just paid our electricity bill for exactly one month, came to just over £300.

The house is electrically heated, as is the cooking etc – no gas.

The house is 4 years old and detached. we have the heating on for a couple of hours in the morning and evening, the house isn’t exactly warm and we don’t have it set high. we generally have hot food in the evening, as do our two housemates, so 2 lots of cooking for ~20 mins a day each.

£300 sounds a lot for energy, or is it?

cannabis farm in the attic?

Have you checked that they used actual meter readings and not estimated?

How many units did you use? is it a real bill or an estimated one? On DD?

Do a 1 week check of the meter and see if it’s coming close to the usage, if not call the electric company.

£300 a month!!!!!!

Mate – something is wrong there! Suggest you check what your housemates are up to!

Definitely something wrong with that bill!

Have you checked that they used actual meter readings and not estimated?

+1, ours jumps from £200 a month to nothing as the supplies can’t seem to do the sensible thing and just bill us the £100/month we actualy use.

So either they estimated it and are way off, you’re using more than you think, or the previous tennant was a bit creative when sending off their last reading. Either way give them a ring armed with the actual meter reading, it should be arround half that.

That can’t be an actual bill, it must be an estimate (or include underpayment from previous bills or something?)

£300 a month is bloody ridiculous unless you have an electrically heated Olympic size outdoor swimming pool that’s floodlit 24/7

Shared house? I bet everyone’s running electric heaters in their own rooms 🙂 Usually because one domineering tightarse of a housemate won’t have the heating on more than a couple of hours every day. Saw this kind of thing loads in my student days.

Sounds like a household that would benefit from an Owl electric monitor or the like so you can learn what’s costing what.

To put in context – our house is lpg/log burner heated but leccy shower and cooking. 6 in the house yesterday inc 4 new year guests and showers for everyone, 3 loads in the dishwasher, dehumidifier running for a few hours drying wet bike & swim kit, full roast and cooked brunch and copious hot drinks – total £2.30.

I’d first be checking what that reading is though (estimate, ‘catch up’ from previous deficit etc). Is there someone in your house that quietly has a 3KW heater on the go 24/7 in their room?

I bet everyone’s running electric heaters in their own rooms

Hmm I had a lodger who I discovered left her heater on all night even though I had the central heating on all evening.

called EDF and turns out the bill my housemate paid was for 6 weeks, not the 4 I was told – seems to have been a mix-up in november with bills

😳

still, think we’ll be looking at the electricity uses to see what’s what. we pay with meter readings, not estimated, unlike the previous tenants who landed themselves a £1400 bill when they moved out… (which suggests that the house is pricier to use than EDF would estimate anyway.

thanks for the tips, panic over!

Well my mum has a house on the coast (not brilliantly insulated and heated completely electrically) which was unoccupied between 29/8 and 14/11, so about 10 weeks.
During that time it used 95.7 kwh of leccy running just a fridge, a laptop (tracking solar pv generation) and wireless broadband. Works out at about £1.50/week.
We’ve just been down from Sunday to yesterday (3 days realistically) and we used 350kwh although this involved heating everything up from pretty chilly inc water – so about £50.
On that basis your bill might be about right given that it’s probably better insulated.
I’d expect our usage to reduce if we stayed there longer and once the house was up to temperature. Think I may well change the 20 halogen downlights to LED!

Thats still 7.50 a day …..

We dont use 6.50 of oil each day to make up the deficit. But then youll have filiment or halogen bulbs alround i bet. And could save a fair bit both in meal costs and power costs if you cooked one big pot o food for everyone and take turns at it 🙂

That said we have friends who moved into a 4 bed electrically heated( economy 7 storage) gaff- their bills also scare me.

It’s the heating things that costs the monies. Three or four housemates all independently running heaters, showers, kettle/washer on non-stop, personal cannabis farm etc etc…

They’d need to be quite friendly to use the shower non-independently…

I guess you have an immersion heater as well? It’s worth checking if that’s set to run on a timer rather than keep the water scalding hot 24/7. Ours just comes on first thing in the morning and again around 6pm ready for washing up 🙂

I have a all electric house and use £84 a month. (3 bed semi with ok insulation)

Make sure your immersion heater is on a timer as that will make a huge difference. We only need it on for an hour over night but have an eclectic shower and dishwasher so don’t use much hot water.

We have night storage heaters so we use economy 7 eclectic. I guess if you are heating up the house as you need it or with fan heaters and the like I guess you could be using that much.

hmm, heating only on a couple of hours in evening and morning, which also provides hot water. no auxillary heating used.
we’re two couples, and aren’t heavy on showering or kettle etc. we’re thinking of running the heating on low constantly, instead of bursts twice a day, and we’re going to check out comparison sites tonight. the landlord is cool with an eco 20:20 type meter being fitted.

