So, a quick flick through my past posts reveals that, according to me, roofs are rubbish, rain is rubbish, festivals are rubbish, digital cameras are rubbish, mobile phones are rubbish, broadband is rubbish, cars are rubbish and even rubbish is rubbish.

In short, modern life is rubbish, except when it comes to fridges. Fridges are ace.

I won’t bore you again with the trials of living without one for a month, but my energy-saving challenge was made easier by the fact that the old fridge broke at the start. I’d had half a mind to replace it, though, ever since I hooked it up to one of our power meters and discovered that it was using an incredible 15 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity each week: enough to run my kettle for more than seven hours.

That had never seemed right to me, and I wanted to see whether a new replacement would really be that much better, or whether makers’ energy-saving claims are all just hot air.

Before I could find out, the old item had to be carried down the three flights of stairs from my flat, and a newer, unintentionally bigger version manhandled back up. This required the street-level removal of all of the replacement’s packaging, the signing of a damage disclaimer, and an almost superhuman effort not to upbraid the delivery man for his insistence that it wasn’t going to fit until it already had.

If the first thing I learned from my new fridge-freezer was that it is chief among the things you don’t want to carry into a third-floor flat, the second was that modern examples are very, very good. After a quick wipe down, I hooked it up to the energy meter and set about loading it up with all the things I’d missed so much in my fridgeless month. Chiefly beer.

Fridge over troubled water

After the first day – much of which would have been spent working hard to get everything down to temperature – it had used 1.45kWh, which seemed a promising start. And despite extra demands from freezing bucket-loads of ice cubes, and left-over chilli and pasta sauces, at the end of the first week the meter was showing just 6.34kWh – less than half the electricity my old fridge would have used in the same time.

In the second week it only got through 5.05kWh, while in week three consumption was down to just 4.89kWh – less than a third that of my old fridge.

I’m impressed, frankly. New Fridge is bigger, colder and better than the old one, and yet it uses just a third of the power: It’s likely to save me more than ?

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• In from the cold

Originally posted 2009-11-05 05:22:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

In part two of his investigations into how to make his Victorian terraced house more energy-efficient without compromising its features and character, our guest blogger, Simon Mustoe, finds a few surprises courtesy of the Energy Saving Trust (EST).

Last week, I went public with a homeowner dilemma: I wholeheartedly subscribe to energy-saving principles but am not really prepared to do anything that compromises the character of my Victorian-era house. I literally couldn’t bear to watch someone ripping out the original wooden sash windows in favour of double-glazing, or covering up a beautiful original wooden floor with carpet. In fact, I think I had unconsciously decided that there really wasn’t much I could do to conserve energy in a house that was built over 100 years too early to benefit from environmentally-conscious building principles. Apparently, the first step in beating a problem is to admit that one exists, so I’m facing up to my previous assumption and putting it to the test.

Given that the Energy Saving Trust is hosting Energy Saving Week I made it my first port of call. A little digging around its website led me to a list of ways to insulate the walls and floors of a house. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. For instance, I hadn’t realised that I could actually insulate solid walls, a feature typical of Victorian-era houses. Apparently I can – both inside and out, although doing both would count as excessive. What’s more, each option would save in the region of two tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions each year, which equates to around ?

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• Life without baths: two weeks into Paul’s energy saving challenge

Originally posted 2009-10-22 01:51:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Guest blogger Paul Pritchard is UK head of corporate responsibility for MORE TH>N’s parent company, RSA. He agreed to give up his beloved baths as part of our energy-saving project, and share the highs and lows with us on Living.

Having steeped himself in literature for the comfort denied him by the shower, his month of abstinence is now at an end. But has it changed his habits for good?

It’s over. I managed to complete my month.

OK, so it doesn’t really compare to a month without a fridge but I reckon it has taught me something and I will definitely change my behaviour going forward. It ended with a bit of a whimper as I had pretty much got used to the occasional shower routine, but still really nice to know I can now enjoy the odd indulgence again. I don’t think I will be doing the five-minute midweek baths though – a quick shower serves equally well (I never thought I woud say that. Also I do actually wonder if maybe we wash and shower too much – as a kid I used to wash my hands and face before I went to bed and that seemed fine.)

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Originally posted 2009-11-10 08:15:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter