Electricity Challenge - Update 9

Can you believe that we have been doing this electricity challenge for 9 weeks now!!!! That time seems to have gone so fast! I don't expect it will be real long now before the meter will be read and we'll get the next bill in the mail. Fingers crossed we'll actually be able to *see* some results for our efforts. :-)

This week has been a challenging week as it has been COLD and WET most days.

However, we have successfully managed to avoid using the TUMBLE DRYER! Yah us! LOL. Washing is a tiny bit behind but not too bad all things considered. I lost count of the number of times I thought I would have to give in and use the dryer. But it didn't happen! Yah! Can you tell I'm excited about this? LOL.

We also managed to avoid using any heating - despite being VERY tempted. Thankfully the kids are all well so didn't require heating in their rooms overnight. I have discovered 2 rather handy hints when it comes to staying warm.

1. Wear your dressing gown over the top of your clothes during the day. LOL. When my family came home from being out the other day it looked like I was still in my pj's. Until I took the dressing gown off and I was fully dressed underneath. :)

2. Wear thick socks AS WELL as ugg boots. It takes 2 people and a sledge hammer to get the ugg boots on but once they're on your feet stay nice and toasty!!! LOL.

So there's two very handy hints for those of us heading into summer. LOL. Me thinks the weather is a mite confused of late.

We've really noticed the difference in our passive solar positioning of the house. When the weather acts "out of season" the house doesn't cope anywhere near as well. For instance, we get virtually no sun in the northern windows at this time of year. Which means the house is very COLD on cold days. We have the reverse problem if we get a very warm April as sun is coming into those windows (as designed to warm them up during the winter months) and the house gets very HOT. There is only so much you can plan for and the unexpected isn't one of them.

And the final figures for the week?

General Electricity: averaged 15.67kWh's per day. Originally I was hoping to get our average down to around 15kWh's per day. Currently overall it's hovering around 16kWh's per day so any week we're below 16kWh's I'm considering a good effort.

Hot Water: averaged 4.34kWh's per day which is well up on what we've been using. Given the weather this week the solar system needed a lot of help to get the water up to temperature so this isn't surprising. That's our highest usage since we started the challenge (even higher than our first "test week").