As October creeps ever closer people are getting more aware, and more worried, about the cost of energy in the coming year. With this in mind, we have tried to come up with some different ways to save energy.

No doubt, if you have been scouring the internet to find ways to save money on your energy bills, you have probably found some of the same things as us – namely swapping out your lightbulbs for more energy efficient ones, dropping your thermostat by a degree or 2, turning your hot water down and some other things that might save you a few pounds.

However, it seems that we really need to do something much more drastic if we are going to even have a slightly reasonable monthly direct debit and these small changes are just not going to cut it. So we have come up with a few more drastic things that you could do:

Cooking Meals

Share the cooking of meals – if you are friends with your neighbours or have family living close by then why not cook something together? A standard fan oven might use 2.5Kw per hour.  With the energy cap from October being 51.9p per Kwh, that will cost you around £1.30 an hour to run. I know my oven needs 20 minutes to preheat so that is already 43p before I have even started cooking.

If you use a table top oven (I have had one of these for a few years and often use it instead of my main oven) then it generally uses less power (the one in the link is 1.5Kw which seems to be average for this type of oven). It also requires less preheating (in fact I don’t pre-heat mine at all). A 1500w oven will cost around 78p an hour to run. It may not be ideal if you have a lot of food to cook but it will certainly cook a meat joint for less than a standard oven.

Saving Money on Heating

In order to save money on heating your house you could arrange with friends and family to visit each other so that only one of you needs to heat their house on that day. You could also set up arrangements with neighbours to go to each others houses.

Heating is likely to be the thing that will take up most of your budget in terms of gas so any way of saving heating costs can help in money saving.

Another option is to turn off the heating upstairs (I know a few people including myself are planning on doing this) and just having electric blankets on the beds. I bought 2 of these blankets (a single and a double) which have a power of 70w. This means they cost 3.6p per hour. I am just planning on having them on for half an hour before bed time to warm up the bed so I will see how that goes.

Sweep Your Chimney

Perhaps you have an open fire that you haven’t used for a while. Obviously safety is a priority so you will need to get it checked out and swept, but if you can just use the fire to heat the lounge and turn the heating off elsewhere that might be an option. Otherwise you could have a small electric heater and close the doors on rooms that are not being used.

Save Money on Hot Water

If you have a gas boiler then you also might be hoping to save money on hot water. A couple of ways of doing this might be – the obvious one is to have short showers instead of a bath. Another option might be for families to do what they did decades ago and take turns in the same bath water. This used to be pretty much the norm when most houses had an immersion tank that maybe only had enough hot water for one bath.

I also wonder if these days we take too many showers – do you really need to have a shower every day? Maybe reassess if you can have a shower less often – are you actually dirty or smelly or do you just want to freshen up? Maybe just a wash with a flannel is enough some days.

Join a Gym

Where it might previously have been too expensive for many people to join a gym, perhaps this is time to reconsider. If the gym has showers that you can use then maybe going there in the morning before work or even at the end of the day. You may need to find a gym that doesn’t have a minimum period of membership as you may not need it for the summer but it could be a good option over the winter. Not only that, you can also get fit at the same time! There is a gym near me which offers no contract membership in off-peak hours for £15.99 a month.

Washing Machines

You can save money when using your washing machine by doing a few things – obviously washing clothes at a lower temperature is one. You can go a step further and use the eco setting on your washing machine – my washing machine has an eco setting that uses half as much electricity than the standard wash.

Also, don’t wash clothes as often – a bit like washing yourself, only wash clothes when they are smelly or dirty – they might go for a bit longer than you would normally leave them for, particularly in winter when we don’t sweat so much.

Hairdryers

Hairdryers on average have a power setting of around 2kw so that is £1 an hour. perhaps you could leave your hair to dry or dry for half as long as you might normally.

Small Changes

Of course there are lots of small changes that you can also try:

• lowering your thermostat
• lowering the temperature on the boiler
• turning off radiators in rooms you don’t use (and closing doors)
• using a slow cooker
• bulk cooking meals and reheating in the microwave
• use the eco settings on your washing machine/dishwasher
• fill the washing machine/dishwasher rather than turning on half full
• don’t fill your kettle and use a flask for extra hot water – kettles also cost £1.30 an hour to run
• turn off hobs a minute or two early and allow veg to stay in hot water
• use lids on pans