The big consumer companies seem to be trying to out do each other with more and more pungent/offensive smells for laundry/dishwashing products. Liquid laundry washing products we’d used for years suddenly had intense fragrances which made us feel nauseous when clothes were drying on an airer.
Some months ago we started using 0% fragrance (silly description as they do have a smell) dishwasher tablets as products we used to use were tainting silicone cooking utensils and similar air fryer baskets with strong perfumes which were affecting the cooked food as you could taste the fragrance.
Trouble is these tablets marketed as ‘low fragrance’ are darned expensive compared to most.
In fact I believe all these laundry/dishwashing products are pretty much snake oil these days, getting redesigned/reformulated with pseudoscience descriptors to entice consumers to spend more on multicoloured capsules when simpler products worked anyway.
Picked up some boring Finish dishwasher tablets in Home Bargains the other day - small packs of 10 for £1 or something - work fine and no residual taste on the silicone goods. Simplicity is often best and cheaper.
Fridges
Freezers
Any heating appliance - Water heaters and room heaters. Notoriously use more than expected as they get older. Also check your water heating times if its electric immersion heater. Heating the water and then not using for a few hours will allow the temp to fall and more leccie used to reheat it. If you can, time the water heating to come on just before you use it.
Other than that the high draw items have already been mentioned- TV can be surprisingly high.
If possible turn everything off for a day ( except refrigeration) and see if their is still a draw somewhere. Also do you have a separate garage with power? Anything left plugged in, in there?
I add a few table spoons of baking soda in to the drum before putting the washing in.
It takes about 3 washes to really see a big difference in towels but on linen (the fabric that scrunches and wrinkles just because you looked at it sideways) it makes a massive difference immediately. My linen shirts and sheets come of the washing line looking like they’ve been ironed.
White vinegar works well for removing the softner buildup but really needs to be done as a dedicated load and then again normally to zap the vinegar smell. It also doesn’t help with the creases and wrinkles.
Towels end up as a sort of midpoint between cardboard and soft tumble dried and I think that’s acceptable.
After the normal wash cycle, add the white vinegar (or baking soda) and do a short cool wash. Then normal rinse and spin. A couple of times of doing this each wash should soften the towels.
Hotels often use white vinegar in the final rinse for towels and bed linen.
well yes I see…had not thought of that, sorry and apologies …
Yes I am got at, and well maybe justified, I have a lot of stuff to get rid of, and the hifi has always been viewed as my extravagance, and has never been a shared passion (though Mrs is musical and talented and I am not musical and very untalented) which has always been a sadness for me. I remember in the early days taking her to a concert, one of only a handful I have ever attended, and she had to walk out after the first couple of songs, disaster. I have to confess my musical taste is less popular and not mainstream so maybe this is understandable.
Yes that tube heater always on and no thermostat or timer control. If it gets reinstated, it will have timer control at least, but the initial purchase was cheapest possible so no thermostat - false economy of course.
And yes some plug in monitoring will be a purchase, and perhaps lead to the cause of excessive electric consumption.
Yes a monitoring plug will be purchased very soon, and investigation started…
Yes, the garage and what we call the ‘Little Kitchen’ have a dedicated (fused) supply to feed garage consumer unit, The garage supply also feeds outside security lighting, on demand power tools, and a couple of battery chargers, and feed garage lighting (florescent tubes), and the supply to the so called ‘Little Kitchen’ with a light pendant, under the counter freezer and under the counter washing machine (used once a week there are just two of us here) no tumble dryer, washing hung on the line in the garden to dry, and a small background heater on a thermostat set to stop freezing (only runs in the winter) as the Little Kitchen is really our larder. (One of my unfulfilled ambitions was to use the Little Kitchen as a wet darkroom and prepare Bromoil Prints…never happened.)
If you have aged security lighting(?), perhaps tungsten filament lighting units, these are atypically 300w+ in usage, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see very high power consumption if these are on much of the time e.g. due to a failed sensor and/or leaving the switch ‘on’.
Anyhow, we’ve established your sky-high bill is nothing really to do with your hi-fi (Naim kit), which was the thrust of your original post.
Yes, they started as something like 750w, and I have changed the bulbs (the long finger like tungsten bulbs) to 300 w, and there are two which are timed once triggered by motion to be on for three or four minutes. Yes, 600w when triggered by intruders. Next door was burgled, and even then we had the lights in place, but it makes me reluctant to remove them. However recently the fox population trigger the lights during the night when they come and play in the garden. I have a led replacement for one (!) not fitted yet, but on the todo list (which is more a tuit list).
Yes maybe the The Big Switch will not end as the Big Sell Off…
Hugh wattage Tungsten security lights that get triggered all night long by foxes, cats etc
Tungsten light bulbs all round the house. Where do you buy these from these days?
If this conservatory is bigger than a phone box then an 180 watt heater is just using power with no benefit. Just leave some windows slightly open, that will keep condensation away.
Old flat screen telly, is this a tube type or plasma? If it gets warm on top then it’s using too much electric.
If unbeknown to you the local wildlife (and domestic cat) population is bathing your garden with light all night ss you sleep, changing to a couple of modern (still bright) 20W LED units might save you a fortune!
Respectfully, ‘The Big Switch’ you need to do, is to swap tungsten bulb lights for LED ones, switch the fluorescent tubes out similarly, and perhaps trim the settings on the security sensors (both dusk and longevity settings), and make sure the sensors aren’t being triggered by shrubs and trees, noting how windy it’s been of late. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, ‘standby settings’ on electric kit nowadays, means pretty much ‘full sleep’, unlike yesteryear, when it meant only ‘light sleep’ and a continued meaningful consumption.
After the above changes, and not putting the 180w heater back on, I suspect the saving would be ~ £75 pm based on 24p per kwh cost (and if you’re paying more than this, you need to look around).
Best thing for incandescent bulbs is the bin.