Cutting the Cost of Household Bills?

schlumpf_louise asks: "I'm in the UK, and I'm about to move out of university accommodation and live in a house, for the first time. When we move, we will have to pay for water, electricity and gas. We'll still be students renting from a landlord, so we can't make any major physical changes to the property. The house has gas central heating and a gas cooker. Four computers will be running pretty much all the time, in addition to the usual general household appliances. What tips do any of you have for (legally) saving on bills? Are there any technologies that are worth buying for long term savings? What should we not do, or not use?" What other saving tips, and frugal suggestions might you have for a house full of college students?

Do your computers always need to be on?

[orin]

It is the four computers running all the time that will cost you a significant amount of money. What you should all do is work out when your computers actually need to be running. Although its nice to sit down and instantly start working, or to check your email when you are up at 3am going to the loo, if you are pinching pennies you'll notice that even over the course of a month, shutting down computers when they aren't doing anything will save you a significant number of pounds. Chances are as students you'll be spending a lot of time away from the house anyway at the pub, classes, the pub again, the local curry place, the pub. If you add that to your sleep routine you'll probably find that the number of hours each week that you actually need your computers is only a small fraction of the 168 that they will be on. Set your automated tasks to occur when you are eating dinner or watching the TV rather than having your computer on at 3am just to backup and download updates. Is having a great distributed computing score worth the price of several meals each month? Also consider. If you all already have mobile phones, do you really need a landline?

heat/cooling

[chills42]

2nd? I would say try running heat/cooling as little as possible while still keeping it comfortable..

Turn off

[Duhavid]

Turn off any and all electrical devices not in use.

Pile on the blankets, dont run the heater.

And lose Internet access

[tepples]

If you all already have mobile phones, do you really need a landline?

If you don't have landline voice service, you can't get dial-up. If the local telco is unwilling to unbundle the local loop, and you don't have landline voice service, you can't get DSL. If you don't watch a lot of TV, and the local cable company is unwilling to sell Internet access to those who aren't cable TV customers, then you can't get cable Internet access. So yes, you may need to keep landline voice service or give up Internet access altogether.

Re:And lose Internet access

[RingDev]

Not if your neighbor has a wireless hub ;)

-Rick

Learn to cook

[Frumious Wombat]

Frankly, that one will save you more than most of the rest. There are a wide variety of not bad foods that can be made in semi-bulk (so you only have to cook new every couple of days), that can be dressed differently at the table for varied meals. It's how I survived grad school.

Follow that one by shoping for clothes at the local version of Goodwill, turn down the heat, plug the drafts, and unplug appliances not in use. Consider adding an insulating blanket to your hot water heater, if it's not an instant-on type.

And, of course, don't do anything that makes holes in walls. Those are pricey to fix and tend to make landlords a bit touchy. The same comment applies to carpets.

Learn to cook.

[Pyromage]

There's lots of good suggestions for other areas, so I'll add the odd one:

If you haven't already, learn to cook. It's possible eat better, healthier, and cheaper than most of the restaurants you're probably eating at, if you know where to shop and what to make. Be willing to buy in bulk (things often cost half as much). Make a lot of meals based around rice (rice is cheap).

Just consider this: where I'm at, I can eat filet mignon for the same price as a sandwich from Subway. Now just imagine if you start eating cheap food!

Also, track your expenses in this area. Only when you know what you're spending can you optimize effectively.

While you're at it, learn to bake. Cakes impress the girls.

Re:Do your computers always need to be on?

[Aurix]

Why is the first post suggesting computers as a way of powersaving? For gods sake, look at things that use the most power first.

I mean, if you're looking at things that use power, don't use driers. Heaters/Aircon, etc will use a heap more power than your computers do (assuming you've nothing out of the ordinary for casual uni students).

Use off peak power if you've got an electronic hot water system, etc etc.

Trying to save a few bucks on computer power when you're spending hundreds on heating is silly.

Hope this helps.

Re:LED Flashlight

[SagSaw]

Convince your house mates that switching to LCDs in going to save everyone even though they're relatively expensive up front. A 19" CRT sucking down 100W will cost a fortune compared to the operational cost of a good LCD. The less power used means the less heat generated which leads to lower home cooling costs in hotter months.

I don't know about that. A LCD of similar size and resolution to my CRT would cost about $600. Let's even assume that by CRT draws about 200W (the label on the back says 1.7A/120V, but that's going to be worst case.). In my area, electricity costs $0.08 per kWh. The LCD would take 37,500 hours to pay for itself $600/($0.08/kWh)/0.2kW. At that rate, I would take over 4 years for the LCD to pay for itself, even if I leave my current monitor on 24/7/365. To me, the savings just aren't enough to make me rush out and buy an LCD. I might consider it when it comes time to replace this monitor.

