me here wrote:
On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 11:49:14 -0000, "Tim Downie"
wrote:



How much loft insulation? Depending on how long ago it was done
your loft could be well below current recommendations. In terms of
value for money, it's a good place to start if it needs topping up.
My thought exactly: a day too late tho - great time to see how long
the snow stays on your roof and to find "hotspots". Almost all the
dormer bungalows around here lost their snow WAY before
'regular-roofed' houses, and the benefit of my recently increased loft
insulation was readily apparent. May well be that the insulation in
the OPs 'roof' isn't very effective at all - nowhere near current
standards.

If you have flat rooves built a while ago (in the 70's in my case)
you'll have an inch of fibreglass and that's it. That's costing me
£100 a year at least I reckon. I have 50m2 of ground floor extension
like that - it'll cost me a well over a grand to back-fill with
Celotex/reboard & plaster so it's not quite worth it yet.

Oh, and tumble driers: absolute energy oigs. If you have Economy 7
make sure you run them overnight. I have an 'A' rated drier which
dries with cold air - takes 4x as long but uses 1/3rd the energy. I
run that overnight on economy 7.

Our dishwasher and washing machine use hot water from the combi boiler
on short pipe runs (WM is right next to the boiler) and so don't use
(peak rate) electricity to heat their water.

Kettles: only boil what you need; keep lids on when you boil veg.
rinse hand-wash dishes in cold water after a swill in a bowl of hot,
not under running hot water. Do a lot of hand washing up at once:
start with the cleanest things (glasses, cutting boards, cups) then
move gradually to the dirtier things, even at the end of the wash the
water should be warm enought to deal with grease in frying pans and
roasting trays.

Don't heat the whole damn oven to cook a couple of silly burgers just
because the instuctions say you can. Fry them or buy something that
isn't so wasteful on energy. Bake taters in the microwave: uses 25% of
the enrgy (IIRC) ditto with veg.


However, in my experience the biggest consumer of energy in the whole
house is the wife. While I wear two shirts, a sweater and two pairs
of socks, she wants to swan around in her nighty.

I agree with all but part of the last paragraph. When we were younger and my
wife was a housewife by choice staying at home with the kids, I was out
working both in and outdoors. I would come home in winter, from a warm
comfortable car to find the house unbearably warm. Now that the kids are
adults, she helps get disabled kids to and from school, walks the dog
several times a day and can cope with the house at a lower temperature than
me!

Why oh why can she not understand that closing doors between rooms conserves
the heat? I'll come home to find that virtually all doors are open and that
the CH is working hard!