What cut backs have you made recently?

[selmahoos]

OldSkoolRS said:

selmahoos said:

Increased income.

Ah; you've got a second paper round then...good on you.

No, just charge the newsagent more for doing the same one.

It's how inflation works. Up go the prices, but up go the wages too

[MaxFromage]

brickwall said:

I have never understood why washer/dryers are not more popular. All-in-one cycle or just wash/just dry. What’s not to like?

(Put clothes in the evening, set delayed start to finish at 6am, open in the morning with dry cycle complete.)

Quite a few answers above, but an all-in-one is much less efficient than a good washing machine and tumble dryer. My new heat pump dryer uses bugger all electricity.

Edited by MaxFromage on Monday 27th June 19:41

[dmahon]

Can I ask about gas. Our hot water is on a timer from 6am-7pm, but I understand that isn’t as wasteful as it sounds as it only kicks in if the tank empties and/or cools down. Is there any benefit to me trying to chop the times down?

We have showers in the morning and evening and hot water for washing up so we shouldn’t need much in the summer.

[gazapc]

dmahon said:

Can I ask about gas. Our hot water is on a timer from 6am-7pm, but I understand that isn’t as wasteful as it sounds as it only kicks in if the tank empties and/or cools down. Is there any benefit to me trying to chop the times down?

We have showers in the morning and evening and hot water for washing up so we shouldn’t need much in the summer.

Yes, turn it on for an hour two in the evening and morning and see how it goes.

The amount it is costing you will depend on how insulated your tank is. If it is poorly insulated, it will currently be kicking in throughout the day to top up the temperature even though water isnt being used. If it is well insulated, it might only be turning on occasionally.

[xeny]

dmahon said:

Can I ask about gas. Our hot water is on a timer from 6am-7pm, but I understand that isn’t as wasteful as it sounds as it only kicks in if the tank empties and/or cools down. Is there any benefit to me trying to chop the times down?

We have showers in the morning and evening and hot water for washing up so we shouldn’t need much in the summer.

Are we talking combi boiler or separate hot water tank? Especially if the latter it depends how well insulated the tank is.

You could figure out roughly how long it takes the boiler to heat the tank up for the morning and evening requirements and let it cool down in between which would give you the bonus in the summer of less heat leaking out into the house over the course of the day?

[wong]

I've added some pipe insulation to the bits of hot water pipe I can see coming from the boiler.

[bmwmike]

xeny said:

I find Prime delivery useful and there's enough video content that it is the only subscription I have.

Coincidentally I just spent some time fiddling to get my NAS to sleep, and now have various other bits of home network infrastructure on two time switches so they go off either just after I'm likely to have stopped working or after I've gone to bed for the day.

Does anyone have an opinion on the relative consumption of 2.4 vs 5Ghz WiFi for low bandwidth hardware like Echoes? It "feels" as if 2.4 should be slightly lower power but I've not tested.

Not sure on your 2.5 vs 5 question but my 30p a day includes not just a NAS but unifi 60w switch and a PoE access point. Those combined seem to be using (need to be doing more testing) as much as the NAS. I think but am not sure the 60w PoE switch takes a chunk as its always hot and is basically running Linux. I think I'd be better off with a PoE supply and junk the switch.

[Bullett]

number2 said:

3 litre tank takes ten minutes according to this https://www.quooker.co.uk/catalog/tanks

They are quite efficient - the cylinder is cool to the touch and I don't catch it heating that often or for that long.

Thanks.

10w in standby
1600w full whack.
10min to heat up from 0.

10w x 24hr at current price cap 7.5p per day
vs
10w x 16hrs = 4.5p + 1600w x 10min (7.5p) = 12p

+ actual usage which is the same in either scenario.

Not worth switching it off unless I've done the maths wrong. or misunderstood something.
Looks cheaper than a kettle with moderate use though (if you forget the huge initial outlay!)

[Meeten-5dulx]

eltawater said:

And so it begins.

"Households with smart meters could get discounts on electricity bills if they use less energy at peak times."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61949246

So let’s get this straight when the electricity network is under stress with limited generation, your electricity supplier is asking you to use less and tHey will pay you for that.in order to measure your reduction they need to have kit or measure on a more accurate time scale, something like a smart meter.

