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What's the boiler actually doing?
If all electric you'd normally just have the cylinder & immersion for hot water.
Is the UFH wet and being done by the boiler?
Also as others have said - check temp of water coming out of the taps and knock it back to 60 at the cylinder.
An apartment in a block may be heating all the neighbours through thin walls/floor/ceiling. My grandmother’s flat was the reverse, after she died and it was standing empty unheated it was still pretty comfortable to visit all year round. The flat underneath was effectively providing underfloor heating FOC!
The room heating is underfloor - I assume wet. There is a large tank with a timer attached with programmes for hot water and heating.
If it's a wet system the flow temp only needs to be a max 55 Deg.
Worth checking flow temps on hot water & heating.
These were my Octopus Agile prices last night, so less than the 2p I quoted, what are most people currently paying? 30.0p/kwh? If she's a big user and can shift some bulk usage to cheaper times, then it's a no brainer.
00:00 - 00:30 1.88p/kWh
00:30 - 01:00 0.00p/kWh
01:00 - 01:30 1.64p/kWh
01:30 - 02:00 0.35p/kWh
02:00 - 02:30 1.46p/kWh
02:30 - 03:00 1.15p/kWh
03:00 - 03:30 1.13p/kWh
03:30 - 04:00 0.72p/kWh
04:00 - 04:30 1.32p/kWh
First step is to turn the lot off and check the meter does not go up at all over a few hours. Fridge freezer will be fine just don’t open the doors.
I have not read the whole thread but lots of people seemed to be suggesting working out which circuits were using the energy with an old dumb meter involved waiting for the meter usage to go up over a meaningful period. For high usage you can tell pretty much instantly - either the meter is an old mechanical type and has a spinning disk or is a digital one which will have a flashing LED. Usually It will be solid red with no power and go on/off depending on the usage. IIRC typically once for each 1Wh (so 100x quicker than you will see the decimal place move on the display). If she is using 17kWh a day that light will be flashing on average 12 times a minute.
so she can work out which circuits are greedy by going to the meter turning all the breakers off, and turning one on at a time and accurately timing 1 min and seeing how many flashes she gets. At “base load” like a fridge, tv on standby, Wifi, smoke alarms etc she probably shouldn’t be using more that 100-200 Wh - so 2 flashes in 1 minute. With a single circuit doing little she may see no flashes in a minute. It should be quite obvious if one circuit is running 10x as fast as the others. Obviously that won’t spot stuff that is switched off, on timer, thermostat etc so probably worth keeping a record and doing it with most stuff off “how she leaves it when she goes out for the day” and with stuff on so she can see. Once she’s found the curcuit causing most of the flashing she can experiment with on/off or thermostat switches etc to see if they actually stop the load.
FWIW 17kW as the only source of heating for someone who is not trying to save energy doesn’t sound totally ridiculous to me - high but not ridiculous. It sounds like this is her first time paying the bills and she is now understanding why you probably spent the last 20 years telling her to turn stuff off, shut the door, spend less time in the bath etc!
It sounds like this is her first time paying the bills and she is now understanding why you probably spent the last 20 years telling her to turn stuff off, shut the door, spend less time in the bath etc!
Exactly!!! 🙂
Agile tariff is dynamic pricing, it won't stay at 2p. Can go up to 100p.
Oh, and what temp has she been used to? My parents run their house at 18 deg my in-laws at 24! You can acclimatise to either. Eco people claim 1 deg can save £100 a year… If your house is very cosy and/or she’s been used to university halls of residence (for some reason always heated close to the temp at the surface of the sun) she may need you to buy her some slippers and a jumper, perhaps some good curtains!
Enjoy it, there's no telling then until that first big bill lands on the mat and that dawning realisation that it's not free 😀
Also depends if south facing, my flats are s facing so tenants never use heating, just the sun. Block opposite is straight north facing, my tenant WFH in shorts, no heating, I can imagine the residents opposite in coats. Just bright sunshine makes the place feel warm.
Plumber replaced boiler as it was 25 years old, the useful life. Much better water pressure at the taps, I went on his recommendation and got a better one.
