Forum menu
Just had an almight shock – i was running very healthy surplus before winter -well it’s all gone..
Jan’s figures -Electricity
Day = 657kwh @39.82
Night = 135kwh @23.81Gas = 4287.4kwh @9.8
so 320 and 450 quid respectively.
edit – cos it was rubbish.. it works out at double the elecy usage, primarily becuase the cabin is now being lived in, but gas is through the roof (but thats the main house and my issue)..
My goodness - that's a heck of a lot of energy!
Almost double our combined Grid+Solar and 4x our Oil usage (in kwh equivalent) And that's with an EV, someone at home most days, a wife that lives in the shower or at the end of a hairdryer and two kids who simply can't switch things off in a 4 bed house in an exposed location with slightly dodgy windows!
I wear 7 million layers and live under a blanket in winter but obviously that’s not for everyone.
I am sat (admitedly in shorts), with a blanket over my legs and a hat on indoors...
Still spent £225 last month!
Also, if you use a vast amount, my understanding is that only so many kWh would get the support and some units would be at the raw market rate as the ‘cap’ only covers the average house hold.
The £2500 'cap' (actually energy price guarantee) is a misnomer. That's based on a fictitious average household, based on their usage the bill would be £2500. If you use more than this average house, you'll pay more. The rate doesn't change at this cut off - there is no cut off.
OFGEN set a cap which is the maximum amount suppliers can charge for their energy on a per kwh basis which the results in a theoretical max price (again based on a standard household). It's higher than the EPG. If you use more then you'll pay more than the current £4279. The suppliers can sell their units for less, but not more. The market's supposed to regulate what the charge, if someone's overcharging - move supplier.
Right now the Gov is paying the difference between the supplier market rate and the EPG rate to the suppliers for us.
Then in addition the Gov is ALSO giving us all £400 towards whatever our bill is. That comes off your bill if you pay it (monthly / quarterly / whatever), or if you pay by monthly DD it's applied as a credit.
This last bit is wrong IMHO, that's going to every household from the richest to the poorest and that relief should be aimed at those that need it most.
simondbarnes
Full Member
wth am i doing..? 🙁Big, leaky house? Living in shorts n tee?
I wear 7 million layers and live under a blanket in winter but obviously that’s not for everyone.
ita a fair old size house (5000sqfeet chalet style), but it's new and well insulated - except the bifold doors which seem to grow and shrink at an incredible rate during the year. that said, when it was a poxy little bungalow, i actually saved money for the first few years after i re-built it as the old place was atrocious.
I know the tumble dryer is a big issue in our house, but gas seems way over.
i keep saying i want to sell up and downsize, its a souless funny shaped box.
Not putting the heating on – how’s it going…?
Extremely well for Shell, it seems.
I know the tumble dryer is a big issue in our house, but gas seems way over.
Might not be the case, however, we discovered we had a gas leak at the meter when we had a new cooker installed. We'd lived in the house for 8 years!! The gas engineer fitting the cooker discovered it when he was doing the 'tests' they do when fitting a new appliance. It was a test nipple that was loose and reckoned we'd been venting gas for a long time. The meter is outside and wasn't bad enough we'd ever noticed. I did, however, notice a drop in gas usage after he'd sorted it. (That was way before this current energy cost issue so financially hadn't really registered at the time.)
190 kWh Electric and 1405 kWh Gas here for January (3 bed semi, no cavity wall ins, 2 adults both wfh, Combi boiler, Wiser installed)
Only been here since May, and sadly our fix (28.41p/kWh, 51.63 s/c electric, 7.48p/kWh, 27.22 s/c gas) ends in a month. But circa £700 in credit.
When we moved, they projected our use as 28,000 kWh Gas per year! When questioned they couldn't provide sound reasoning for that, and we agreed for our DD to be set against UK average of 12,000 kWh Gas and 2900 kWh Electric. Our projected annual use stated on last bill is 1430 kWh Electric and 8700 kWh Gas which doesn't feel too bad.
Solar panels would be of interest, but not worth it at our low usage? Perhaps if they ever create a small efficient electric car we'd switch cars and it'd make more sense?
This last bit is wrong IMHO
Surely it's all wrong? Government are paying energy companies tons of money and they are making huge profits. How does it make sense?
January's results are in. All usage less than half last year, sadly costing double.
Good effort!
our autumn/winter quarter payment was £ for £ the same as last year - MrSaLiAS is most unimpressed as since last year #2son isnt here, her daily morning hot shower has been swapped out for a wash and no electric heating (underfloor and/or panel heater) has been used at all.
finally ran out of the scavenged Cherry wood and paid for the first load of dry/mixed logs of the year, up from £100 to £125 🙁
Still chilli outside but the wonders of solar gain are back. Currently 23 degrees in the upstairs bedroom (double south facing window ) and 20 in the downstairs.