Submit your own regular reads. At least once a month, it will help to calibrate bills and understand usage.

£300 sounds high. We are on £200-£220 for elec / gas

We tried Low constantly once. Never again. Cost a lot more…for us.

monkey – there must be something wrong with your heating system!

It must be using significant kw of energy if it’s only running for a couple of hours a day and you have a bill of £300.

heating on low constantly

Won’t work well. Will cost more and you need it warmer in the day than the night.

4 bed detached house with wife and 2 kids, so cooker, washing machine, boiler etc in regular use. Work from home so at this time of year have underfloor heating on in the office. I pay £103 per month for gas and electricity. £300 is a crazy sum.

Check for a bitcoin mining server farm in the attic.

He’s already said it wasn’t £300/month. It was actually £200/month.

Which is far more likely to be right.

With electric heating it’s never going to be cheap, if you are adding in stuff like Plasma or CRT TV’s on standby all the time. PC’s permanently on, halogen down lighters in use a lot of the time, etc etc. then £200/month is pretty doable.

Even more so if you are on a crap tariff that you inherited from someone else who couldn’t be arsed.

My parents have an all electric house, with economy 7 heating. £160 a month.
Mind you that is for a toasty warm house, full tank of hot water plus afternoon boost), excessive use of the washing machine and tumble dryer(almost every day), iron (she irons knickers and hankerchiefs ffs) and oven. I suspect a lot of of their usage is not related to the heating.

Sounds high. We pay £300 a month over winter gas and electric for 5 bed house with central heating on a lot, tumble drier etc. based on your usage I would have thought it should be a lot lower.

Like, maybe… £200/month 😉

That seems reasonable bill. We had 4 bed, 5 year old house in Highlands and averaged £250 PCM for the 5 years we were there, no matter how frugal we tried to be.

3 bed semi here, 2 adults, 1 13yr old daughter and gas/leccy combined is £111/month and none of us are particularly careful with what we use.

I recommend that some of you lot have a look at improving your insulation and moving tariff.

Yours,
Martin Lewis 🙂

Just remember those of you comparing gas & electric with just electric that the cost per kWh is much higher for electric.

You haven’t said what tarrif you are on, but here’s some numbers…….

My house – 3bed bungalow, heating on 6-8am, 3.30-9.30pm weekdays, 8-9 weekends. In December we used 2500kwh of gas CH.

If that were electric at a standard rate (approx 14p/kWh) it would have cost £350.

If you are on a wet electric CH then I would expect you to be on a Better than standard tarrif but I don’t know how cheap it can go.

You need to check your real meter readings, and check what tarrif you are on to be able,to make any meaningful comment.

Edit: spotted that it is £200 not £300 – that’s not too bad for heating/domestic usage in December.

Check with the landlord if its a rental house, sometimes the previous tennant will have run up a bill and the landlord agreed for the elecy supplier to run the meter fastyer to pay off the debt,they do with pre payment meters,i which xcase tyou have to provide a copy of the new tennancy agreement to show when you moved in and previous address just incase you owed money there .

Also switch all power sockets off, and see if meter moves, dont sweitch off at mains though.

Finally take metwr readings am and pm for a week and see what is being used per day.

Check if youre on the cheapest tarriff.

Someones got a cheeky fan or oil filled radiator in their bedroom and not being upfront to you.

Op have you accidentally bought a lighthouse?

sometimes the previous tennant will have run up a bill and the landlord agreed for the elecy supplier to run the meter fastyer to pay off the debt

That can’t be right surely ???

The way we are sold energy is rigged to be confusing, you should know how much you are paying per KW of electricity. It’ll be something 13 pence per KW (compared to 3 to 5 pence for gas) depending on your area and if it includes a standing charge.

£200 is not exceptional and easy to achieve if you not managing it’s use. I have recently gone the opposite way, much to my families delight.

I’m £250 a month in a small bungalow with electric everything. We keep it pretty warm and I have a media server on 24/7.

Just having electric heating makes me tardy about switching other stuff off as I know a light bulb makes relatively little of a difference to the mahoussive incoming bill.

“sometimes the previous tennant will have run up a bill and the landlord agreed for the elecy supplier to run the meter fastyer to pay off the debt”

Yes, very good. And sometimes a criminal mastermind in a lair under your house is using YOUR electricity to point a powerful laser at Mr Bonds bellicks 🙄