ridiculous esb bills!

sjaakie

to answer some of your questions.

as stated already we dont use a tumble dryer we use a clothes horse.
the house is "lived in" 3 meals a day are prepared and eaten.
mother and baby there all day, son in school and hubby working.
50% of the lights are energy saver bulbs. other lighting is not excessive.
washing machine usually ran at 40 degrees.
no elec shower.
PCs are high spec & have TFT monitors.
All the appliances are high quality.
no electric heating or immersion used.

i will get that maplin measuring device for sure and check out the energy calculator.

markpb

I live in an apartment with two other adults, no children and we pay around €100 every two months. It used to be much higher but we changed all the bulbs to energy saving, reduced the amount of water that was being heated at night and started running things like the dishwasher (twice a week) and washing machine (2-3 times a week) at night or first thing in the morning while it's still on night-time rates. The other appliances like laptops, tv, wifi router and ntl box are all switched off at the mains when they're not being used.

It's definitely worth trying to identify the high-use appliances but you can reduce your bill a lot by being a hitler about how electricity is used. It's probably hard with a child around the house but anything that needs to charged can be done at night assuming you have night saver rates. Consoles, batteries, phones, etc are all candidates. Making sure curtains are tied back to make use of light for as long as possible in the afternoon & evening. Electric blankets can be replaced by heavier duvets. It all depends how far you want to take it

jor el

The last house I was in had 5 adults, washing machine used about 5-6 times a week, tumble drier too, and bills were never more than about 150 euro. Currently I'm in a house with 3 adults, and our bills average about 120 euro every 2 months. There's 3 laptops, 1 PC, 2 TVs, 1 Wii, 2 Xboxes, 1 PS3, washing machine used about every 2nd day as is the drier. The PC and two laptops would be going for probably 12 hours a day. Electric oven used pretty much every day too, for between 1-2 hours usually.

I honestly don't know how anyone can use a washing machine more than twice a day. I'd say this and the dish washer are your biggest culprits.

sjaakie

i did an estimate breakdown on everything and now its pretty obvious but scary!


Appliance, hours per week, Power, cost per bill

PC1 84 300w 18.63
PC2 42 400w 23.5
PC3 84 400w 47.02
Wash mach 18 loads 22.67
Dish W 10 runs 16.79
Cook hob 2.1 2000w 2.94
Big fridge 19.59
small fridge 12.04
cooker oven 3 4.72
TV 70 110w 10.84
TV flat 28 130w 5.09
router/modem 2.5
lights normal 84 60w 84.64
light CFL 180 60w 15.11
Coffee maker 42 900w 52

lights and PCs costing over 200e alone!

june92

Righteo folks!

instead of me answering every question and comment here...I'll be a very generous (As I'm out of work with laryngitis) I currently work for ESB in the customer service and i answer up to or over 200 call a day (hence the laryngitis!!!!)

Any questions ye have i guarantee can answer it!

Mr. Presentable

sjaakie wrote: »

i dry the clothes on a large clothes horse, takes up most of the landing.

Three loads a day on a horse?

Mr. Presentable

Mine's a 3 bed, two adult, one child.€150.00/month.

3 PCs 16hrs/day
Washing machine 5/week
3 TV, but rarely more than one on

Gas C/H
No dishwasher
regular light bulbs

OP, yours is mad, unless you're missing something like immersion on constantly. But the washing machine use seems excessive (or maybe we're just dirty)

tippbhoy

i'm shocked at the amount of power the PC's use, is this the norm?

Have you had any nice new next door neighbours around the time this happened?

ixoy

tippbhoy wrote: »

i'm shocked at the amount of power the PC's use, is this the norm?

Wouldn't have thought so. Calculating against the PSU wouldn't be correct IMO - that merely indicates the maximum power the PC can draw. On average it should be drawing an awful lot less.

loyatemu

do you really need 3 PCs running 12 hours a day? Though I still think those estimates look high.

18 washes a week still sounds very high to me - we have 3 small kids so we do a lot of washing but still no more than 1 - 2 loads a day, I'd say 10 a week max and most of those at 30 degrees - you can wear a pair of jeans 2 days in a row you know!

using the oven is the least efficient way of cooking - the hob and microwave use much less energy (especially if you have a gas hob).

our bill averages around €100-€200 for two months over the course of the year - I can't see how you are managing to run up €400 bills.

Lizzykins

If my bills were even 200 every two months I would freak. We have 4 kids and 2 adults in the house and I wash once or twice a day. Dishwasher is on once a day and PC and TV on for about 8 hours each. I used that ESB energy calculator and it was amazing how it all added up. My bugbear is the immersion being left on. That will send bills sky high. I don't know if anyone mentioned that at all?

Cabaal

Immersion's and tumble dryers will cause any ESB bill to go insane,