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Gas / Electricity in the kitchen

Well we have been trying for several years to save money on our electricity bill as it’s large. We half heartedly attempt it every now and then normally when the bill comes in and we have that sick feeling of seeing how much we pay and how much they want us to pay.
Well the start of it happened when we re-did our kitchen and at the same time we converted the old shower area (yes in the kitchen!) to a utility area moving our washing machine and tumble dryer out there (not that we use the tumble dryer much at all). This also meant we could have a new Combi boiler fitted and replace our 28+ Year old back boiler (British Gas Bloke reckoned it was at best 60% efficient) for a MUCH more efficient one. ( Worcester Bosch (A) 90.1%) this seems alone to have saved us around £10 a month on GAS and we now cook with it also. (NO not the boiler the new cooker) meaning we now spend around £26 a month instead of £37.
We also changed our Fridge freezer and Cooker. Although the fridge freezer is big enough to store the wife in (I don’t keep her in there for long honest, she drinks all the wine!!) it’s much more efficient than our old one. When we went to move the old one as we were knocking down the wall to the shower we found it had around an inch of ice under it gluing it to the floor. So that can’t have been great also the seals on it were far from great. We also changed our cooker as 1 of the halogen hobs did not work and the second only worked at half power, while the oven was great at heating the kitchen and not much else. We now have a range cooker with a Gas hob and two ovens one fan assisted the other not. These are not so much of a saving as we probably will never recoup the costs of them but have helped reduce our energy consumption and as we had to get new ones seemed like a bonus to get energy efficient ones.
The lights in the utility room are GU10 fitting and came with 3x 50 Watt bulbs that’s 150 Watts to light a small area. We changed these to 3 x GU10 LED ones using 3 Watts each so 9Watts total. Much better although not so bright, they look bright but don’t cast much light. They are fine for the area but would not be much use in the kitchen so this needs to be looked at as we have 8 of them in the kitchen drawing 400 Watts when on. Must look at this!

Energy Meters.

Rob a gadget mad person that he is has also bought a few energy meters to see if we could kerb our electricity usage.
The first was a unit that could be plugged in between a wall socket and the appliance (much like this one http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=38343) this was very insightful and helped identify some problem areas e.g. the old fridge freezer. But did not give us much insight of the whole house usage and was no good for things wired directly into the electrics, like the oven.
Rob then looked around and found a gadget that connected to the mains cable (eek, no it’s not dangerous) See http://www.efergy.com/home.html for the product (looks like they have updated it since my one). This was great you can see the usage of your whole house and was great to watch as you turn on appliances. It would give you a current reading as well as your usage for the Day/Week/Month/Year. But it seemed that the unit was under reading our usage by a far bit read least 10% it seems that the unit only reads its sensor every 10 – 15 seconds. And so you may use loads in-between it reading. But was a good start at seeing where we were going wrong.
Then in November 2009 Rob saw another gadget. http://www.alertme.com/ It’s much like the above one that camps round the power cable but reads its sensor much more often. It also allows you to see your power usage remotely and if you have smart plugs turn things on and off as well as monitor their own power usage. From the first day we were using around 20Kwh of electricity a day or roughly £2.71 or £84 a month!!! After playing around with settings on some computers (Firewall and Windows Home Server) this was reduced by 5Kwh a DAY!!! Or £0.63 or £20 a month. Another savings was our laptops. We shut them down over night but never disconnect them from the mains. These were drawing 15Watts or 0.36Kwh a day £1.40 a month. The other savings seem to have come from us being more aware of things we are leaving on e.g. kitchen lights. We seem to be hovering around 10-12Kwh a day. Or £1.43. These figures need to be check with the actual meter reading to make sure they all tie up. But not bad so far for the first week. That’s £1.28 a day saving.
I’m sure we will be using more than 10-12Kwh at the weekend but that’s a saving of £6.40 a week As of 2/2010 we seem to be useing around 9kWh a day now around 50% of what we were useing saving us around £400 a year. Pics of Alertme Interface.

How these energy meters work (WARNING Geekiness inside) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect

Things done.


3/2010		Install of 1.72kWp Solar PV system. (Now working.) See page
3/2010		Change GU10 Bulbs from 50W to 35W saving 60W an hr
2/2010		Finished loft insulation.
2/2010		Sealed bathroom and our bedroom window frame.
2/2010		Installed 50% of our roof insulation.
2/2010		Turning down our LCD TV Backlight saves us 50Watts! £17 a Year Savings based on 6Hrs a day (Sony 40" LCD) from 10 to 5
1/2010		Dunning dishwasher on a quick wash with out drying. Saving us 0.6KWh each run.
1/2010		Moved Firewall back to seperate PSU, 17Watts should be able to reduce this when moving the disk to a 2.5" version or a compact flash drive maybe a SSD.
1/2010		Looked at home server. (powers up at 1600 and down at 2200 mon - fri. 1200-2300 sat-sun for backups and file useage. Also now on a Alertme smartplug (80watts when on)
1/2010		Moved Main computer on to Alertme smartplug so I can power it on when needed. (avg 160watts - 190 if useing all 4 cores)
1/2010		Turn off microwave at wall, when not in use draws 7 Watts £0.65 a month or £7.80 a year
1/2010		Turn off washine machine at wall when not in use as it draws 10 Watts £0.90 a month or £10 a year
12/2009		Re sealed the front bedrooms window frame.
12/2009		Unpluged Sarahs Alarm Clock Saving £4.38 a year
12/2009		Wireless router switched off now when we go to bed. Costing us £10 a year but would need to be on so ½ that eg evenings / weekends and roughly a saving of £5
12/2009		Blocked gap to understairs cupboard. Very strong cold draft. Still needs looking at.
12/2009		Turning off the power to our laptops (Saving 15Watts or 0.36Kw a day or £1.40 a month) (See Computers)
12/2009		Tuning Firewall and Windows Home server (Saving 5Kwh a day, £0.63 a day or £20 a month) (See Computers) Superseaded by update 1/2010
12/2009		Draft excluder on the back kitchen door. (Unknown savings but the kitchen does seem warmer)
03/2009		Removed Firewall power supply and joined it to the Windows Home Server (See Computers) Superseaded by update 1/2010
02/2009		Replaced Computer power supplies with energy plus ones 80+ rating (See Computers)
12/2008		Sealed kitchen window frame when doing up kitchen
11/2008		Sealed utility room windows frames.
11/2008		Thermal underlay in the kitchen as its got a solid floor (see House / Kitchen)
2008		Sealed window frame in front room to stop mooing noise when windy.
2008		Turn down TRVs in rooms we don’t use. (Look at again quarterly if possible)
2007		Remote switches to turn on / off the TV.