Thanks to deep eaves when the sun gets a bit higher we lose the solar gain on downstairs and it is much cooler than outside.
Just had a message from Bulb saying that prices are going up from 28th Feb but "won't be a steep as originally thought". Funny how they won't let me be in debt but it was OK to hold my money for the few short months my credit lasted.
Good effort!
Well what I'm wondering is, yes we've been 'tight' on CH usgae, but what the hell were we doing with the leccy??
Edit: thinking about it, that's barely using the tumble dryer, smart plugs on all TVs, all light bulbs now LED (although most were already). The electric shower (replaced with bathroom revamp for mixer shower of the CH) can't have been using that much surely????
I've not had my central heating on for the last 16 days. Had the wood burner lit a few times. House is hovering around 10°c, sunshine is helping out a bit but the windows are E/W and the gable end is North facing.
My intention is to insulate the walls around the windows with insulated plasterboard which should help a fair bit when next winter arrives.
170 m3 of gas used this month. It's going to be expensive. Feels like a lot but we pay for what we use, so that's offset by it being about £20/mo during the summer.
It wont be this summer though.
It wont be this summer though.
Our heating's always off during the summer, heatwave or no.
We went to our place by the beach this weekend for a change of scene. Turned the oil heating down at home and saved about £25 in oil..... offset by the 90kWh of electricity we used heating the other place Friday evening to Sunday lunchtime!
The place there is upside down so the living room/kitchen and main bedroom are upstairs which was the only bit we heat - so it was 17c upstairs and 11 downstairs!!
Thankfully we're in a decent amount of credit with the supplier there and still on a lowish fixed rate until October (21p/kWh)
Isnt that mindset a little bit like ' i don't worry about the price of petrol, as I only ever put in £20'
Not really....it's really bloody expensive!
as per my other thread about cavity wall insulation (decided it wasnt worth the risk), This weekend I topped up the insulation in the loft.
The majority of the loft had 10cm of insulation fitted by one of the previous owners probably in the mid 80s, I added 20cm to this. There was also a small difficult to access section of roof above the bathroom that had no insulation at all , its probably 5m square in surface area, so I got my son to squeeze under the main beam and put about 30cm of insulation in here.
I'll see what sort of difference it has made over the coming days, but its hard to tell whether any change is because of changes to the outside temperature, or due to the increase in insulation, but in the 7 days leading up to fitting the new insulation we used on average 131kwh of gas per day, and since fitting the new stuff (I only have 2 days worth of data so far) we have used an average of 109kwh per day. Will wait and see what the data shows, but hopefully it has made a significant difference.
Next step will be to get a new boiler fitted to replace the one from 1992.
so I got my son to squeeze under the main beam and put about 30cm of insulation in here.
Sounds like Victorian working practices......
Chimney sweep anyone?
Sounds like Victorian working practices……
Chimney sweep anyone?
I did suggest he take it up as a career.
Its ok though, he wasnt exploited, the little bugger charged me 60 quid for the job.
Sharkbait, X post. I was referring to moly and his offsetting winter against summer bills.
Julians. Ensure you buy a boiler with a high modulating ratio. 1:15 or greater if possible.. This seems to be the least worse scenario for having to run the heating and it not bankrupting you
Sharkbait, X post.
Doh!
So, new boiler installed today (combi) which has a digital display for adjusting the temps of HW and CH. I will be interested to see if fine tuning it makes any difference - the old one just had a printed scale so no real idea what the CH temp was. I could test the water temp at the tap but hopefully this will allow some proper tweaking of temps…
Had my gas bill through for the 1st quarter - £95. Twice what it was for the previous quarter, I've obviously been too extravagant 🙁
On the plus side, being frugal with my leccy I've still got £190ish on my PAYG smart meter of the £400 the government gave out so shouldn't have to top that up for a while.
Had my gas bill through for the 1st quarter – £95.
#humblebrag
🙂
#humblebrag
Hardly. My house hasn't been above 12°C all winter and my bill is twice what my previous one was.
simondbarnes
Full Member#humblebrag
Hardly. My house hasn’t been above 12°C all winter and my bill is twice what my previous one was.
Do you not have problems with condensation/mould at that temperature? Mine started having problems around 17c
Not massively
Dec: £200
Jan: £250
Feb: £160
It was a bit warmer in Feb but I also turned the heating off during the day. But that was largely because it was not so cold.
December was £450 for us. We have one electric oil rad in the kids room on overnight only. One night storage heater in middle of house. Immersion heater and electric oven. Wood burner with back boiler does rest of house. How on earth this minimal heating was £450 I hayno idea
Going pretty bad for me. I’m in a rented Docklands flat, facing out to a river/estuary. It’s absolutely freezing in the flat with no heating on. Generally about 4 degrees. It’s so bad when I take my clothes out of my cupboards I have to put them on the heater to warm up.
