Wednesday 1 February 2012

Electricity savings




Firstly, welcome to my new followers Sue from Our new life in the country and Mrs. Thrifty. We posted on-line to our electricity company, our final reading for this quarter. Yet again, they have only taken 2 rather than 3 months money from us. Normally that would leave us quite a bit in debt. However, it seems using less electricity, being frugal with the heating, tumble drying, hanging washing on the line before finishing off inside, is really paying off.

The upshot of all this is that we have used 1.7 kilowatt hours per day less for this quarter than last year. It may not sound much but if my maths are correct, we have saved this quarter, the equivalent of nearly 14 days of electricity usage! They won't (for now) drop our monthly credit to them but we hope they will do so after the next quarter's reading as by then, we reckon they will owe us! If we can then get it lowered, these savings will be used towards buying logs in the summer.

Although we have spent extra on logs this year, next year we will be able to buy and store more in the cheaper summer months than previously so that will help also. Kindling so far this year has been free as neighbours have given us the odd pallet to cut up. We also aim to start picking fir cones earlier and store them as they have proved very good fire starters/enhancers (about 8 per fire).

Our one hours worth of heating and hot water comes out of our cheap overnight tariff. The other hour in the afternoon is on full rate. We have worked out that if we choose to only have heating and hot water on for this cheap hour and get rid of the costly afternoon boost, that will help further in reducing costs. Then, when we want a bath (no shower remember) we will only boost the water on those days.

We each have a microwave bean bag and when really feeling chilly, this warms us up no end. So after these next few cold days, we are going to try our new regime of only one heating/hot water use and see how we go.

2 comments:

  1. Good electricity you have made there :) Only bit of advice I can offer, though, is to stop using pine cones to start your fires. Apparently burning pine cones / wet pine causes the resin to line your chimney, which could lead to a fire in your chimney in future.

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    1. Thank you Dani, we were aware of that but only use them to get the wood burner going when it looks in danger of going out, maybe once or twice a week. We also have our chimney swept often. Thanks for the warning though.

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