So you are being paid to reduce demand at times of system stress.

This is something that industrial customers have been doing for years….

[GT3Manthey]

dmahon said:

Can I ask about gas. Our hot water is on a timer from 6am-7pm, but I understand that isn’t as wasteful as it sounds as it only kicks in if the tank empties and/or cools down. Is there any benefit to me trying to chop the times down?

We have showers in the morning and evening and hot water for washing up so we shouldn’t need much in the summer.

We used to have the hot water come on twice a day for an hour & I’ve now cut this down to just 20 minutes twice a day which still covers our morning and evening showers.

If someone requires a shower at a random time and the water is cold then a quick 20 minutes is all that’s needed.

[RizzoTheRat]

bmwmike said:

Not sure on your 2.5 vs 5 question but my 30p a day includes not just a NAS but unifi 60w switch and a PoE access point. Those combined seem to be using (need to be doing more testing) as much as the NAS. I think but am not sure the 60w PoE switch takes a chunk as its always hot and is basically running Linux. I think I'd be better off with a PoE supply and junk the switch.

You got me wondering about that after your first post, but sounds like you've probably got a bit more power hungry stuff than me. I have a cable modem, 8 port switch, 3 TP-Link Deco nodes, a NAS and a Zigbee hub. Had a bit of a read up on Synology and people reckon if you have Plex installed it'll keep waking the NAS up so no point playing with the hibernate times.

I tend to have my PC on most evenings at about 500 watts and my wife has a tendency to just leave her laptop on all the time. God knows what her old one was doing but the fans were often going at full blast when it wasn't being used, but she's just bought a new one so hopefully won't have that issue. We have a whole house mechanical extraction system and now that I've got Zigbee light switches through the house the next job is to set up remote switches to the fans to control them from humidity sensors in the bathroom and kitchen, which will hopefully reduce the amount of time they're on as I sometimes forget to turn them back down after a shower.

We were away for a week in April and the house still used about 4kWH/day which seems a bit excessive to me. When we're home it tends to be about 8 kWH/day

[eltawater]

Meeten-5dulx said:

eltawater said:

And so it begins.

"Households with smart meters could get discounts on electricity bills if they use less energy at peak times."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61949246

So let’s get this straight when the electricity network is under stress with limited generation, your electricity supplier is asking you to use less and tHey will pay you for that.in order to measure your reduction they need to have kit or measure on a more accurate time scale, something like a smart meter.

So you are being paid to reduce demand at times of system stress.

This is something that industrial customers have been doing for years….

Or..
They'll raise the standard price threshold higher at the start and then offer you a "discount" back down to where you are right now if you tow the line.

Then in two years time, they raise the "standard" price threshold again and your "discount level" magically rises again to equal your current "standard" price threshold. But now the discount time window has been reduced down to only 2am-4am as all the discount chasers are hammering the network between 4am-7am to ensure the washing cycle is done on the cheap before they wake up.

[Countdown]

eltawater said:

Or..
They'll raise the standard price threshold higher at the start and then offer you a "discount" back down to where you are right now if you tow the line.

Then in two years time, they raise the "standard" price threshold again and your "discount level" magically rises again to equal your current "standard" price threshold. But now the discount time window has been reduced down to only 2am-4am as all the discount chasers are hammering the network between 4am-7am to ensure the washing cycle is done on the cheap before they wake up.

What's to stop the Govt price-capping them?

[eltawater]

Countdown said:

eltawater said:

Or..
They'll raise the standard price threshold higher at the start and then offer you a "discount" back down to where you are right now if you tow the line.

Then in two years time, they raise the "standard" price threshold again and your "discount level" magically rises again to equal your current "standard" price threshold. But now the discount time window has been reduced down to only 2am-4am as all the discount chasers are hammering the network between 4am-7am to ensure the washing cycle is done on the cheap before they wake up.

What's to stop the Govt price-capping them?

You mean the price cap which is so far rising twice a year and is being proposed to rise quarterly?