Since moving into the flat towards the end of December I have spent over £2200 on Electricity. It’s a PayAsYouGo Prepaid meter. 52pkw. (I’ve also had a 10 day holiday with all the electricity off)
Scottish Power refusing to allow me to change the meter or the tariff. There’s no debt. The heating is what is just electric wall heaters, I only heat 1 room at a time when I’m there, which is about 60% of the time. I very rarely cook, it really is just heating and shower once a day.
I’m in a 12 month contract but had to write to them today to say I just can’t afford to live here. With no heating on it’s not habitable, and the cost of living with heating on is untenable…..I get a feeling I’m in for a battle with the estate agent and the landlord, but paying about £6000 per year on just heating wasn’t what I expected. Especially as it’s just me in a 2 bedroom flat. If I was to cook and live here more often I’d be paying closer to £8000 per year.
£35 for electric and £33 for gas both including standing charge. I did use the gas central heating a few times when it snowed.
House operating ok around 10°c.
I'm using about 7L of oil per day (actually slightly less but hey) and the last load I bought was at 69p, so about £140/month but dropping.
@wOOdster that sounds horrendous.
Looking at mine now:-
Dec £400 combined, Gas £180
Jan £350 - Gas £150
Feb £300 - Gas £120
Give or take a few quid. Electric is high in this house - 2 gaming PC's !
I’m in a 12 month contract but had to write to them today to say I just can’t afford to live here. With no heating on it’s not habitable, and the cost of living with heating on is untenable…..I get a feeling I’m in for a battle with the estate agent and the landlord, but paying about £6000 per year on just heating wasn’t what I expected. Especially as it’s just me in a 2 bedroom flat. If I was to cook and live here more often I’d be paying closer to £8000 per year.
Did they give you a copy of the EPC certificate when you signed the tenancy?
IIRC it should state the "typical" amount of energy to be used in that property.
Might help you build a case with the the agent.
Alternatively you can look it up here:
https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate
September £44 normal price
October £58 price rise, no additional usage
November £77 put the heating on for a few days. Only brings it up to 16 degrees or so.
December £76 as above
January £122 heating on most of the month
February £48 no heating & turned the overnight hot water tank off. Don't need it. Hot comes out the shower & I use the dishwasher once a week. Hands get washed cold.
Glad of the £67 rebate for the jan bill. The rebates since the 1st october have covered most of my elecy usage.
Heating hasn't come on much in the past week as the house seems to have settled down at 17 degrees with no input from the central heating.
Was away last week so heating in holiday mode (frost stat set at 14) and away again next week.
When we come back, on the weekend of the clocks going forward, we will turn the heating off completely, as we have done for the past 5 years of being here. Heating just goes on infrequently for cold spells from then on.
Combined energy costs for Feb were £130 and will be a closer to £100 for March (with 2 weeks on holiday mode).
We do live on the south coast in Dorset and specifically chose a house with good levels of insulation.
@w00dster hope you get that sorted, sounds horrific. Fingers crossed.
we've been pretty stingy on CH use but February's usage was higher than last year which surprised me, but I now think that Shell's data for the beginning of last year is not right after our enforced switch from Pure Planet. Either way, if it doesn't start to cheapen, next winter is going to be grim especially as we are due to re-mortgage this year in September and that's looking horrific currently.
Just ordered another 700L of oil. Burnt through the last 800l in 57days. I’m hoping I can throttle the heating right back over Easter while we’re away and then have it’s usage drop as the weather gets warmer.
Submitted our meter readings for March and the octopus app threw a warning as we’d used so much.
Typically, we've only been putting the heating on in the evenings every other day (or three), for 4-5 hours. Prices are for gas and electric.
Don't think we've done badly at all
11 Mar 23 £143.26
11 Feb 23 £185.48
11 Jan 23 £207.78
11 Dec 22 £119.45
11 Nov 22 £122.08
Woodster's position sounds a horrible one to be in, an indicator of how poor a lot of the UK's housing stock is. I was fine in a small 19C stone house in Calderdale. Biggest monthly bill over the winter (after the £67 rebate) was £52 for gas & electric; this month was £26.
Acclimatisation makes a big difference. I work and play outside, so I'm happiest at temperatures of 13-16C. No mould issues, just open a window. Damart longjohns and an old ME fleece jacket for the win.
But ironically, despite my gas usage falling away my monthly bills might be higher over spring and summer due to the increased prices and lack of assistance. While I understand the logic of rising standing charges, exactly how long does it take for the falling bulk prices to feed through to kWh charges? One suspects we're being mugged off...next winter could be interesting.