How do you save money on Gas and Electricity?

[allanc]

I'm based in the UK, I am an at home business running from an office in my house.
I've been looking into the gas and electricity usage in the house after having new windows put in (hardware not software), the new windows I am hoping will cut the cost of heating as i was using a portable electric radiator last winter to save heating the whole house most of the electricity use is from me in my office.
TECCS

I feel your pain ... and your cold feet.
Is your main heating rads or forced air?

If forced air - how about load balancing?
While I am on that topic, does anyone know how to DIY Load Balancing?

 

[sapphirescales]

Unless you're running a ton of overloaded desktop PC's (e.g. mining rigs, souped up gaming rigs), the main cost is going to be from heating/cooling. New windows/insulation might help a bit, but unless you're in some 1920's cottage don't expect the energy savings to pay for the cost of the new windows. That's marketing BS spewed by the window companies. It would take 100's of years to pay for the windows with the money you saved on your energy bills.

I would do a rough calculation of how much electricity you should be using and if it's off by a significant amount, call an electrician out to pinpoint the source. The only other option to save money is to freeze more in the winter or sweat more in the summer. Personally I don't obsess about little things like electric bills. I mean, I take a look at the graph every once in a while for unusual spikes in energy usage, but other than that you've gotta use what you gotta use.

 

[LedHed]

If you have an electric tank water heater, you should put a timer on it. I did that a few years ago and, at the time, I calculated it was saving me 30 dollars a month. I have it set for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the afternoon. The rest of the time it is off.

 

[backwoodsman]

If you have an electric tank water heater, you should put a timer on it. I did that a few years ago and, at the time, I calculated it was saving me 30 dollars a month. I have it set for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the afternoon. The rest of the time it is off.

If that helps, then you need better insulation on the water heater. It doesn't cost anything to keep the water hot; what costs is letting the heat escape because of poor insulation.

 

[timeshifter]

then you need better insulation on the water heater

Thank you for not calling it a "hot water heater"! That drives me nuts... if the water is hot then why do you need to heat it?

 

[GTP]

I had an electric water heater and one simple money saver was to turn the thermostat down from 75 deg to 60 deg.

Iv'e since switched from electricity to a gas hot water system which has saved a ton on power as the gas heats the water only while its being used, whereas the electric hot water tank was 'always on.'

 

[Moltuae]

I had an electric water heater and one simple money saver was to turn the thermostat down from 75 deg to 60 deg.

I was under the impression that it was best to heat the water to 75 C to prevent Legionella growth. According to the info here, it seems 60 is ok but perhaps a little slow to kill Legionella for my liking. I think I'd prefer to stay in the 'disinfection range'.

 

[cyabro]

We put gas hot water in our place when we built.
Have controllers in the bathrooms and kitchen so you can set the temp you want the water to be, from 38-55 degrees c.
So you’re only heating what you actually need at the time.
We also put led lights in everywhere.
Our monthly power bill is only about NZ$130 per month and we only need a new gas bottle every two to three months, depending on the season, at NZ$118.
This is in a 270m2 house with two kids that like to have long showers!

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

I can tell you right now that the vast majority of electric usage is heating and cooling the property and the water heater.

To give you some perspective these days I game about 40 hours a week and leave my pc on 24/7 doing some tasks but its an i7-8700k with a gtx 1080, about 5 hard drives, an ultrawide monitor and another 1440p monitor next to it and my system uses approx 150kwh per month so at 14cents per kwh that comes out to 21 us dollars a month. My qnap NAS probably costs me about 2.50 a month and I leave it on 24/7.

 

[fencepost]

Years back my home PC was a retired server from a client (in the days when 4GB of RAM in a PC was notable), and even with dual early-mid 2000s Xeons it was probably costing me about $10/month in power - enough that I eventually shut it down and shifted to only laptops, but certainly not a big deal.

My home office was nicely toasty though.

