Total energy consumption per m2 per annum

[newhome]

32 minutes ago, ProDave said:

That figure worries me because so much of it is "stuff" not actually running the house. But I struggle to think of any major saving I can make to that other than use the desktop pc a lot less and use a more energy eficcient laptop more (e.g when I am only browsing)

 

Does that figure worry you? It doesn't seem like that much to me TBH. There are 3 of you living there vs only me here and there is only so much you can do to reduce the use of 'stuff'. I guess you could look at what elements of your stuff use the most energy and see if you need to use them, or use them as much, but if it was a major household appliance it would either be essential (eg fridge freezer) or an inconvenience not to use it as much (tumble dryer for example). Sometimes we can worry too much about fairly minor things. Is a saving of £40 a year or whatever worth the hassle of trying to cut down on something's use? Probably not, unless you are down to your last farthing ... 

 

 

 

[ProDave]

8 minutes ago, A_L said:

@ProDave , can you estimate how much of that is DHW?

Not easily. My heat pump has no data logging.  As a VERY rough guess, it seems to spend about an hour per day heating water, and I think I once measured it's power consumption as a peak of 1.5KW, so that would only be 1.5KWh so not very much.

 

I think I need to buy a cheap electricity meter just to measure what the heat pump uses to get a separate reading of "real useful" energy usage compared to just "stuff"

[ProDave]

4 minutes ago, newhome said:

 

Does that figure worry you? It doesn't seem like that much to me TBH. There are 3 of you living there vs only me here and there is only so much you can do to reduce the use of 'stuff'. I guess you could look at what elements of your stuff use the most energy and see if you need to use them, or use them as much, but if it was a major household appliance it would either be essential (eg fridge freezer) or an inconvenience not to use it as much (tumble dryer for example). Sometimes we can worry too much about fairly minor things. Is a saving of £40 a year or whatever worth the hassle of trying to cut down on something's use? Probably not, unless you are down to your last farthing ... 

 

 

 

I would like the tumble dryer to be used less, but that is "outside my control"  At least it is a condensing dryer so any waste heat stays in the house, so for half the year it is contributing to the heating (but not as eficciently as the heat pump would)

 

I have already mentioned the desktop pc, that perhaps I should use less (only for office stuff) and use the laptop more for browsing etc.

 

I have some satellite receivers on 24/7, I could put them on a timer, but that creates other issues.

 

I know our "stuff" usage is lower than in the old house, but can't really think of anything we are doing different (though I always had a suspicion the FF at the old house used a lot more than i should)

[Jeremy Harris]

I went around checking out stuff and found that my "normal" 24" hi-res monitor was an energy hog, even when on standby, and that tended to be left on a fair bit of the time, my old desktop PC was also an energy hog - over 100W a lot of the time.  The PC problem has been fixed in the new house by building a mini-PC using a fanless kit, that has an SSD as the boot drive plus a 1Tb 2 1/2" low power data drive, that sits powered down most of the time.  With a Kaby Lake Core i7 7500U processor and booting off a Samsung Evo 850 SSD it's reasonably quick, but the main advantage is that it rarely exceed 15 W power consumption, and idles at around 3 to 4 W much of the time.

 

What I'm looking for now is a monitor that's at least 24", with at least 1920 x 1200 resolution, that uses a lot less power than my old Acer 243W.

[Onoff]

6 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

I went around checking out stuff and found that my "normal" 24" hi-res monitor was an energy hog, even when on standby, and that tended to be left on a fair bit of the time, my old desktop PC was also an energy hog - over 100W a lot of the time.  The PC problem has been fixed in the new house by building a mini-PC using a fanless kit, that has an SSD as the boot drive plus a 1Tb 2 1/2" low power data drive, that sits powered down most of the time.  With a Kaby Lake Core i7 7500U processor and booting off a Samsung Evo 850 SSD it's reasonably quick, but the main advantage is that it rarely exceed 15 W power consumption, and idles at around 3 to 4 W much of the time.

 

What I'm looking for now is a monitor that's at least 24", with at least 1920 x 1200 resolution, that uses a lot less power than my old Acer 243W.

 

Just got one of these for my boy on Preloved for £200:

 

https://www.dell.com/en-uk/work/shop/accessories/apd/210-agul

[joe90]

13 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I would like the tumble dryer to be used less, but that is "outside my control"

Ha, I designed the house with no tumble drier in it as I said the MVHR and the conservatory would be more than enough to dry our clothes and save us a shed load of cash!  For once I did not get an argument ?

