Save It!

Over the past 6 months I have been monitoring our Gas and Electricity usage carefully - just to learn how much we use and also to check whether the Solar Panels that we have on the roof to heat our water are actually making a saving for us in the summer.

Anyhow, now that it is winter, our Gas bills have soared… and so I’m going to experiment with the central heating and how long it is running each day. We have been having it on pretty much constantly from 6am - 9:30pm because with 2 young children at home all day we need to be warm. We do not have a room thermostat to help regulate it. What I am going to experiment doing is to have the heating on throughout the same period of the day, but… only on for half an hour in every hour - so it will cut in and out every half hour throughout the 6am-9:30pm time slot - the only exception being that it will be on for a full hour first thing in the morning to warm the house up. I’m hoping that the half hour ‘on’ period will heat the radiators enough to give us some heat throughout the next half hour before it kicks in again.

Obviously I need to monitor how cold I’m feeling, but more importantly, is it going to save me money?

Last week I used 43 units of Gas = 483kWh = £13.13 (with my tariff at EquiGas)

I’ll update in a week with my findings!