How much energy does YOUR house use?

A while back, I wrote a piece about the energy ratings on British houses, and I estimated our own house as being at the bottom of Band C, given our double-glazing, low-power lights, and recent condensing boiler.

So, with all that, how much energy do we actually use?

Our electricity usage is fairly constant, but our gas usage shows a seasonal cycle (there is a delay in the usage and the data, as we are billed every three month, so the "Winter Bill" appears in the data just as the weather is warming up.

In order to know whether any energy-saving upgrades are succesful, one has to know what the relative usage over time is.
Of course, as we have "gas" heating, the biggest factor in our usage is the temeratures that a particular winter brings.

That's me.
What about you?
Do you use more or less than us
(we have a "modern", in other words "small", 2-bed semi with a conservatory, and we live in the South of England)

Reducing Energy Usage - A Practical Experiment

Hi all.
I thought I would share with you my thoughts on reducing energy usage.
First of all, you have to know what you are actually using.

I like tea.
A lot.
But how much energy does it cost to heat enough water for a mug of tea?

Energy Ratings for Houses

In the UK, houses have to have an energy rating certificate if they are being rented out or sold.
Our house doesn't have one, as we bought it before the current rules were introduced.

However, we can estimate our house's energy rating by using the certificate of the house next door, and then making adjustments for the differences.

The house next door has a rating of just 55 (right at the bottom of Band "D" on the Government's A-G rating system).
Their certificate recommends a condensing boiler (we had one a few years ago!), with more modern heating controls (we have that too!), and suggests that those improvements would be worth 7 and 3 rating points respectively,
Then we have double-glazed windows, and they don't. So that is another 3 or 4 points.
Low-energy lighting throughout gives us another rating point,

So we get about 55 (next door's rating) + 7 (condensing boiler) + 3 (modern heating controls) + 3 or 4 (double glazing) + 1 (low-energy lighting), giving us an estimated energy rating of 69 or 70 points, which takes us to the bottom of Band "C" - a whole rating band above our neighbour!

our condensing boiler

our modern, digital, wireless, thermostat.
our heating is optimised for the hamster!

One of our LED table lamp bulbs

Are there any other neighbours we can check "our" assumed rating against?

Yes - another house in our street, which is being rented out, also has a certificate.
Remember, all the houses in our street were built at about the same time by the same property developer, and although the vary in layout and size a bit, they are all built to a similar standard using similar construction tecniques and materials.

So, this second house has a rating of 60 - still Band "D", but better than the first house we looked at!
The values for improvements have changed a bit, too (the energy report for the second house was issued four years later than that for the first house).
So here we go.
60 (for the second house) + 5 (condensing boiler) + 2 (modern heating controls) + 2 (low-energy lighting), giving us an estimated energy rating of 69 points, which takes us to the bottom of Band "C" - so we scrape into a rating band above that neighbour too!

How efficient is your house?In the next 10 years or so, I expect to have solar panels on the roof, too, and that'll be worth a further 15 (first report) or 13 (second report) rating points, and would lift us into Band "B"!
Interestly, the inspector for both energy reports was the same man (!), so I suspect that the guidelines about the rating points have been altered a bit in the four years between the two reports.