Things to do.

Trying to use our slow cooker more as it uses 250Watts on high and 175 on low.
Replacing the GU10 50Watt bulbs in the kitchen with GU10 CFL(7Watts) or LED (3Watts) we have 8 x 50Watt bulbs. That’s 400 Watts when the lights are on! Even if we move to 25 Watt bulbs we should see a 50% saving. Purchased some 35w versions will look at doing the main ones in the kitchen.
Rob Also has a Projecting Alarm clock so the time is on the bedroom ceiling may be the same savings as Sarah’s. But not sure the projecting works without the mains. Maybe a timer switch?
Look at seeing if cavity wall insulation is possible. Pretty sure its not possible as I think our house was constructed with a Common Bond see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brickwork ours is a 3 to 1 version to do the insulation would mean drilling lots and lots of holes to inject it and with our extor walls rendered it would look awful.
Thermal Underlay for the ground floor as it can be cold on the floor and the floor underlay we have does not have a good thermal rating you can get some that are up to 3.1 Tog current could be as low as 0.79 tog.
Try to remember to close doors to unused parts of the house to save heating them.
Block the old air vent in the floor in the back room (was for gas fire / central heating)
Buy a chimney-balloon for the fire place where the back boiler use to be.
Look at blocking our vents in the outside of our house as air is blown through our carpet.
Looking into getting Solar PV installed on out roof. We have a south faceing roof so would be perfect. Installed date end of March. See Solar pages.
Fix kitchen door (internal) so we can close door in the evening saving heat? Done 1/2010
Look around for Wall warts or transformers and see if we can turn these off when not in use. E.g. Phone chargers / Alarm Clocks. (Sarah as an alarm clock that the clock runs off watch batteries but the light when you press it uses a power pack. If this is using 4Watts in a day it will use 0.096Kwh so £0.01 Pence a day or £0.37 Pence a month or £4.38 a year and since you can run it on batteries these should last longer than 1 Year at less than £4 a year. Done 12/2009
Increase lagging in loft. Bought 12/2009,2/2010 Done
Look at the window frames as some of the sealent has come away from the plastic and is letting in cold air and noise. Front bedroom, Back bedroom and bathroom to do. Done 02/2010
Now running the dishwasher on a quick setting with out drying. This is saving us 0.6 KWh a wash.
Remote switch for Robs PC. Hopefully alertme smart plug (ordered 12/2009). So I can monitor its power usage and also turn it on and off remotely. Done 1/2010
Look at powering down the Windows Home Server when were not at home and the Ability of WOL (Wake On Lan) so Rob can get files off it if needed when at work. (would mean going back to 2 PSUs instead of 1) Done 1/2010
Move Wireless router on the TV power plug so this gets turned off when we turn the TV off (10Watts??? £0.03Day, £0.93 week £10.95 half that as we will need it when home) Done 12/2009
Turn off the Washing machine as its using 10 Watts even when its off. Done 1/2010
Turn off the microwave as its using 7 Watts even when its off. Done 1/2010

Savings that could be made a year.

Problem Area	Savings
Wireless router	£4.93	Done
Home server	£78.84	Done
Sarah’s Alarm clock	£4.38	Done
Rob’s Alarm clock	£4.38
Kitchen Lights 1Hr a day	25Watts £9.13, or CFL 8Watts £15.33
Washing Machine	10Watts even when off thats £0.90 a month or £10 a year	Done
Microwave	7Watts even when off thats £0.65 a month or £7.80 a year	Done
Washing at 30C	0.64 KWh	Done
Washing at 40C	0.64 KWh (Guess its using hot water and not electricity to heat the water)
Dishwasher quick and dry	1.09 KWh
Dishwasher quicl (with out dry)	0.51 KWh	Done
Slow Cooker	250Watts High / 175Watts low.	Done

How we are trying to save energy @Home

Quick links. Pictures | Honeymoon | Saving energy | Solar | Blog

Gas / Electricity in the kitchen

Energy Meters.

Things done.

Things to do.

Gas / Electricity in the kitchen

Energy Meters.

Things done.

Things to do.

Savings that could be made a year.

Other Links