Not putting the heating on – how’s it going…?

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.

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

That’s really good. As I mentioned above we were £450 last month with immersion and two electric heaters only on overnight. House is about 15degc or less without woodburner on. We are really tight on our electric usage but it’s still breaking us.

December £130 for electric
January £100 for electric
February £51 for electric
March (so far) £29 for electric

We’ve also used around 600l of oil since mid December so £450. Ouch.

Our house is never more than 17deg and is currently 14deg.

The solar array is definitely paying dividends right now. We’ve only used £2 of grid power in the past 7 days despite having used over 100kWh.

Mrs Zip has just put the heater on in the front room.

I put it on twice last week.

Wow. What’s the outside temperature where you are zippy and monkey?

I put it on for an hour last night…but only to circulate the conditioner after I’d dumped all the crud out the magnetic filter. 😵

Was cold sat in the home office this morning

I’ve just come back from 2 weeks in a holiday let – heating was on every day. 🙄

I turned mine on in July for 30 minutes to spin the pump and make sure it still works. Going to do the same on a wet miserable day in August. I’m sure one will turn up this weekend. 😭

Wow. What’s the outside temperature where you are zippy and monkey?

18c !

14C and wet.I,m ashamed of myself for giving in.

17c here, grey amd mizzle. My neighbour is running his log burner. Im sitting in the front room in a pair of shorts and t-shirt.

We are not all as healthy as you mate.

I guess it just goes to show the massive difference between houses, my yorkshire stone house is reading a comfy 20c in the livingroom, and I’ve not closed the upstairs windows for a good few weeks/ months,  I pull them too if it gets a bit nippy/rainey.

It probably helps that its an end terrace, south facing on the end, so the brickwork gets the sun all day long, such as the sun is, in Yorkshire!

I don’t envisage using any form of active heating untill at least september, hopefully october.

Still not looking forward to winter though, last gas bill for the winter period was about £600.

Was parked up at 1600m in some valley near Mt Blanc. Outside was 4°C the other night (the surrounding mountains were powered white) and the van was a toasty 23°C. Cost about 1.20€ in diesel. Good value!

Boosted the heating for 15mins a few times over the last couple of weeks to dry towels and such. August and it looks like October.

Modern detached house in South Lanarkshire, ours has been on the last few mornings, the Hive comes on early when it dips below 18 degrees at the hall thermostat.

My heating has been on a few time in last month.  Just because it is summer doesn’t mean it is hot.

I have heating to to enable me to sit in a warm comfortable house.  Yes it costs money but then so does pretty much everything else.

14C and wet.I,m ashamed of myself for giving in.

Putting the heating on isn’t a character flaw, despite what you may read on here.

West as far as a thermal hoodie for the shed office yesterday morning here in london

Heating had kicked in at 17° when i got up this morning.

First shower with a warm towel in months!

That’s so **** up.

When I cook food in the oven it  makes my house too hot.

Y’all need to downsize or suck it up.

I had to scrape ice off the car windscreen yesterday morning!

14C and wet.I,m ashamed of myself for giving in.

What’s the temp inside? As I type it’s 16 out and 19 in even with the windows open

I nearly put it on this morning but decided to MTFU.