Energy Saving Archives - Eco Thrifty Living

How I’m keeping warm for less this winter!

Zoe — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 13:36:02 +0000

It’s sooo cold!!!! The last couple of weeks it’s been sub zero temperatures in the mornings. All this cold weather has been making me think about what I can do to keep our heating bills down. To start with I spent a lot of time advancing the heating and snuggling up to the nearest radiator. It’s not ideal and it inspired me to think some more about how to stay warm for less!

Ways we reduce our heating bills and you can too:

We have done lots of things to keep the heat in and the cold out already.

We (aka my husband) fitted an extra thick layer of loft insulation to stop the heat escaping through the roof .
We safety pinned two duvets together to keep us extra warm at night. Minor downside of that – my husband gave me a fright in the middle of the night last night. I woke up to hear him say ‘stay where you are’. One of the safety pins had come undone and got him. These combination duvets* are better option as they are designed to be joined!
When home alone I put a thick dressing gown on with a hood and wear slipper socks to keep warm!
And we do most of these things too: 6 easy ways to reduce your heating bills

All of this hasn’t been enough to keep me warm when I’m home alone in the day time though. So I’ve been trying to limit my time in the house on my own and spending some time in cafes writing. I take my reusable mug with me and get them to fill that up, because that way I can make a cup of tea stay last for ages!

Taking things further:

I was surprised that even though we’ve done a lot to keep the heat in our home, it’s not enough. We have more work to do. So I decided two things;

1.I am going to investigate further where the heat is escaping in our home. Most of our house isn’t carpeted and I think a large part of the problem is a lack of rugs.

2. To start up a Facebook group: Energy saving tips and tricks UK , so that I can pick all your brains for tips. I thought it would be great to have a like minded community of people who want to save energy to share and exchange ideas with! It is a group to discuss all kinds of energy saving tips and tricks, not just how to keep heating bills low. Come and join the group and chat to other like minded people who want to save energy too!

Although I have found it a bit annoying that my house has been so cold, it has actually had a plus side. I’ve found that going to cafes is working really well. I stay off the wifi and get lots of writing done!

I hope you are finding ways to stay safe and warm in this cold and icy weather! Come and join the Energy saving tips and tricks Facebook group and tell me how you are getting on!

This blog post contains affiliate links marked with * and anything you buy through them will help to support the blog as I will get a small commission. Thanks! All opinions are my own and it won’t cost you anything extra to use the links.

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Intelligent or remote heating controls – what’s the point?

Zoe — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 08:00:00 +0000

Remote heating controls are all the rage at the minute, with Nest* now available in the UK, Tado* having been around for a little while and British Gas’s Hive* being pushed really hard on the radio and TV as well as a growing number of lesser known alternatives.

So what’s the point of an internet connected heating thermostat? How will they save me money and will I actually use it?

This is a guest post from Mr ETL and it contains affiliate links which are marked with a *. The content of this post was not affected by the links, it won’t cost you anything extra if you buy through them and if you do it will help to support the blog – thanks!

Every house it’s different and each family will want to heat their houses at different times and to different temperatures. The traditional thermostats allowed you to set schedules for your heating, normally by day or weekday and weekend and allowed you to set lots of different times and temperatures during each period. Those of us who did make good use of these were probably saving more than those who just set a morning and evening temperature and a lot more than those who just had the heating on the whole time. They normally allowed you to override the settings as well so giving you quite a lot of flexibility. So again, what’s the point?

Well the main point is every time you are not at home when the heating has been set to come on, you are wasting energy, which directly impacts your heating bills and the environment. Although you probably are able to predict when you will be at home and when you won’t during the working day, it isn’t always easy to predict which evenings you will be in or out and what you will be up to over the weekend. With a heating system that you can control on your mobile phone, you can delay it or turn it off for the evening if you decide not to come straight home from work and you can also tell it to start heating your home when your plans change and you come home earlier than expected. Although there is an initial outlay, over time these products should be able to save you moneyThe three main products on the market are all slightly different and here are some of those differences

Tado*

We have had Tado installed for over 2 years now, It is really simple and easy to use and controllable via your mobile phone. You set the temperature you want the house to be when you are at home, and the temperature when you are asleep along with what time you wake up and go to bed. Tado knows if you are at home or not by seeing how far your mobile phones are from the house and so as long as each member of the family has a mobile it knows if someone is home or not. The further away from home you are the cooler it will let the house get when you are out and it starts to warm it up as you get closer. They have recently also released some intelligent radiator valves which have the potential to save you even more money, we have had some for a year now (not Tado) and I’ll be giving you my thoughts on them soon. Tado has gone for a simple and neutral looking thermostat unit, which shows current temperature and you can manually adjust it (although ours is a first generation which has no manual controls).

