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Well its irresponsible for energy companies to encourage usage like this. And misleading.
- They assume you are on a fixed tarif water bill, on a meter you will be paying for all that extra water in a bath twice (once for the water and once for it going down the sewers)
- They assume I'm sure a small amount of water
- They dont tell you how much it mounts up, even if you spend the minimum 5p extra for a bath they state thats still £20 a year per person just on energy, for a 2.4 kids family you just gave the every companies an extra £50 a year per household and thats assuming their minimum energy only

Lets work it out, My 3kW emersion heater is 3kW and will just warm enough water for a shallow bath (warm not hot) in 30mins. After that it will turn itself on and off as the water gets hotter so makes things more difficult to measure. That 1.5kW of energy (its 3kW Hr)would indeed cost 15p at 10p per kwH (actually the rate I'm paying is 16p so thats 24p)

At 50 litres for an average bath (though only a warm one not hot) my water meter will use 0.05 cubic meters is about 8p. (£1.66 cubic meter).

So the real cost assuming those cheap electricty rates, being on a meter, and having a shallow warm bath is actually 23p.

For me at 16p an electricty unit (primary tarrif) thats actually 24p+8p= 32p per bath, or if I have one every day thats £117 a year.

My father coming from a farming background has a bath once a month (whether he needs it or not) now thats energy saving.

Every company with an expensive service says "only so many pence per day" to make you think its cheaper and spend more. The £150 tv licence is pronouced as good value for 42p a day.

Clearly this is just a poor attempt to make us think energy is cheap and use more. In these times the regulator should step in to stop them from advocating using more water and more energy by showing the figures in a way to make it look much more affordable than it is.

(PS Ive been frowning a lot lately due to lack of money, you could put a smile on my face for just 1p per day, thats it just 1p. The kind of loose change you would ignore on the pavement. Just 1p a day...thats worth it isnt it...everyone do it now. (Hmm 1p*20M adults that £200k a day, and 73 million pounds a year...you bet I'll be smiling)

Where is the comprehensive menu Declan?

We could use a lot more useful numbers than the few so far!

Declan, I agree with your blog, I don't believe the figures about electricity costs either.

Money Saving item, and your related blog, which says "We'll find out how he arrived at these prices". We did not find out how these prices were arrived at, and I cannot see them on either the E.ON or Energy Saving Trust web sites. Can you provide the URL please?

Kevin Bryant E.ON + Paula Owen Energy Saving Trust appeared on Working Lunch.

Warm bath costs 10p was quoted from the 'list'. Qualified by Ms.Owen that a hot bath topped up will cost a lot more. Electricity was being talked of as the fuel, so there's virtually no boiler/efficiency loss involved.

I want to know how this figure was arrived at, what was the water temperature, and the amount of water (also as a % of a standard bath)

Maybe it amounts to six inches of tepid water in a standard bath, but to get a warm bath with just enough water to cover me costs more like 50p.
And to get a hot bath, long enough for a twenty minute soak, costs about £1 or more with a half-filled bathtub.

Based on my last electricity bill £166.95 for 1188kWh = 14.05p/kWh, 10p would purchase 0.71 kWh or about 2400 BTU.
Which in a 40 gallon bathtub filling would raise supplied water at 55 F to 62 F - and I wouldn't call that a warm bath!

Working lunch should correct the information with realistic costs, otherwise some people are going to be spending more than they bargained for.

The menu...
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
Energy saving is complex, take for instant the light bulb question. One agruement, the new light bulbs 20Watt instead of 100Watt; but that 80Watt was heat and in a cold climate like UK did it really go to waste or was it contributing to heating your house, reducing your heating bill (gas or electric)

There's an easy way to find out if you use more water with a bath or a shower. Take a shower using a showerhead over the bath, and put the plug in before you start. For me, a 40 minute shower uses more water than a 2 hour bath, so is far less efficient. I have the hot/cold water ratio about the same in both cases.

I looked on the E.on website to find the data on energy use. I found a pdf document entitled '100 ways to save' see

[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

and no 55 says:

"baths use up to three times as much hot water as non-power showers."

Note that they qualify the comment to cover 'non-power' showers - a ten-minute shower under a high-volume power shower can use as much water as a bath so if you like long showers under power showers then you won't be saving much if anything.

Finally, it's also worth noting that 'electric' showers (ones that heat the water as it flows) result in two to three times as much CO2 per litre of hot water than gas boilers.


Thomas

ENERGY COST OF A CUP OF TEA

Contrary to expectations, the energy cost to make a cup of tea is less than 2p. Check it for yourself.