[xeny]

eltawater said:

You mean the price cap which is so far rising twice a year and is being proposed to rise quarterly?

The one which is below spot price for electricity or gas? Who is this "they" - I'm not seeing electricity distribution companies posting vast profits.

[eltawater]

xeny said:

eltawater said:

You mean the price cap which is so far rising twice a year and is being proposed to rise quarterly?

The one which is below spot price for electricity or gas? Who is this "they" - I'm not seeing electricity distribution companies posting vast profits.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with making a profit in business. But as an electricity customer, the only thing which benefits me directly is lower prices as standard. Not gleefully accepting new and innovative ways to rinse more money out of me and being made to feel grateful for it

Anyway, I suspect this is more in the cost of living squeeze topic rather this thread so apologies for derailing it.

[bmwmike]

RizzoTheRat said:

You got me wondering about that after your first post, but sounds like you've probably got a bit more power hungry stuff than me. I have a cable modem, 8 port switch, 3 TP-Link Deco nodes, a NAS and a Zigbee hub. Had a bit of a read up on Synology and people reckon if you have Plex installed it'll keep waking the NAS up so no point playing with the hibernate times.

I tend to have my PC on most evenings at about 500 watts and my wife has a tendency to just leave her laptop on all the time. God knows what her old one was doing but the fans were often going at full blast when it wasn't being used, but she's just bought a new one so hopefully won't have that issue. We have a whole house mechanical extraction system and now that I've got Zigbee light switches through the house the next job is to set up remote switches to the fans to control them from humidity sensors in the bathroom and kitchen, which will hopefully reduce the amount of time they're on as I sometimes forget to turn them back down after a shower.

We were away for a week in April and the house still used about 4kWH/day which seems a bit excessive to me. When we're home it tends to be about 8 kWH/day

RE plex i don't doubt that. I was monitoring my nas (QNAP) and it never went to sleep, ever. I spent hours debugging qnap code for them and now it sleeps, but wakes according to their stupid cron job schedule which is spread out over a 24hr period. It'll be interesting to see how much my fixes save for them in actual £ terms.

4000 watts per day when you're not home is 166 watts per hour isn't it. We have an ancient whole-house wired alarm which uses 100w. I'm going to rip that out next, as it doesn't work properly. Perhaps yours is similar, by the time you factor in always on stuff like wifi router, fridge, freezer, 166 watts doesn't seem too bad.

[RizzoTheRat]

bmwmike said:

4000 watts per day when you're not home is 166 watts per hour isn't it. We have an ancient whole-house wired alarm which uses 100w. I'm going to rip that out next, as it doesn't work properly. Perhaps yours is similar, by the time you factor in always on stuff like wifi router, fridge, freezer, 166 watts doesn't seem too bad.

Yeah I suppose it doesn't seem that bad when you think about it as a constant load. The extractor fans on low are probably using 50 or 60W between them, plus the network, Fridge Freezer are I think the only things running all the time. Pus a load of stuff on standby drawing a tiny bit of power. Maybe 166W isn't too bad.

It's just when you think of it as €2/day it seems crazy!

Gas and electric we were hitting €20/day a few times in February/March! Need to get a couple of windows replaced where the double glazing has blown which should help with that for next winter.

[xeny]

If you're only there intermittently, can you perhaps reduce the fans operation to say alternate half hours or something, so air turns over but total draw is reduced.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that modern kit plugged in but shut down draws very little. I've a stack of 5 laptops on my desk at present all shut down but plugged in to a watt meter. The meter is reporting 3.5W or so for the stack, so an average under 1W each.

At current prices that is less than 1p/day which passes my "not worth my time to switch off at the wall" threshold.

[PurpleFox]

We run our dishwasher daily and I always use the intensive 70 degree wash, running the eco cycle often leaves everything inside smelling like wet dogs, 70 degree seems to cure it.

I wondered how much extra this was costing so plugged in my handy electricity meter which has a plug on one side and socket on the other. Measured 5 or 6 cycles of each - consistently 25p for a 50 degree wash and 34p for a 70 degree, based on 28p per unit.

9p to not smell wet dogs when you take a drink from a glass is well worth it for me so will stick to intensive program.