Nest*

Nest has gone for the pretty thermostat prize and it looks good. This thermostat needs to be taught what to do. To start with you need to change the temperature on the unit manually for a week or so – when you get up, you turn it up to a comfortable setting, when you leave for work, turn it down and so on. Within a few days it starts working out what time you get up, go to bed and everything in between. If your schedule changes you need to manually adjust the settings and after you have done it for a few days, Nest learns. It also has a movement sensor on the thermostat in your house, which will turn the heating down if it hasn’t seen movement for a while (you need to walk past for it to know you are there, so it needs to located in a place you would frequently walk past) and they have recently started integrating with their other smart technology to improve this. If you have their smoke detectors for example (which should be spread around your home) they also have movement sensors which can feed information into the heating system. You don’t need to have a mobile phone for Nest to work (you can control it via your laptop or tablet) but they have recently introduced a function for Nest to know if are at home or not via your mobile if you want it to.

Hive*

Hive is going for a much simpler approach, a traditional schedule thermostat with the ability to remotely adjust the temperature. So if you go out for the day and forget to turn the heating off, you can use the phone app to turn it down, or if you’re coming home at an unusual time you can turn the heating up a bit earlier.

All of the products say they will save you money by giving you more control of your heating. How much you save and which is right for you will depend on your individual circumstances. So for instance, if you have a quite fixed schedule and just want to be able to control the temperature manually then maybe Hive is good enough for you. If you like your gadgets to be good looking and functional then Nest may work for you. If all the people in your house have mobile phones and you are at home at different times then maybe Tado is the thermostat of choice.

I might be biased towards Tado as I have one of their thermostats, but I did my research beforehand. Do yours and think about how often you are out and the heating is on or how often you are sitting on your sofa thinking it would be great to keep the heating on another hour.

Which intelligent thermostat would you choose and why? Let me know in the comments below.For more tips on how to save energy check out my post on 6 easy ways to reduce your heating bill!

Coming up next: Look out for my blog post next Monday which asks the question – does going zero waste mean you can’t have fun (especially with events like Christmas and New Years Eve coming up)?

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6 easy ways to reduce your heating bill!

Zoe — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 08:00:00 +0000

6 ways to reduce your heating bill as temperatures plummet

There are lots of affordable ways to keep heat in and the cold out. Here’s some to try today

Note – This blog post contains affiliate links marked with * and anything you buy through them will help to support the blog as I will get a small commission. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

1.Switch energy suppliers – USwitch can help you compare prices and potentially reduce your heating bill. If you would prefer a renewable tariff you can compare against companies like Octopus Energy * on there too.

2. If you have a cold drafty chimney and a fireplace that isn’t being used block it with a chimney balloon*. They are reasonably priced and help to stop the heat escaping up your chimney. Make sure you take the chimney balloon out before lighting a fire though! Or you can make your own!

3. A lot of heat is lost through windows and adding some thermal curtains* can really make a difference!

4. Shutting doors is a simple thing to do and it helps to retain the heat in a warm room.

5. To keep even more heat in a room put a draught excluder* along the bottom of the door.

6. Getting cold at night time – time to change that duvet! A duvet with a thick tog rating* will make so much difference and will keep you snug all night long!

You don’t have to spend a fortune on heat saving products.

I have bought most of our curtains from charity shops. Making draught excluders and DIY chimney balloons could be a fun project . However, it is a good idea to also invest in quality products that last and save you money in the long run.

What do you do to keep your warm in winter and to keep the heating bills down?

UPDATE: Since I wrote this blog post I now have another on intelligent and remote heating controls which can potentially help save money on energy bills. Take a look!

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Tado Heating Thermostat coming into winter number 2.

Zoe — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 22:00:00 +0000

Tado is a thermostat with a difference, it’s smart and saves you money by only heating the house when you are at home.

We have had it installed now for almost 2 years, and more importantly for a winter. Coming into the winter I thought it would be worth looking at how we have got on with it. Well it shows me how much the heating is on (which is quite a lot), it shows how quickly the temperature in the house drops overnight (which is too quickly for my liking) and it turns the heating off as soon as we leave the house and back on again when we are on the way home (which I really like).

They have updated their app this year which has introduced scheduling, allowing you to set different temperatures for when you are at home at different times of the day and for different days, the same as you would with a dumb timer thermostat. But why would you want to if it turns off when you are at home? Well for us, with Zoe at home during the day the heating would be on all the time in cold weather and that could get expensive. Instead she is quite happy to put a thicker jumper on if needed, so we lower the temperature during the week day. At the weekend with the kids around we find it hard enough to get them to put a jumper on when we go out let alone in the house so we want it a bit warmer, plus the temperature often plummets in the evening.

