Our green family, from Warboys, Angus Murdoch, Julie Spennewyn and daughter, Izzy, five, have been using an OWL electricity monitor for the past four weeks to help reduce their fuel bills. Angus told The Hunts Post: The Owl energy metre is astonishing.

Our green family, from Warboys, Angus Murdoch, Julie Spennewyn and daughter, Izzy, five, have been using an OWL electricity monitor for the past four weeks to help reduce their fuel bills.

Angus told The Hunts Post: "The Owl energy metre is astonishing. It shows you the cost, the level of consumption and your carbon emissions per hour."

"The monitor is fascinating and it really shows you how much electricity you are using. It does make you change your behaviour. We now turn the kettle off 10 seconds before it boils because it boils at the rate of 76 pence per hour at the last few seconds."

Mr Murdoch said the metre had you on "hot coals" and was portable, so it could be read anywhere in the house to see how much electricity was being used. The family had now changed its Sky-plus box to a cheaper system for receiving and recording satellite channels because the amount of electricity Sky-plus used on standby was hardly different to when it was in full use, Mr Murdoch said.

For cooking, the family had been saving electricity for some time by using a rice cooker, rather than cooking by heating up water from cold. Mr Murdoch said he thought they had saved between �150 to �250 in electricity since the experiment had started and that every �1 saved would be used to insulate their home better to make it even more fuel efficient.

Just before the weekend, the family started using an "eco shower drop" a device that monitors the amount of water used in a shower and stops it after a certain number of litres. They are also about to take delivery of a wormery - a natural compost system.