Interesting day

Right, in my quest for the dastardly mystery electric user, I turned off the immersion for 24 hours. I wanted to try and recapture yesterday's electricity usage to get a feel for what was going on, but I had to use the oven for 1 1/2 hours and one of the hobs for quite a long time too.

I checked the meter at the beginning of lunch prep and afterwards, and had used 2 1/2 units. That's a rough guide as we had computers and refrigeration running too, but at least it gave us an idea.

We've had no baths (obviously!), no washing machine, and tried to keep everything else as 'normal' as possible. I've been keeping water warm on top of the wood burner which, along with warm water kept in the hot water tank has been fine for washing up. We wouldn't be able to wash up after a greasy meal with that, but for every day food it was fine.

In addition, it took about 20 seconds to boil a mug of water for tea and coffee by using pre-heated from the woodburner poured into the kettle. Every little bit helps, right?

Annnnnyway, after all that, living as frugally as possible for 24 hours, turning off unnecessary lights and keeping things to a bare minimum, we have used 13 units. Our reading is now 97590

Shocking huhn? Two hours of water a day has been costing us a LOT of money.

You'll see over to the right my goals point towards tankless water heaters. Now we have decided that these are first on the list on necessity. Hot water gets used every day, whereas heating is only necessary for half of the year.

We've discussed that now we are going to have the water coming on for an hour in the mornings and if we want a bath in the evening, we boost it for another hour later in the day. I have to admit I LIKE hot water en tap (boom boom) all the time. It's great that I can have a bath whenever I choose and if Dd gets herself in a mess then I can clean her up. But it's coming at a huge financial and environmental cost, so it's time to change our ways.