I’ve never really been too concerned with my energy bills, they are never pleasant and seem to gradually creep up all the time but I was rather surprised when speaking to my parents the other day, that their bills are considerably cheaper, yet they live in a house double the size of mine.  I knew it was time to do something about it and the next day Zenith offered to send my one of their energy saving kits to try – perfect timing!

The kit consists of an energy monitor and three handy gadgets to use around the home to help you reduce your energy consumption.

The first of these is the Energenie automatic standby shutdown lead.  This is a handy lead which allows you to cut off the power to one of your appliances rather than having it sitting in standby, ideal for tv’s.  You just plug it into the mains, plug the tv into the lead and when you put your tv into standby using the remote control, this gadget will cut the power off completely for you.  To renable power you do need to press the green button so this does need to be accessible, although my children loved pressing the green button as they are usually the ones to turn the tv on in the mornings.

We also tried the ECO Showerdrop Shower Meter, a simple little gadget that can be hung or fixed to the wall.  It requires calibrating by filling the included bag or a jug with a litre of water so it can judge how fast the water comes out of your shower.  You can then use it to prompt you when it is time to come out of the shower.  My children have just become fascinated with having showers rather than a bath so this is handy to guide them as they do love to stay under the water for rather a long time.  It’s good to get them educated from a young age about water and the environment especially with the costly water bills we have here in the South West.  My husband also was quite surprised as to how much water he was using and has reduced his shower time since using this.  For me personally, I do enjoy a bath in the evening when the children have gone to bed, one of my little luxuries that I’m not willing to give up but I do try to be conscious as to how much I fill it up each time.

The Radiator Booster was one of the energy saving gadgets that really interested me, although due to the warm weather we are currently having, we haven’t had our radiatiors on in order to try this out.  I am very much looking forward to using it in the colder months in a bid to cut down on our heating bill as we live in an Edwardian house with high ceilings and really need the heat to reach around the rooms.  By using this you can look at saving around £140 a year.  It works by sucking the hot air in and circulating it around the room using an inbuilt fan.  It sits nice and slimly on the radiator and needs to be plugged into the mains, and when in use should allow you to turn your thermostat down by up to 3 degrees!

The most interesting part of the Zenith Energy Saving kit is the Owl Micro & Wireless Energy Saving Monitor.  I had something similar a few years ago, but it was bulky and had a long wire that took up a plug socket, eventually leading me to giving it away.  This Owl Micro however is a very small, slim design and is wireless!  A great bonus, I can put it anywhere I like, move it around so I can keep an eye on whats happening etc.  It’s simple to use and just requires a few set up steps to get it going, like inputting the date, time, your electricity cost etc.

I found it interesting just keeping an eye on this throughout the day to see what things make the monitor increase.  Big things like the oven, washing machine and tumble dryer certainly made a difference, but obviously I need to use those so I have been more conscious about how long the oven is heating up before I actually put food in it and turning the tumble dryer off when things are dry, not overdrying them.  Also only leaving lights on in the evening that I really need on.

I think using and trying the Zenith Energy saving kit has been interesting and definitely made us more aware of when we switch something on.  What I’m really keen to see now, are my bills when they arrive in a couple of months, hopefully they’ll be noticeably lower than the one I had a few weeks ago.  If they are, then I’m hoping we can build on that the following quarter and reduce them even further.  If it can save you money and be better for the environment then why not try some energy saving measures today?

All reviews are my own and my family’s opinions and the Zenith Energy Kit was sent to us in order to write the review.