IN THEORY:
you will need your kettle /a thermometer /a calculator / 1 litre of cold water / your physics book to remind you of things.

We know:
Water boils at 100 Celsius, cold water is at 17 Celsius (in my case),
1 calorie is the amount of energy required to bring 1 litre of water up by 1 Celsius,

1KW/h = 860 calories.

100C - 17C = 83C.
Therefore it should require 83 calories to boil this litre of water.

860 calories : 83 = 10.36

1 KH/h : 10.36 = 0.09434 KW/h

1 KW/h @ 16.5pence : 10.36 = 1.59pence. This is the theory, when efficiency is 100%.

IN PRACTICE:
my kettle is rated at 2KW/h, and took 200s to boil 1 litre, from 17 Celsius:

1h = 3600s : 200s = 18
2KW/h : 18 = 0.111 KW/h x 16.5pence = 1.83pence.

Please stay with me.
1 litre = 1000ml. 250ml are used to warm up the teapot, and lets assume that about 50ml of water is absorbed by the tea leaves;

you are left with 700ml = 4 x 175ml cups @ 0.45pence,
or 3 x 233ml mugs@ 0.61pence.

Water and sewage charges, amortisation of kettle and tea leaves are ignored, as this is only a calculation for energy cost.

Or am I wrong somewhere? Encouragements are needed before tackeling the bath/shower figures.

Danny

Heres my best two money saving tips!
After taking out the big things, the two best states of mind for money saving are

1) When you look at that thing to buy for say £20, instead of thinking of your bank balance (or credit card limits) think about how many hours it takes you to pay for it at work (or seconds if you're Declan). If right now you could have that £20 item, but before that you have to go to work and sit at the checkout for 3 hours, or sit in a boring meeting for an hour, or try to look happy into a TV camera for 20 seconds. Does it seem worth it now? Penny saved is a penny earned. (ok perhaps the 20sec smiling into a TV camera is worth the choc bar, off you go).

2) Even small things that you do every day mount up. Say you stop at the garage and buy a choc bar for 70p, everyday for 250 days a year. Thats £175 on choc just for that stop. Now if you bought it from the supermarket in a multipack it might be 30p each, saving you £100..now what could you buy with that? At christmas if you're on a tight income imagine another £100 to spend. That sunday newspaper every week for a year at £2.50 is £125. The little things really do add up.
Not only that, saving 40p every day, thats your long deep bath right their (assuming you dont just stuff the whole multipack of choc bars in one sitting).

lixiescot wrote:

"ne agruement, the new light bulbs 20Watt instead of 100Watt; but that 80Watt was heat and in a cold climate like UK did it really go to waste or was it contributing to heating your house, reducing your heating bill (gas or electric)"

If you heat your home solely with peak rate electricity, then switching to fluorescent bulbs will probably save neither money nor energy. If your home is normally heated with off-peak electricity (e.g. economy 7) then you'll probably only save money.

However, if your home is normally heated using gas, then you'll save about 75% of the cost of those 80W, and a similar amount of energy also, due to the conversion losses involved in generating and distributing electrical power.

energy saver for outside lights,i bought a couple of outside lights at a bootsale for £2. each ,they were 500 watt halogen units,so i took everything out of the casings made a bracket for a light bulb holder
and wired it all in then got a 20watt CFL bulb, and away it went i can now light the garden for 40watts instead of 1000watts.
no one manufactures these lights :

here,s a tip to get your heating bill down [ BUY A WOOD BURNER ]!

HOWS THIS FOR SAVING MONEY THE ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ WONT PRINT IT
But here goes we moved in and it was some time before i checked out the boiler ,having worked on boilers for a company when i worked in another area ,i stripped it down and seviced it and then set up the gas pressure
for the burner ,it had been set far to high and the gas bills must have been very high ,our autum bill was £160 ,after the service our next bill was £55 and the last one was £59 ,so how many gas boilers are set up wrong bearing in mind our boiler had 4 different settings to choose from !

REF NO 7 MAKING A CUP OF TEA
HAVING STUDIED YOUR CALCULAS FOR THE FORMULA ,
I have come up with this= the angle of the dangle times the heat of the meat equauls the mass of the ass.

Good day Declan.
My maiden name was as yours. Curry.
According to my father it was a Scots Clan in the days of "yor.
Is it possible to learn more regarding your program on Wednesday. 5th May.
I am interested in the information you gave. "Selling your book" I missed this as I had a telephone call.
Kind Regards, Me GD.