Having purchased a 13 amp energy meter from ebay my Husband set the functions with the required data and we set it to work. Having a large family with lots of laundry meant that we purchased a tumble dryer out of desperation a few years ago but we never really knew how much it was actually costing us to use. Today we are going to find out!
We have been line drying for several weeks due to the sun but here it has turned to rain and we have to wash three or four loads a day here in order to keep the basket empty and dangerous mountainous piles of clothes away. We took a deep breath and set it up, you just plug the meter into the plug like an adaptor and plug the appliance plug into it. Our tumble dryer uses 3000 watts to run! After it had finished drying I rushed out to see the reading and it appears to be about 20p for about a couple of hours. I was surprised at first as I was actually expecting it to be a lot more than that! However, when my Husband and I worked out that we did an estimated 4 loads, 5 days a week during the Winter months, that actually amounted to a whopping £50 of our electricity bill, per month!! Yikes!!
I guess that is what is so scary that something which costs just 20p and sounds rather harmless can mount up to such an extortionate amount if it is a regular or frequent expense. WIth the tumble dryer we don't have the option to stop using it altogether but we can try to dry more on the airer overnight in Winter when the Woodburning Stove is burning. Also, we already dry clothes above the Aga if they aren't allowed in the dryer due to delicacy etc but we could try to dry heavy things like towels and jeans on the Aga instead of the dryer.
Another thing my Husband likes me to do is to wash all the flannels from the bathroom in one load and then take them straight back to the bathroom from the washer and hang them up again ready to use. He says there is absolutely no point drying flannels when they are meant to get wet! They just need to be clean. Another benefit to this is that it eliminates the need for some many flannels if everyone uses the same ones continously.
Tomorrow we will be finding out how much it is costing us to keep our old chest freezer on. We don't use this one all the time, I filled it up again because we picked up some bargains from the supermarket and had a load of meat back from one of our lambs. Is it actually saving us money on purchasing food if it is costing us a lot to store it? I should add that this old freezer is a second one, we already have a newer upright freezer combined with our fridge so this one is extra and not essential but we do live in the Country, a drive away from the shops and we do have a lot of mouths to feed!
We have to be patient in order to get the chest freezer reading as the energy meter needs to be on over a longer period of time in order to establish the pattern over the day, as it switches itself on and off as it needs to. The freezer is full so that helps it to stay cold but it does make it harder to find the food at the bottom. If we decide to empty it again then I plan to put in old ice-cream pots full of ice-cubes or cold water to turn into ice and put them in the fast freeze then when frozen put them into the bottom of the freezer and put the food on the top. You just keep doing that until all the food is gone! Of course, I will be making room in my upright freezer to so that I can put the last of the items in the other one, it would be stupid to have a huge chest freezer on with only a few items in it!
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