Tado have also brought out a new model with the temperature shown on the wall unit and you can change the temperature on it as well as from the app or website. It looks good but I still have the original

I am looking forward to them adding a few other features which I think will really make this product fantastic, a heating boost feature and an advance to next temperature feature, they have talked about some new features before the next heating season but I won’t hold my breath.

Would I recommend Tado, certainly, its one of those gadget’s that just work, you don’t need to do anything but get on with your life and it saves energy when you are not at home.

If you are thinking about getting a smart thermostat do it, if you’re not, why not? Buy it here.

This was a guest post from Mr ETL.

If you liked this post please click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks so much!

Disclaimer – this blog post contains affiliate links.

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How hungry is your appliance?

Zoe — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 20:28:00 +0000

This is a guest post from Mr ETL (my husband) about how we found out exactly how much we are spending on our background electricity usage throughout the year and how it is broken down by appliance.

We are spending around £365 a year on our background electricity usage!

When I look at our energy usage we are always using some electricity, even in the middle of the night. It’s only 200-500 watts per hour so not a huge amount but it does mount up, averaging roughly 8.4kwh per day, about £1 a day, so approximately £365 a year which is quite a lot before we actually turn any lights on or cook anything. I wanted to gain a better idea of what’s using all that electricity and a quick search of Amazon came up with quite a few plug in energy monitors which tell you how much a particular appliance uses. The one I bought is a Belkin one. I liked this one in particular because you can plug the appliance you are monitoring into the back of this energy monitors plug and there is a cable leading to a screen. This is really handy when the plug socket is behind the appliance as not all energy monitors have this feature (i.e. there is no cable between the plug and the screen on some of them) and getting my head down to read the value with all the dirt and creepy crawlies behind the fridge for example didn’t appeal. We try to turn things off when we aren’t using them, so I hate to think how much we could be spending on electricity throughout the year if we weren’t.

Which appliances are costing us the most?

So I had a walk around the house and looked for appliances that are either on or on standby that might be contributing to my “background” energy usage. Below is the list I came up with in order I thought would be using the most electricity

Fridge
Tropical fish tank
Outside pond pump
Cooker on standby
House cordless phones (base station plus charging units)
Kitchen radio on standby
Mobile phone chargers
Cable TV box
NAS box

I started with the fridge, plugged the unit into the wall and then the fridge plug into that and left it for a week, it reads the energy usage and estimates a yearly cost based on a electricity cost you can enter on the unit. So it estimates the fridge will cost me about £66 a year, not a huge amount I can do about it, but might look at how much a newer fridge might cost, can’t see it being cost effective though.

Next I looked at my tropical fish tank, I’ve got the lights, pump and heater on a multi plug so plugged it into that. A few days later it told me I was spending about £70 in electricity a year on my fish tank.

The cable box is costing about £25 a year, interestingly it doesn’t seem to make much difference between standby and running but as it’s not advisable to take it off standby, again I don’t have much choice.

That still leaves me with over £200 of “vampire” usage to find, next on my list is the NAS box, for those of you less technical it’s where we put all our pictures, kids films and laptop backups so the whole family can access it, it’s on 24/7 at the minute, it sleeps most of the time and actually is costing me another £45.

We’ve got 2 ponds that we inherited when we moved in, we got some fish from a friend and put some in each pond. They both have filters which need running 24/7, I hadn’t really thought about how much they were costing me but a day of running one of the filters with the monitor told me it was costing us over £40 a year. The other pond has a leak so I moved all the fish into one pond, have stopped running the other pond filter and I think I won’t bother any more. One pond for fish and the other can be au naturel. Saving me £40!Say no to standby – you could save a surprising amount of money!

I’ve still got more appliances to monitor to track the rest of the usage but what this exercise has shown me is 3 things:

A big chunk of my electricity bill is things that are on all the time, some I can’t do much about and some I can.
Lots of electrical items left on standby add up to a surprising amount of money.
The plugin monitor (Belkin Energy Saving Insight Energy Cost Monitor
) will easily pay for itself in finding appliances to turn of standby or use more sparingly.

Once I’m finished with the monitor I’m going to lend it to someone so they can benefit from it to. I’d recommend this monitor or one like it, if it finds just one thing that’s costing you more than you thought it will probably have paid for itself.

