Tackling energy consumption in Otter Cottage

We want to see if we can bring down the per night energy use in Otter Cottage, currently double that of the lodges.

So to start we’ve added some energy saving timer switches – now on the immersion heater (as in the lodges) and the main room heaters.

They mean the immersion top up can’t be accidentally left on after it’s needed for a dull day. And guests won’t accidentally leave the heating on all day if they go out.

It does mean they’ll have to get up and press a button every two hours to keep the heaters on, but they’ll still be in charge.

The kitchen lights are now the new extra-low energy LED types (3.5 Watts each), which are getting better in quality and coming down in price.

I expect we’ll need to do more. But this should all help. Especially with those (very few) ‘outlier’ energy users who seem (perhaps completely unintentionally) to have the entire electrical capacity of the cottage on full blast for the length of their stay.