Non testers:
- We'd love to know what your top tips are for saving gas and electricity around the home. What precautions do you take? How easy do your children find it to follow these steps to saving energy? How do you keep an eye on the amount of energy you use in your home? Do you manage to stick to a budget?
Top tips:
LED bulbs instead of standard energy saving ones wherever possible, especially the bathroom / landing light that the needs to be on all night for the children.
Jumper on before heating up.
Blankets on legs while watching TV at night rather than turning heating up.
Lots of loft insulation
Make sure curtains aren't covering radiators - or drying clothes for that matter!
Close curtains as soon as it goes dark - put long curtains on the windowsill if they hang over a radiator.
Curtains should have thick (thermal if possible) linings to help prevent against heat loss when closed.
It is only switched on if in use - lights off if you're last to leave a room.
"Bye Bye standby" devices to prevent using electricity when devices are on standby.
Charging mobile phone at work via laptop or in car rather than in house overnight.
Replacing appliances with most energy efficient models as and when old ones require replacing.
New, A rated tumble drier consumes less electricity to dry a load of washing than putting radiators on to dry clothes hanging on them!
If you want to bake something, plan to put it in the oven before your tea needs to go in the oven so you only need to pre-heat the oven once, or if the meal and baking can be on the same temperature, put them in at the same time.
Batch cook (at least two family sized portions at once)/ batch bake. Microwaving frozen pre-made meals consumes less electricity (and time and effort) than cooking one meal from scratch again.
My children are under 3 so I don't yet have the issue of lots of plug-in gadgets of theirs to worry about. My eldest already reminds me to turn lights off as we're leaving a room. Sometimes she's most forceful and is unimpressed when I tell her the lights are off, I can't turn off the sun too!
We have a smart meter to keep an eye on our consumption, and switch suppliers regularly to ensure we are paying the lowest price possible.
Our direct debit for gas usually is more than we consume during warmer months, so we let the credit acrue so that in cold months it acts as a buffer so we don't suddenly find out direct debits have been increased. If there is any of this "buffer" left by March we ask for it back. If you're on a budget and do this, the money back could be used to buy something that will save you more energy, e.g. more loft insulation / reflective sheets for behind radiators / thicker linings for curtains, etc.
We don't have a budget as such, more that we try to save energy where we can and keep an eye on how much we're using, and who has the best deals. We've currently got a price freeze 2 year deal (no penalty charge for early exit though) which we got through a comparison website that was also offering cashback. We've saved money on the cost of the energy, and the cashback money basically means we had a month's electricity free!