 

[GTP]

I was under the impression that it was best to heat the water to 75 C to prevent Legionella growth. According to the info here, it seems 60 is ok but perhaps a little slow to kill Legionella for my liking. I think I'd prefer to stay in the 'disinfection range'.

Hmmm. Never heard of anyone in Australia getting Legionella from their water tap or HW tank before.
Our tap water is pretty good in Australia and is all treated before it comes out of the tap.
I rarely actually drink directly from the tap ( I use a glass instead, lol) as I have a Purafilter System that removes everything from the water.
The only time I may ingest (a small amount of) water directly from the tap is in the shower or whilst cleaning my teeth.
With a gas HW service obviously I couldn't shower in 75 deg or even 60 deg, so I set it for 35 deg which is nice.

 

[allanc]

I had an electric water heater and one simple money saver was to turn the thermostat down from 75 deg to 60 deg.

Iv'e since switched from electricity to a gas hot water system which has saved a ton on power as the gas heats the water only while its being used, whereas the electric hot water tank was 'always on.'

You have piqued my interest and I know very little (if anything) about this method of heating water.
However, and please don't flame me, in layman's terms - how do these units heat a steady flow of room temperature water to showering temperature in no time flat?

 

[GTP]

I don't know the mechanics of it but most units come with a device that you can set the temperature to you want. Like for showering, you set it to 35 deg.. If you want really hot water for washing up, it bypasses the temp controller.
Mine is a "tankless" system.

Maybe this can explain?

 

[Moltuae]

Hmmm. Never heard of anyone in Australia getting Legionella from their water tap or HW tank before.
Our tap water is pretty good in Australia and is all treated before it comes out of the tap.
I rarely actually drink directly from the tap ( I use a glass instead, lol) as I have a Purafilter System that removes everything from the water.
The only time I may ingest (a small amount of) water directly from the tap is in the shower or whilst cleaning my teeth.
With a gas HW service obviously I couldn't shower in 75 deg or even 60 deg, so I set it for 35 deg which is nice.

Ah, so all of your hot water is heated on-the-fly, so to speak? I suppose that makes all the difference. Legionella is only likely to have chance to grow in a hot water storage tank, where the temperatures there could help it to thrive (if it never gets hot enough to sterilise the tank). My hot water supply comes from a tank, which is heated to 70+ degrees by an immersion heater (which is of course mixed at the tap with cold water to achieve the desired temperature), but my shower is electric, heating cold water directly on-the-fly.

 

[LedHed]

WOW! I didn't mean to open up a can of worms! That thread ran away quick.
@backwoodsman
I live in Louisiana, 90% humidity and above is the norm. My sister used one of those water heater insulating blankets in the past. Because of the humidity, it caused the water heater to sweat, which caused other problems.

 

[allanc]

I don't know the mechanics of it but most units come with a device that you can set the temperature to you want. Like for showering, you set it to 35 deg.. If you want really hot water for washing up, it bypasses the temp controller.
Mine is a "tankless" system.

Maybe this can explain?

Yes, thank you.

 

[Karl00]

My business gas bill stays very low. The gas utility guy came by a few times thinking something was wrong with the meter. I don't really use hot water. Energy bill is lower than my neighbors'. I turn off AC/heating when I'm gone and don't set it low during the summer or high during the winter. I have heat come on when it hits 60F in Winter and AC on when it hits 75-76F in summer. I open the doors when it makes sense to and use ceiling fans.

 

[backwoodsman]

I live in Louisiana, 90% humidity and above is the norm. My sister used one of those water heater insulating blankets in the past. Because of the humidity, it caused the water heater to sweat, which caused other problems.

The only thing on or near a water heater that would cause condensation is the cold water inlet pipe. If she didn't do something to keep that from running down into the insulation, I can see it causing a mold problem, especially in high humidity where there's lots of condensation. Is that what happened? There's not going to be any condensation anywhere else on a water heater, no matter what you do with insulation.

 

[LedHed]

Not exactly sure, it was a few years ago. I do remember her telling me about it, though.