[newhome]

I'm laptops only here. Got rid of the desktop and screens as I never used them anyway. Never use the TVs. Don't tend to use the electric oven much as I have a small halogen oven that I prefer to use just for me anyway. I do use the tumble dryer for almost everything but as you said above it's a condenser so I look upon it as a supplementary heating source. I reckon the fridges and freezers here are a bit of an extravagance but 3 out of 4 are integrated and I doubt it would do them much good to be switched off permanently.  Things like the MVHR run all the time. I'm not sure how efficient those are but they need to be left on. 

[newhome]

2 minutes ago, joe90 said:

Ha, I designed the house with no tumble drier in it as I said the MVHR and the conservatory would be more than enough to dry our clothes and save us a shed load of cash!  For once I did not get an argument ?

 

Too much ironing needed for me with that method . Hate ironing so the tumble dryer rules 

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, joe90 said:

Ha, I designed the house with no tumble drier in it as I said the MVHR and the conservatory would be more than enough to dry our clothes and save us a shed load of cash!  For once I did not get an argument ?

The purpose of the tumble dryer, is not to "dry" things, but make them "fluffy" towels and socks in particular. Though it also does save on ironing.

 

The TD only gets used for the bare minimum time. Stuff comes out still damp and goes on the airer to finish drying, but as long as it has had some tine in the infernal machine, it passes the fluffyness test.

[newhome]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

The purpose of the tumble dryer, is not to "dry" things, but make them "fluffy" towels and socks in particular. Though it also does save on ironing.

 

 

 

 Lol, mine stays in until the stuff is dry, gets hung up and then put away later. Can't bear having wet washing lying around the place. Fluffy towels are amazing too. Hate line dried towels, they are like cardboard! 

[joe90]

In fairness our washing machine is also a dryer (for half loads ) so will see how it goes.

[Stones]

18 hours ago, ProDave said:

Back to energy usage.

 

I have just taken a meter reading so now have the first full months usage now we are in the house.  It comes out at 15.08 KWh per day, and with my present energy supplier that's £2.46 per day.

 

Extrapolating that to a full year gives a total of 5504KWh and a cost of £897.  In square metre terms, that's 39KWh per square metre or £6.48 per square metre.

 

That is everything other than space heating which obviously not using at the moment.  That is still an unknown.   I am not expecting winter lighting to add much as the house is all LED lighting.

 

That figure worries me because so much of it is "stuff" not actually running the house. But I struggle to think of any major saving I can make to that other than use the desktop pc a lot less and use a more energy eficcient laptop more (e.g when I am only browsing)

 

Dave, your figures don't seem too bad to me (see my energy usage figures as posted earlier). Excluding heating we average 17.65 kWh / day.  We make no particular effort to limit use. Given there are only three of you, your DHW use will be lower than ours.

 

21 hours ago, Stones said:

We use the following:

 

9.75 kWh per day on general use (TV, washing machine, cooking which is all electric) figure is a bit higher in winter when more lighting used, lower in summer

1.4 kWh per day on running the treatment plant air pump

6.5kWh per day for DHW (input)

1763kWh for the year heating

 

Depending on how you look at it our house is 165m2 floor area or 210m2 equivalent (if you factored in all the vaulted areas which could very easily have been made into useable floor area)

 

Overall not bad, DHW circa £300 a year (should reduce when the kids leave home), £225 for heating, £65 running the treatment plant pump, £90 p.a. de-sludge (assuming de-sludge every 2 years),  Water £247 (paid with Council tax), 

 

 

[Onoff]

On 25/08/2018 at 13:40, ProDave said:

The problem for me at the moment is my landline is used for people to contact me in relation to my business.  Any VOIP offering as far as I know will not allow me to port an existing landline number to it?

 

Off thread I know but just saw this in the CPC flyer that dropped on the mat:

 

https://cpc.farnell.com/swissvoice/eth-pstn/invoxia-voice-bridge/dp/TE08194?

 

Aside from the cost can't decide whether it would help in your situation...

[ProDave]

2 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

Off thread I know but just saw this in the CPC flyer that dropped on the mat:

 

https://cpc.farnell.com/swissvoice/eth-pstn/invoxia-voice-bridge/dp/TE08194?

 

Aside from the cost can't decide whether it would help in your situation...

Unless I am missing something, that still needs a physical landline. It just forwards from you LL to your mobile (or to an app on your phone)

[PeterW]

17 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Unless I am missing something, that still needs a physical landline. It just forwards from you LL to your mobile (or to an app on your phone)

 

INet will transfer your BT number to VOIP. 

[NSS]

So, my projected energy usage proved to be pretty accurate, with total import of 4680kWh at a cost of £784 for the full year (I'd estimated £790) in our 165m2 chalet bungalow. Net cost after FiT and RHI payments was £60. Happy with that ?