I keep a close eye on Gas and Electric, but I have got caught out with the telephone and on more than one occassion too - I refuse to have a DD even though it costs me more because I had my PC hacked into once and I don't want the risk of a huge sum being taken (or bounced) for someone else's calls / internet.
Plim :sad:
Thank goodness for my supplier. They regulary check my meter and constantly adjust my payments such that I neither owe or am in credit by a great deal.
When prices shot up and I suddenly found myself in arrears a simple phone call was all it took to negotiate a price to pay that was acceptable to both parties.
I suggest some of you check around for better service if not a better tarrif.
We take meter readings every month after a nasty surprise last January. Fair enough, our house is big and we had 10 people in the house over the Christmas period that year. My dad thought it was OK to spend all day in the conservatory with it's plastic roof (!) with the electric fire on all day (even though theres a real fire in the living room)
The combined gas & electric bill for just that 1/4? £840!!! We'd only been paying £80 per month so the outstanding was £600. To say I nearly fell over was a bit of an understatement.
We took several measures including replacing all the lights in the living room (all 8 of them!) with energy saving bulbs, but that didn't seem to be doing much so we bought 3 lamps for the living room. Cosy and a hell of a lot cheaper.
We also set the heating to be no more than 18 degrees at any time. That took some getting used to as we were used to 20/21 degrees but obviously couldn't afford that. We also covered cardboard with foil and put it behind the rads that were on outside walls to reflect the heat back into the house rather than loose it to outside.
I took to batch cooking more. If the oven went on, I put more than one meal in there, divided it up and froze what we didn't use. A quick blast in the microwave and bingo. A ready meal and I don't have to cook every night.
We've got our usage down now to £88 a month, which is still pretty high but compared to the £280 a month that quarter was, it's a hell of a lot better and we hopeully won't owe anything over the winter months.
Lesson learned the hard way!
It's a farce tho when you have to freeze in your own home because you can't afford to heat it!
*Her*
Good posting Couplefun
We are with nPower for both gas and electricity and recently switched to a different tariff. By doing this they sent us this little gadget which comes in two parts, the first measures your usage by clamping to one of the electricity meter cable tails and the other sits inside the house and gives you loads of usage data on an LCD screen.
We can now see in real time (and historically) our electricity consumption which is quite frightening to see. In a Mr Hodges WWII air raid warden style you will now hear "switch that bleeding light off" shouted rather often.
The big culprits are:
- hot tub (but no surprise there)
- tumble drier and washing machine
- kettle
- the sheer amount of stuff that is plugged in and on standby
So the hot tub which is our luxury item has had its temperature turned down to 37 deg C when we aren't in it and goes up to 38 just before using it. Doesn't sound much of a saving but it is. Also it's daily pump running to filter the water has been reduced from 3 hours to 2 with no reduction in water quality or additional chlorine. It's already massively insulated but we are also going to put a snugly fitted closed-cell foam sheet directly on the water surface. It's reduced the cost of running the hot tub by about 25%, down to 75p a day.
The tumble drier is now only on when needed, with a washing line out in the garden as the primary means for drying clothes. Also think about your washing machine load, is it efficiently loaded? Consider a cooler wash cycle too.
Kettles - we now think about how much water we actually need to boil rather than just switch it on. We were boiling about twice as much water as was actually needed.
"Standby stuff" such as power supplies for 5 laptops and computers and 5 phone chargers, microwave, cordless phone cradles, 3 TVs, PS3, 5.1 sound system, AV receiver, Sky box etc - used 400W and costed 5p an hour to run, every hour of the day and night even when it's in standby mode. Now most of it gets switched off or unplugged when not used.
I can recommend getting a real time usage meter, it really makes you think about what actually needs to be used and will give you a real saving. Better in your pocket than a shareholders!
Refund on the way to me! Yay! :mrgreen:
LG. x
