Monitoring Home

Checking Second Home

“I bought Loop for a house I own in Shetland so I could monitor usage whilst I’m away. I live in Leeds and it takes roughly 24hrs to get to my Shetland home so having a spare pair of eyes on consumption was very handy. Plus, as it’s on an Economy 10 tariff, I couldn’t get a smart meter so this was a perfect alternative. And I’m glad I bought it – shortly after purchasing the property and Loop, I left the house with the heating set on a timer but on a very low setting. After monitoring Loop, I found that the usage was unusually high at strange times in the day. As it turned out, I had a fault time-switch AND a faulty thermostat in the electric boiler. It was a very costly fault and Loop kept me up to date on how much it was costing whilst the house was empty!!!”

Identifying Energy Hoggers

“As a high electricity user in the house, the Loop system has offered a fascinating and quite visually fun and appealing way of identifying the real hoggers. The electric Aga is easy, the tumble dryer and even the dishwasher…but who knew about standby, the TV, the dreaded Sky box, even the router – really interesting to see the base draw from them. By isolating individual equipment, I have managed to lower my base load – I identified a rogue hi-fi system left on in a bedroom – when I’m away and can see when, for example, the fridge kicks in or the Sky box whirrs into record mode by the spike in my usage graph.”

Seeing Live Usage

“As we ventured into the process of owning our own house, the geek in me knew I needed Loop to be able to see what energy was being used – live. When first installed it was nice to gauge the rough usage of background, always on appliances. Or see how much draw the leccy kettle added to the mix. Recently I was viewing the app and was puzzled by how much energy was being used. By seeing a higher than expected rate, it lead me to check things round the house – and it was finally resolved when I discovered I’d left the light on in the garden shed. Simple story but the kind of thing that is really useful.”

Tracking Appliances

“Loop helped identify just how much power older kitchen appliances were using, and helped work out that replacing them with new would payback the purchase cost in just a couple of years! It also helps change habits by highlighting that some things being used during economy 7 hours were actually running over into peak hours, so their start times were changed to make sure they finished in plenty of time to stay on economy 7.”

High Usage Alert

“At Christmas I had lots of relatives to stay and the inevitable happened with everyone showering in the morning… the water went cold!! Some bright spark decided to put the immersion heater on and LEFT it on… I never switch it on so did not even think about it, but luckily my trusty Loop alerted me of the huge usage on the app on my phone and after dismissing the fact several times as I had a lot of visitors I decided to investigate…. Phew close shave!!!”

Accurate Energy Data

“The property I’m in is rented and has a shared supply with my landlord. His pool and garage run off the meter in my house. He was convinced that my electricity consumption was significantly more than his despite me being out at work all day and using oil fired central heating for the house. I ordered Loop to measure electrical consumption and was able to show that my use was significantly less than he was estimating. Being able to show usage during the day when I was out with no current draw enabled me to get a better deal on the split of the costs.”