Energy bills are hitting us all hard these days and we are all looking for a way to reduce our electricity bills and are casting suspicious eyes around the house wondering which devices are draining our bank balances the fastest.
There has been a lot of talk in the press recently of devices that are using up a lot of electricity around the house when not in use, these often go by the name ‘vampire’ products.
Meaco products are not energy draining products, they are exactly the opposite as we have the most energy efficient range of dehumidifiers in Europe and are very proud to be leading the way in low power consumption dehumidifiers. Saving our customers hundreds of £s each year, read here how buying a Meaco dehumidifier could save you over £700 in just 5 years.
We are all about education so we would like to make our customers aware of how these power hungry products can be identified, and help save you money.
What are vampire products?
Vampire products are appliances which consume electricity and cost you money when they are not being used. Even when appliances are off, they are often still draining your energy. Around 30% of homes in the UK have items left on standby that haven’t been used throughout the year. Turning off your products instead of leaving them on standby could save you £147 a year, according to the BBC.
Products such as smart TVs which need to connect to Wi-Fi even when they’re in standby mode, are costing customers money. Other appliances include: cable or satellite TVs, computers or computer-related equipment (routers, printers,scanners etc), instant-on TVs (with LED, LCD and rear-projection), or even household items with a screen or clock (microwave, garage-door opener, DVD player, etc)
You can often identify vampire products by looking out for the following: are they connecting to the Wi-Fi? Is there a continuous display (e.g. a clock)?
If the answer to these is yes, then it might be draining the energy in your home and increasing your bills without you realising. If you want to control this have a look for an Eco mode setting, could you use that, you might want to consider switching off your product from the wall switch directly, or simply unplugging it.
Unfortunately there has been a lot of miscommunication within the British press about devices drawing power, just at a time when we all need clearer information. The Guardian Newspaper has published a very good guide as to what we should be concerned about, what reports we can ignore (and why) and what we can all do to save some electricity right now.
Watch out for dehumidifiers using Wi-Fi
Within our market this would mean that buying a dehumidifier than connects to your phone using Wi-Fi could be a very expensive option in the long run, as the dehumidifier would need to stay awake to watch out for commands coming from your phone via the wi-fi, it will always be awake, and this is where the drain on your electricity bill comes in.
Meaco products do not drain energy and are very cheap to run
We realise cost is an important aspect for our customers. That’s why none of our products will drain energy without you knowing. All Meaco products comply with the European Eco-Design Directive and therefore consume less than half a watt in standby mode, meaning that they are not vampire products, but are extremely energy efficient.
If you’d like to know how much you’re saving on your product, each of our products have a ‘cost to run’ section on their individual product page, this uses the very latest electricity rates from October* to give a very honest guide as to exactly how much it will cost you to run any of our products. This sort of transparency is not available from any one else (although we do wish that our competitors would be just as honest).
Below is an example of the transparency of prices of our MeacoDry Arete® One 25L Dehumidifier / Air Purifier.
4 responses
I need a dehumidifier that I can turn on and off using a smart plug. This only works if the dehumidifier remembers its last state when its turned off at the wall, so it will come on again when powered on. Do Meaco’s (specifically the Arete Ones) do this?
Richard,
Using a timer/smart plug is not a great idea on a dehumidifier for the following reasons.
Firstly you have a safety issues because you are not letting the dehumidifier turn off properly, when you turn a dehumidifier off at the control panel a few internal operations happen after that to allow the machine to settle correctly, forcing a power cut prevents that. This is the case for all dehumidifier manufacturers.
Secondly, timers in general are a problem. For example set the dehumidifier to turn on at 10pm and off at 6am, because you get condensation at night, then it will not be dealing with the moisture in the air that you have generated during the day through bathing, showering, putting the kettle on and cooking etc. The moisture that was generated by those activities will have been free to migrate around the house with no dehumidifier to capture it. What will happen is that the moisture will be absorbed by organic material in the home instead, furniture, clothes, the fabric of the building, books, paintings, photos etc. This will then lead to the organic material having a higher moisture content, which in turn will lead to dimensional change in the object and the potential for mould growth. Instead of using a timer, if the dehumidifier was left on at a sensible humidistat setting like 50%rh, then the dehumidifier could sense the increase in moisture and then deal with it before it gets absorbed by the organic material. The humidistat also ensures that the dehumidifier only runs when necessary and energy consumption is managed.
Hope this helps.
Chris
Hello,
I am getting a little concerned about the time my new dehumidifier is running. I have for now had my 20L Low energy Meal dehumidifier running 24×7 for one week. After a few days, the RH would come down to 52/53 early morning and the unit would switch to standby. As soon as everybody gets up it shoots to 66% ish and then takes about 22 hours to bring it back into a standby mode. I have read it takes a few weeks to bring the latent humidity down in the house, but it does seem to come down – but then bounce back high again. Is there something wrong, or do you think the fabric of the house is still ‘drying out’? Many thanks!
Nickos,
Thank you for your purchase and your message. It sounds like the machine is responding to your daily activities and perhaps you do not have ventilation to help the bathroom and kitchen dry out so the workload is being taken on by the dehumidifier. In this way it is doing a very important job. It might be reaching target during the middle of the day when no-one is in to witness this?
At the end of the day the dehumidifier will only work when it has to and it is responding to what is in the air. It is doing the core job that you bought it for. It will change over time.
Chris