Utility Bills Post Reply

[SW11er]

Hello,

Just trying to get a sense of what people are paying for a standard 4 bed Victorian family house between the commons - for combined electricy and gas - based on current usage (eg based on a meter not just a standard dd that equalizes through the year). We are see £800-£1000 pm through the winter - which seems extremely high. I think the house is reasonable energy efficient and we don’t live in the cold - but I don’t think we are too wasteful. Just be interested to get some comparisons. Be interested to know if anyone has found anyway to dig a bit deeper to find out what is really driving consumption (eg which appliances, boiler,!underfloor heating etc.

Or is this really a function of prices.

Thanks

[Goldhawk]

Usage will vary massively depending on how much heating people use
We have it on all day as WFH - some will only heat their office or are out so the heating is off

You can buy an energy meter and then check how much electricity your devices are using
Energenie Energy Saving Power Meter 13A | Toolstation

[eb949013]

I was shocked by our energy metre over this winter period - we've never been wasteful but seeing the pence go up in real time definitely made me more vigilant with the bathroom light and tv's on stand by. We realised the kw rating on some of our older appliances was quite high so will be looking to budget for more efficient models in the long term!

[catboo1]

Hi SW11er, I too was shocked by our winter bills- same size Victorian house as yours. We are with British Gas and getting bills of £900 pm for combined usage. We have the thermostat on 18 and heat only coming on twice a day so we are chilly a lot of the time but still exorbitant costs. I can’t get though to anyone at BG as it’s always busy…

[empfindlich]

I keep a very close eye on our bills - we are a four bed house, just over 2,000 sq foot and on average we have spent £420 in November, Dec and Jan.  But we have a system which has automatic valves on the radiators in every room so they come on as we need them (kitchen 6-8.30pm, sitting room 7-10.30, bedroom 10-midnight etc). Plus it automatically turns off and on when we leave the house and return.  We work from home and have some rooms set at 15 during the day. If we are cold in the daytime we have electric heat pads that we sit on (on the basis that one should warm the person, not the room!).

We have reasonably good double glazing, far better than in our previous flat. In fact we are using in kilowatt terms almost exactly the same amount of energy as we were in that flat, which was just over half the size of this house.

[ally30_1998]

How many of you live there and if kids, how old, as that makes a big difference.


Our combined bill for a 4 bed was £550 for December, which is £200 higher than last year. That’s probably partly price rises and partly to do with having had a houseful of people for much of December, so more showers, kettles boiled, oven being used, gas stove etc, certainly far more devices sitting on charge, more TV’s etc.

Not accounting for price increases and guests our bills are lower now that kids have left home. EG: Washing machine is on twice a week unless I’m doing bedding and towels, and far less showering, shaving, hairdryering etc taking place !

[NVG]

We live in an admittedly large detached house. We were paying £1900 a month (DD standardised throughout the year) to Good Energy who turned out not to be good at all. I switched to Octopus and the bill came down to £1400 (even though they want you you won’t get much of a saving by switching.) When we left Good Energy we had to pay an extra £900. It’s absolutely crazy.

[mummy in cj]

We are a family of four living in a 4 bed house on a dual gas / electricity tariff. We work from home (one person 5 days a week and the other 2 days a week).

Our bills are significantly lower than the original poster - around £1,400 a year. We pay a monthly DD of £117 a month through Outfox the Market with credits building up in the summer that we then use up in the winter. We spent about £80-£90 a month most months rising to around £250-£350 this December - February before the government discount.

Sharing what we have done to use so little energy in case useful for others:
- All our appliances (especially the high energy usage ones of the fridge, oven and washing machine at A++ rated).
- Our house is double glazed.
- We turn off lights and applicables as we leave the room.
- All lights are LED.
- Our thermostat comes on a couple of times a day and is set at 17 degrees plus we heat our office space if it gets too cold. We do wear warm clothes indoors and use hot water bottles.
- We use the microwave quite a bit as it uses less energy than a conventional oven.
- We have invested in a dehumidifier to help with drying clothes indoors in the winter; in the summer we hang them out in the garden.

We hope to get to a zero bill in future as we are installing solar panels with a battery. We will then aim to switch from gas to electricity to get the full benefits from this.

[MummyontheGo]

Ooh where do I get an electric seat pad? Room where my desk is is always chilly and maybe this is the answer!

[schoolsearching]

We are a family of 5 living in a semi-detached family house in between the commons. We have made all the less expensive investments into energy efficiency (e.g. insultation, draught excluders and LED lights) and have a 14 panel solar array on our roof (GBP5.7k total cost of installation).  Our December-22 energy and gas bill came to GBP360.

March through August we are essentially 'off-grid' as the panels export more than we use although there is a small bill as we are charged more for what we use than we are paid for export. 

[Clare Lupton]

Hi - underfloor heating & aircon appear to be the hungriest things - I have often been asked this question & it seems that the hones that use these have the biggest bills. I offer a free & no obligation bills clinic to save people money on their household bills. if you’d be interested in a remote review or a link for you to be able to look yourself, do PM me.

[Zanizi]

We had a similar situation with our 3-bed older home, and our bills were sky-high until we did some digging. Turned out, our boiler was using more gas than it should due to an old part. Getting that fixed made a noticeable difference. Have you checked your boiler and insulation? As for finding out what's driving the costs, we used a smart meter that helped us pinpoint energy hogs. Also, have you looked into switching tariffs? I switched to Octopus Energy recently (octopus-referral-code.co.uk), and it's been a game-changer for keeping costs down.