Note: we have solar panels and the energy monitor can’t factor in the electricity which we haven’t paid for, so for us it provides a rough guide to how much certain appliances are costing us throughout the year.

Disclaimer. I bought the monitor and this is not a sponsored post so have no affiliation to the manufacturer. Of course you do want one and buy it through the link here we make a (very) small amount of commission from it so buy buy buy

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How to make a DIY chimney balloon

Zoe — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 10:00:00 +0000

How can you make your own chimney balloon for free?

Introducing guest post number three from my husband.

It’s getting colder outside and we have had the heating on already. I’m on a mission to use technology and gadgets to reduce energy usage and save money. So when I could feel a cold draft in our family room it didn’t take long to track down the source of it – our chimney.

Please note this article contains affiliate links marked with an asterisk. If you click through and buy something, it won’t cost you anything extra, but it will help to support the blog – thanks!

We decided a while ago that our gas fire was not very efficient and we haven’t used it in ages. The decision not to use it at all was sealed when we needed to get a gas safety certificate. The gas man said we needed new fake coals or we could just cap the gas. We went with capping the gas.

When our kids are older I’d like a wood burner but until then our chimney is just a source of wasted heat. So I started looking into what was available. I came across chimney sheep* & a chimney balloon* which you can buy, put in your chimney and blow up. When you want to use the fire you just deflate it. You can reuse it many times over so quite thrifty already. This made me wonder if I needed to buy it or if I could make my own.

I then saw a post where someone used a black bag and some loft insulation. I picked up some bags of loft insulation from freecycle so that seemed like a good and free solution. This project took me less than an hour and has saved us money, as well as making the room more comfortable.

I used the following to make the chimney balloon:

2x thick black bin bags
Old loft insulation (fiberglass)
Strip of material or string
Piece of plastic pipe
Safety glasses
Gloves

It was a bit of trial and error with how much insulation to put in. I put in loads initially and then couldn’t push it through the opening of the fireplace. The idea is to put the bag far enough up the chimney that you can’t see it. Leave just the end of the material hanging down to be able to pull it down when you need to.

I double bagged the insulation as the inside of the chimney is quite rough. The missus was worried about ventilation and it is important there is some air flow in the chimney. This stops condensation causing problems so I found a castoff of some plastic piping.

I put that up the chimney first and then squeezed the insulation as small as possible to get it into the hole and then let it expand into the chimney stack leaving the pipe to provide a small amount of ventilation. There is still some airflow but is no longer a big draft. A job well done! It was quick and didn’t cost us a penny.

Warning: Do not do this if you have a working fireplace. A chimney balloon designed for the task would be much safer and they are not expensive.

For more tips on how keep heat in and cold out check out these 6 easy ways to reduce your heating bills.

Want to get started with reducing your waste? Buy my Eco Thrifty Living Book! One of the central themes in it is reducing waste – the suggestions I make are affordable and could save you money! I think it’s a great introduction to the eco-thrifty life but I’m probably biased. Before you make up your mind, check out the reviews on Amazon and from bloggers: Frugal Family, Inspirationalise , A Refuge for Daffodils and Allotment Recipes.

I’d love to know if you have made a DIY chimney balloon and how it is working for you? If you would like to read more DIY energy saving solutions you might enjoy this post on heat retention cooking.

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Obsessive or prudent?

Zoe — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 21:45:00 +0000

I have written a couple of articles about our Eco-Eye energy monitor here and here, but really it is my husbands baby and he wanted to write an article about it himself, so here it is!

I think people install solar panels for 2 main reasons, to make money / save money or to do their bit for the environment. Often it will be a combination of the two. I was determined that it wasn’t just about getting a cheque from the energy company every quarter but that we make the most use we can out of the energy we generate.

In our previous house we were on Economy 7 which gave us discounted energy over night so I was encouraging the missus to put on the washing and dishwasher overnight when it was cheaper, we dumped that though as it wasn’t cost effective as we used so much more energy in the day than we saved by having a cheaper tariff overnight.

Now we have the solar panels installed its all about when the sun is shining but its soo much more than that. Our system came with a monitor that told us how much energy was been generated at the minute (when you press the button on it), but it was out of context, yeh we are generating 1Kwh lets put the kettle on. That’s when I found the Eco eye , that shows us what we are consuming, generating and our net position both kilowatt hours and in a great traffic light system, red for drawing electricity from the grid, amber for using all we are generating and green for generating more then we are using.

With the eco-eye we can now see if we have spare electricity to use and how much we have used and generated each day, I can download the information and look at how much we are using over time but its all “offline” and in this day and age that just won’t do. So an evening or two of research on how to upload the data to the internet and I had the eco-eye connected to Xively, a site for “connected devices”.

