07 January 2023 , 11:10
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A woman saved £400 on her utility bills by turning off a single appliance.
Householders are desperately trying to save cash with spiraling bills and looking at hacks to save money.
They have resorted to turning off or running appliances during off-peak hours reducing their thermostat by a single degree.
Harriet Morphy-Morris, a consumer writer for Manchester Evening News, however found she and her partner's direct debit payments continued to go up.
And she admits this has caused a fair amount of stress, sing costs with the added pressure of trying to figure out where they were overspending.
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She said: "We are on a standard variable tariff with EDF and pay via direct debit, so we expected fluctuating prices given the circumstances, but up until recently our monthly bill for two people exceeded the average amount for a family of four, and we couldn't understand why.
Harriet turned down appliances, washed during off-peak hours and turned her thermostat down but the immersion heater was the issue (Harriet Morphy-Morris)"It was only when we had to get a small leak repaired we realised we had left our immersion heater and consequently racked up a hefty bill.
"After seeing the immersion was on the plumber asked 'if we had experienced any issues with our boiler', I'm assuming he thought that could have caused the leak, after saying no and that our boiler was running fine we quickly realised our mistake.
"We had been throwing money away by using our immersion every day."
An immersion heater heats water using electricity, even if you have gas central heating and has been branded as 'insufficient' by experts at Which because it uses electricity all the time to heat water .
In early summer last year their bill went up from £125 per month to £240, even though they knew a rise in price was coming given the price cap at the time and was a lot more than expected.
Harriet added: "From here we did everything to get the bill down (during summer so our heating wasn't on) used gas appliances more efficiently and made sure we submitted readings before the price cap rose once again in October.
"When the October 2022 price cap came, at the same time as our EDF direct debit review (in this period customers are made aware of any credit on their account), we were defeated at the minimal credit amount on our account, less than £100, and continual £240 bill. It wasn't until we had work done on a small water leak we realised that we had been ridiculously overspending by using our immersion heater.
"And by turning it off in October we have now accumulated £372 in bill credit - which is not surprising now that we understand how immersion heaters work and how much they cost to run."