how to cut down electric use and still keep warm?

[spiritinthesky]

we are the most frugal household i know;yet we are still spending about £20.00 a week on electricity.(have got one of those monitors which i stare at horrified)i wouldnt mind so much if the house was warm,but we are permanently cold.its an old drafty house,no central heating,v.few mod cons and we use 2 wood fires for heating.Our 3 offspring have little 400w heaters in their rooms,which i am forever switching off,but i feel so mean,their rooms are really icy.please give me some tips.we alredy wear lots of clothes!

Electric is the most expensive form of heating. I assuume you are heating all your hot water with electric as well? If so that will be very very expensive.

Can you afford to get a wood burnig stove with a back boiler so your hot water is heated and at least one room will be warm? They are much more effiicent than open fires.

Could you afford to fit a gas/diesel boiler and some radiators? I grew up in a big old Elizabethan house with no heating just as you describe and then we got diesel powered central heating and it was fantastic.

Low energy lights of course will help but heating with electric is really your problem.

Blankets. (Sitting cuddled up under one at the moment)

Wear wool. Scarves. (I wear one almost all the time)

I feel for you - we have gas-fired central heating and we are still cold.

Do you have one of those gagets that measures how much electricity different appliances use?

I imagine it is the heaters though & there's not really much you can do about it if the heat is needed.

It can be things like the fridge or freezer that clock up quite a lot (especially if old or they have worn seals), as they are on all the time. Can't think of much else, unless you haven't already changed your light bulbs for low energy ones throughout the house.

It doesn't actually sound like alot for all heating/cooking/appliances, we pay alot more for eleci plus oil. Not that that helps.

I think tumble driers and flat screen telies use alot too.

thanks for response,sorry betadad,i should have said ,one of our fires is a woodburning stove,and its true, that room is lovely and warm,no back boiler alas, but we do heat kettles on top. we very poor,(which is prob getting me down more than the cold truly)so no possibilty of upgrading ,we've done all the cheap and makeshift improvements,such as door sausages,tape round windows, thick curtains etc.Its just an old, cold house.
i shouldnt grumble,its lovely to live in in summer,and we're all healthy,just seems however hard i try to cut down on power,the bill is still big,as big or bigger than other households who are really warm and well heated.
anyway, sun is out today here,goig for a brisk walk, that'll warm us up.

Can you move the DCs in together in the winter, so you only have to heat one room?

Do you mean those electric fan heaters, bar heaters or those plug-in oil-filled radiators? I think the fan heaters are the worst of the lot - they just chew through electricity.

Keep an eye on Freecycle for a more efficient electric heater.

spiritinthesky - OK I understand the situation better now. I was a bit tentative in my answer before because I am aware that money is tight for a lot of people.

One thing that you might want to think about is perhaps getting some heated blankets for the childrens beds and your bed. I mean the ones that go under the bottom sheet that you lay on not teh ones you lay on top of teh bed.

We have them as out house is cold and do not put radiators on in the children's bedroom. We put the blanket on for 15 minutes before we go to bed. It makes it cosy but would mean you could avoid using the fan heaters at all. Maybe get some in the sales as they are often quiet heavily discounted.

If you needed some extra cash to buy them could I also suggest you take a low cost loan from your local cedit union. They are small not for profit lending institutions. I work for one and we help a lot of people on low income. Look up your local one here.

Have you got any chance of getting insulation grants.

thanks, good ideas there.electric blankets sound good,i assume they use v.few units? sharing bedrooms also good,dont think teenagers will buy that,but then they'll have to be cold wont they?!i will give them the choise,share room & heater, or keep sole occupancy and heater on for 2 hrs a day.
times are hard , and prob going to get much tougher for us all, so i'm prob doing them all a favour by making them tough.
do you think maybe we all need to get used to a harder life,i was brought up in a cold,inconvienient poor household,and i'm having an interestig life despite it.now i'm inflicting the same on my children,perhaps I should tell them its a priveledge living like this!

We spend about £20.00 a week on electricity and are in a very small flat so I think you're doing pretty well tbh.

Remember, if you don't have GCH then heating is more expensive but you don't have any gas bills. Many people with small electricity bills will have large gas bills to pay this winter.

We don't have central heating, just electric heaters and a gas fire, but although our electric is £20pw, our gas bill is about £50 a quarter in the winter (have gas cooker too).

(we share baths and wear lots of jumpers btw - and take great comfort from our neighbour's central heating which means the room temperatures never fall really, really low).

spiritinthesky - yes the electric blankets we have are realy quiet economic. Much much better tha fan heaters. As ninedragons rightly said, electric fan heaters really chew through the electric.

If your teenagers are same sex they should be willing to share a bedroom. Have you explained money is tight? Teenagers can be surprisngly mature once they have thing explained to them and treated as an adult. I am sure my boys are 9 and 7 now love sharing and openly cry if the other is not there and will always want to share. Two hours of fan heater versus 15 minutes of heated blanket? I would have the blanket any day.

Although I lived in an Elizabethan house as a child and certainly worth several millions today my parent were very very poor, almost bankrupted several times. I never had heating in my bedroom and I think it makes me appreciate what I have now.

Here is a link for insulation grants Energy saving trust