Energy bill

[Gal2]

Wow that’s a lot Shell! Two of us, bath most nights, use a washing up bowl as broken dishwasher, around 5 loads of washing a week, monthly bill currently £23 for water. I actually think we use a lot, Tom’s very wasteful, like leaving the tap running while brushing his teeth.

[Workingman]

I think that a water "smart meter" might be a bit of a misnomer. A few years back our meters were upgraded and the new meter automatically sends my reading to Yorks Water via WiFi - no more going under the sink to get a quarterly reading and no more visits from the meter readers. The battery apparently last for seven years or so, but there is no counter top display. It is sort of "smart" but not in the electricity way. My bill has been about £35 per quarter, winter and summer, ever since. Single, shower every other day and two wash loads per week, the rest is pots washing etc. normal stuff.

[TheOstrich]

Ah, thanks for that, WM.

MM, do you have a basic water meter, or are you still paying water rates based on your council tax rather than based on your consumption. Depending on the number of folk in your household, it can make a heck of a difference. We are a family unit of 2, and we pay a direct debit of just £14 a month to Wessex Water ......

[saundra]

Here my meter is read by Yorkshire water my bill is normally about £40

[miasmum]

I have no water meter, just pay direct debit each month presume based on my council tax.

We have a bath each every night and a shower each every morning. Dishwasher goes on during the night, as does the washing machine, at least 5 nights a week.

Maybe I should get assessed for a meter?

[JoM]

I have no water meter, just pay direct debit each month presume based on my council tax.

We have a bath each every night and a shower each every morning. Dishwasher goes on during the night, as does the washing machine, at least 5 nights a week.

Maybe I should get assessed for a meter?

I know that here you can have a meter fitted and if you feel it’s not working out for you then you can have it removed within a certain time (a year maybe?).
It’d definitely be worth it for you Shell.

We have a meter, four adults (sometimes 5 when Amanda stays) and anything between 4 and 8 showers a day (depending on exercise), washing machine on every other day, same with dishwasher. Cars being cleaned, in the Summer we use hose the garden daily if no rain. We drink a lot of water too.
Our bill is always around £500 per year.

[miasmum]

We have one Jo, we are just not connected. I looked online and we can be moved back within a year if it doesn't work out.

Only thing is I did the calculator and it told me my annual bills with a water meter would be 735 whereas at the moment they are 670

I dont want to be worrying if occasionally I leave the tap running and forget about it, or like last year the hose split in the garden and the steps were like those at Chatsworth in the morning

[cromwell]

Two of us here. We tke showers, do all the normal things and our bll is £25 a month. Before having a meter fitted we were paying £600+ a year, and that was years since.

[TheOstrich]

Two of us here. We tke showers, do all the normal things and our bll is £25 a month. Before having a meter fitted we were paying £600+ a year, and that was years since.

Yes, same here. When we moved to B'ham in 2000, we had a new-build house with a water meter fitted by default and the savings over the council tax based water rates was immediately apparent.

But it is very much horses for courses.

We have a bath each every night and a shower each every morning. Dishwasher goes on during the night, as does the washing machine, at least 5 nights a week.

We don't have a dishwasher - that's my function - and the washing machine is employed once or twice a week on average.
We rarely use the shower (TBH, I can't fit into it ... ) and Ossie never takes a bath (so he stinks like a polecat; it's the fevvers, you see )
The car went in for its triennial valet down at the Eastern European Car Wash last week (£35; they did the best they could with it), we never clean it on the driveway.
We have a large water butt, but Mrs O does not allow me to wash in it.

Our water consumption, according to Wessex Water, is actually less than they'd estimate for a single person household .....

PS - Eon Next have declared another Energy Event tonight between 16:30 and 17:30 so we shall sit in the dark again and try to hit our savings target of 21p ..

[Suff]

I was looking at your post Ossie and it reminded me to go look at solar solutions again. What I saw was surprising but also not surprising.

Have a look.

That is just over £5,500 for a kit that can run my entire home almost all the time summer and winter.

My home has a 16kw feed from the mains, this is 10kw. However I never really get near the 16kw limit these days. I only ever exceeded it when we tried to heat the house by electric alone and that was the first house, not the expanded two houses. Now we only need to feed electricity to the boiler as it runs on wood (soon to be pellets when their price starts making sense again).

This price is between 1/3 and 1/5 of the price I was looking at back in 2010. The reality of grid storage and electric vehicles, economies of scale kick in dramatically and make these things truly viable.

I will also get the benefit that if the power goes off (it does that quite a lot, maybe 5-10 times a year), that my office won't go off.

Once I take the plunge, the options to expand over time are there. My biggest power hogs, right now are the water heater, fridges (plural), freezers (x3) and the hot tub. The water heater and hot tub can go on timers to be off when the sun is down.

Mrs S has just told me it's a good idea. OK I'll have to fit it but it will be going on the cottage roof and Mrs S fitted that roof (along with a few others).