Re:Do your computers always need to be on?

[quadong]

"A computer is a very inefficient way to heat a house. The amount of power it uses up will NOT simply come off your heating bill. Certainly not if your heating is anything other than electricity"

Ahem. Physicist here. First of all, he _said_ that he had electric heat. If you have electric heat, then running your computer while the heat is on is free, just as he says. A computer converts all of the energy it uses into heat, just as an electric heater does. If you're interested in making heat, then you could call both devices 100% efficient. The only difference is that in the computer, some of that energy does more interesting things before turning into heat.

As you say, if you have gas heat, this is not true. Gas is cheaper per unit of energy (although this is hard to tell from your bills, since they measure them in very different units!).

Re:Do your computers always need to be on?

[Jettamann]

Going to the PUB 50% less (stay home) will save you more money then any other suggestion here.

Learn how to cook

[Duck of Death]

I'm in the US so my experiences may not translate directly to your situation, but here goes:

Learn how to cook - preparing meals yourself is cheaper than eating out or buying pre-packaged convenience foods from the market. I can do a chicken dinner (roast chicken w/gravy, rice, salad and veg) for 4 for $10 or $2.50 per person (about 1.45 GBP). Learn how to make a few basics - roast chicken, marinara sauce, eggs, soup, etc. You don't need a lot of equipment and most parents would love to help you equip a basic kitchen setup.

Shop the sales and buy in bulk if you have the storage space (if you've got a house, you've got the storage space). Pasta is cheap, usually about $1 per pound here, but it also can be found on sale from time to time for 50-60% off. When that happens, buy 10 pounds. It's not going to go bad, and you will eventually eat it all. Get a warehouse club membership (or use someone else's) to buy basics like paper towels, toilet paper, meat.

Plan your meals and the use of leftovers. Roast two chickens on Friday night, eat one, and on Saturday make chicken salad or chicken soup with the other. If you're tired of chicken, put it in the freezer, thaw the marinara sauce and make spagetti.

Turn the computers off. I have a computer that's on most of the day, but when I started making sure it was turned off at bedtime I noticed the difference on my electric bill immediately. I have a tiny Linksys NSLU2 file server that's on all the time, but it only draws 5 watts or so, and it's suitable for my 3 computer home network.

Use compact flourescents. My kitchen lights are on most of the day, as is the floor lamp in the living room. Before I swapped out the bulbs, I figured I was drawing over 600 watts per hour. Now that the flourescents are in, I'm drawing 150 watts per hour. Between making sure the computer was powered off at night, using the compact flourescents, and just trying to make sure lights are off if no one is in the room, my electric usage has dropped by 20% per month (which is good because rates went up significantly recently).

By shopping sales and bulk buying, doing some basic meal planning and cutting down on waste, I cut my grocery bill by 30% (I tracked it for a few months). And we are pretty much eating exactly the same stuff as before - we're just being smarter about when we buy and how we use it.

DD

Unplug devices

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything plugged into an electrical outlet will pull a small amount of electricity for its "standby" mode. This may not seem like much, but consider that's ~300 hours per month, and it's probably a lot of devices. Anything with a transformer on it probably heats up, too, which likely doesn't help you.

Best advice? Read Alan Zelicoff's book "Saving Energy Without Derision" (look further down in this page [zelicoff.com] ). It's about simple ways to save energy, before going to extremes like installing a $20,000 solar installation. You can purchase it for $10 (US) or you might find a PDF of it somewhere out there. It's got loads of advice about watching your usage and carefully managing it.

Foam and Caps

[Deanasc]

Since you're renting you don't have much choice in how it's insulated but there are a couple things you can do and your landlord might even let you deduct the cost if you approach him before you do it. If you have access or can get it for a day, take a look at not only the water heater but if you have hot water pipes for heating check those pipes as well. Every bit of pipe that's exposed is a source of heatloss so every bit of pipe you see should be covered in pipe foam. It's a couple dollars or pounds or euros for every ten feet or 3 meters. One or two bags should cover the pipes in an open basement. I know you can't run the foam all the way to your apartment, once the pipes go into the walls you have to hope there's insulation.

The other thing you can do is check the wall switches and outlets. If you feel a draft a spray can of electrical outlet safe foam will go a long way toward sealing the draft. But you're not done yet, put caps on any outlet that isn't in use, all those slots in the house can equal a quater inch or one half centimeter open window.

Re:Foam and Caps

[fred fleenblat]

Every bit of pipe that's exposed is a source of heatloss so every bit of pipe you see should be covered in pipe foam.

Side benefit is that if all the pipes are covered in foam you are far less likely to have problems with bursting from frozen pipes.

Not a problem in my area, but some locales it's critical.