you moved into a new house 9 years ago and it shot through the roof.

> So we blamed the oil heating at first thinking it was using electricity. However this was 9 years Ago but we were so tired and so on auto pilot we just carried on.

How old is your oil boiler, and is it in an outbuilding? If so, in what condition is the outbuilding? And your house - stone? Single glazed, double?

Old oil boilers CAN suck electricity, and especially if they are a) in a crusty old outbuilding and b) are old and c) you live in a house with poor insulation.

Our electricity bill in our last house was outrageous, and a lot of it was because the boiler was constantly going on and off and on again, trying to maintain the (very low) temperature in a house that wasn't built to have central heating.

The minute we moved into a newer house, our electricity halved. And we are still on oil, and our boiler is still in an outbuilding, but it's a far better built outbuilding, and the boiler is half the age of the old one.

I'm a single adult with no kids in a one bed flat. I average 3 units per day at day rate and up to 10 at night with economy 7. I've been keeping a log of my weekly usage in a note book for the past 3 years and it's interesting that I can now tell which weeks I've had the oven on more often or done more wash loads than average. I have electric shower but no tumble dryer and only one phone to charge and one tablet. The TV is turned off every night when I go to bed as is the wifi. In summer the only electricity used over night is the fridge. I've had an entire week where I have used less than one overnight unit.

3 wash and dry loads a day is a lot, could you dry without it or reduce the loads per week more generally.