Now I can see the current usage and generation on my phone or on my PC, can see when we have put the washing on at the right time or not. It does mean I can see when the misses has put the washing on when there is no sun or missed the ‘ideal’ time to put it on but I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.

As part of the feed in tariff (FIT) the government assume we use half the energy we generate, from what I’ve seen and read people use much less than 50% unless they are making an effort. The more electricity we use when the sun is shining the more our electricity bill is reduced so it makes sense. What do you do to reduce energy usage and bills?

So as you can see my husband is rather obsessive umm I mean prudent when it comes to using electricity at the right time in our household and we keep our paid electricity usage as low as possible!

If you liked this post please click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks so much!

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Tado the intelligent heating control – first impressions

Zoe — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 08:39:00 +0000

I recently wrote an article about how and why my husband is tracking my every move and I mentioned that we are beta testing a new heating control called Tado. Well apparently it is useful for things other than just remotely letting him know when I’ve left the house and he has written this article explaining more.

Tado the intelligent heating control – first impressions

We are lucky enough to be beta testers for a new type of intelligent heating control. I like my gadgets and I like saving money and this seems to fit the bill well. So why am I excited to have a new thermostat? It isn’t usually the most interesting of gadgets.Well this one is pretty clever.

Tado is made up of 2 main parts – the Tado Box which connects to the boiler and replaces your existing room thermostat and the Tado App, which runs on your smart phone and is the way you control the heating.

The guys designing Tado have made it really simple to use asking 4 key questions:

What temperature do you want the house to be at when you’re home?
What temperature do you want it to be at when you’re sleeping?
What time do you wake up in the morning?
What time do you go to sleep?

Tado then pretty much works everything else out. It knows what temperature the house is at and claims that it learns how long it takes to heat your house up. So the idea is that it works out how to heat the house up just in time for you to get out of bed. This should mean that the more insulation is in the house the less time the heating will need to be on. It also gets the weather forecast for the local area so sunny days and very cold nights affect how it heats.

Now for the clever bit, it knows when you and the other members of your family are home by the app on the smartphone. When the last person leaves the house it turns the heating off. I have tested this and it’s really good, it recognises when we have left the house within a few minutes and knows we are home just as fast. It says it works out if you’re heading home and turns on the heating in time but as it’s only been installed over the summer so far so we will have to wait and see about that.

I don’t know when it’s going to be available in the UK, probably next year after they get the results of the winter and I don’t know what the price will be but so far so good, I can now see what the temperature in the house is, how long the heating has actually been on and slightly big brotherly when the wife is at home or not I am looking forward to seeing how it actually performs over winter and will report back then.

To find out more look at the Tado website.

In case you are wondering this is not a sponsored post.

If you liked this post I would really appreciate it if you click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks!

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Do you have the next big energy saving idea?

Zoe — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:30:00 +0000

This is a Sponsored Post

Have you ever had a great energy saving idea and felt that you would love to share it with an energy company that would take your idea to the next level? Well here is your chance – E.ON have come up with 5 challenges to the British public, which are linked to their Home of the Future show aired on Channel 4 on Sunday nights, around the themes of work, rest, food, play and wellbeing. The idea is that you sign up to their website E.ON Innovation and submit an idea under one of their themes.

The first theme is rest and asks ‘How could your home ‘learn’ about your energy usage to create a more restful environment?’ Maybe you would like the radio to automatically turn off when you leave the room and turn on when you return. Or perhaps you would like your fridge to automatically go into holiday mode overnight. You can get really creative here and your imagination is your only limitation!

I entered the challenge and suggested that it would be useful to have ‘intelligent appliances able to reset themselves after a power cut/ being turned off’. I went through a phase of turning the oven, hifi and microwave in my kitchen off after each time I used them, but quickly got annoyed when I had to reset them every time I turned them back on. Our oven won’t work until you reset the time so after a while I stopped doing it. If these features came as standard in all new appliances, then eventually we would all have them in our homes and it would be easier to turn them off and on again. It probably wouldn’t be a short term solution though.

Participants are encouraged to comment upon and vote for each others ideas, so if you do sign up, it would be great if you could vote for my idea or at least let me know what you think! The most popular ideas will be submitted to a judges panel and a winner will be chosen for each theme. Each winner will have their idea assessed for development by E.ON and will win a home energy makeover worth up to £2000. An overall winner of those 5 will also be chosen and their energy home makeover will be increased to a value of up to £10,000.

You can follow the conversation about this project by following E.ON on Twitter (@talkingenergy) and looking out for the hashtag #eoninnov.

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