If she bought it, it will have epc so you can see if there's any obvious improvements she can make.
Typical Agile pricing is 15p/kWh and average per bill tends to be 18p/kWh at the moment. It's much cheaper than almost any other tariff. The only reason for the very cheap rates in the mornings over the past few days is the wind speed and intensity.
@B.A.Nana
Can we see an example of peak pricing, or a 24hr period?
I've been waiting ages for a smart meter, they are blaming national Grid and saying they can't install one yet.
and direct from Octopus:
[url] https://agile.octopushome.net/dashboard [/url]
So did we figure out what was using the leccy?
@B.A.Nana
Can we see an example of peak pricing, or a 24hr period?
Peak is 4pm-7pm, this is the same day 19/09/23 for Yorkshire and including VAT
16:00 - 16:30 28.62p/kWh
16:30 - 17:00 30.05p/kWh
17:00 - 17:30 32.97p/kWh
17:30 - 18:00 33.41p/kWh
18:00 - 18:30 33.81p/kWh
18:30 - 19:00 33.60p/kWh
As someone above states, the price cap is 100p but I'm pretty sure I've never seen it go above 35p and if it was to get silly you could just switch back onto the standard octopus tariff.
Do check that the meter is connected to the right flat. I once moved into a flat and after about 6 months got a massive bill. Followed the pipes from my meter and they went to a completely different flats. Then had an ongoing argument with National Grid who said it was impossible for it to be incorrect. Even though I was in the basement and the pipe ran up the wall to the top floor flat.
MySmartEnergy
Click on the 'Agile Octopus price table' drop down box to see half hr by half hr prices.
and direct from Octopus:
That's all very interesting..... I'm thinking how I could use this - but I don't have a smart meter yet.
I'm sure my two adult kids will only realise how much electric costs when they get their own place. I sound like my dad 'turn it off' - leccy was much cheaper then.
Sharkbait, it works with things like IFTTT, so I've had a smart plug that switched on a dehumidifier if the price fell below 10p/kwh and switch off if the price went above. Also Agile works intelligently with my car charger (ohme) to charge the car in the very cheapest half hour segments over night. So in my table above, if 1hr charging was enough, it would charge the car at 0.30-1.00 and 01.30-2.00.
Thanks banana
Apologies if already covered....
Is it a new build?
I've had to manage the sale of a few empty buildings and sorting out right meters for right flats/units can be "entertaining". Paperwork is not always in perfect order at the developer/utility company end and one minor paperwork error can translate into a truckload of nuisance.
She's not picked up the building supply has she or another flat with a pot plant habit?
Otherwise that's a lot of pot noodles.
Sharkbait, it works with things like IFTTT
That's what I was thinking. I already have electric underfloor heating being switched on and off using IFTTT according to the generation of my solar panels.
So this would be great in the winter when the PV isn't generating enough excess.
I could 'charge up' the floor on the cheap rate overnight.
We also have a place by the beach that's entirely electric and it could be helpful there also.
Hmmmm 🤔
I could ‘charge up’ the floor on the cheap rate overnight.
Although looking at the historic data from last winter the overnight prices seemed barely any better than the variable rate.
Although looking at the historic data from last winter the overnight prices seemed barely any better than the variable rate.
You could just about count on one hand the number of times the agile pricing drops significantly through winter. Nice when it does but it's rare.
Ahhhh.
No point in that for me then probs.
That's the current situation and has been since the wholesale price hike, but it didn't used to be that way, every night was consistently very cheap and I hope that in the future it will go back to that (I might be thinking pre COVID). So I guess, monitor it. There's a couple of apps that will show you prices on a daily basis, octopus watch being one of them. I was on tracker v1 tariff last winter which is a daily price calculated as an average of half hourly Agile prices, it was consistently lower than everyone else
Well there's a coincidence:
I don't have a smart meter and registered my interest with Octopus a long time ago but with no progress - I've just had a message from them saying my old meter is out of certification and they need to install a new one...... booked for next week!!
(I presume it will be a smart one?)
This will hopefully open up opportunities for my inner nerd!