horrendous electricity cost.. advice please

pigphysio

i live in a 3 bed mid terrace property, which is electric only. we have no gas in the street. i have 3 night storage heaters downstairs, no heating upstairs and an emmersion heater.
i used to pay by direct debit but the electric company kept mucking us around with the payments, pay more.....pay less, then land us with a big bill.
so we decided to have a pre payment meter installed??? this was ok in the summer, we used about £20 a week (this included heating the emmersion) now the winter has come and i put on only 2 of my 3 storage heaters and the cost has gone up to a staggering £50 a week!!!
this cant be right?? i got the elecric company to check the meter, they said its running fine but agreed usage was high.
i then rang our electrician who told us to change our supplier......very helpful!!
can somebody tell me, would it be worth our while having a c/h system put in, or would it be a waste of money? i.e would our costs be the same?
i really dont know what to do, we have quite a large mortgage already, no savings as my husband had a heart attack in march so he is off sick from work at the moment.
please, please, somebody advise me...this credit crunch is killing us.

aliasojo

Storage heaters can be very costly to run, but a jump of £30 seems high just for switching on 2 of them tbh. We had them before we got gas central heating put in and we never used them too much as they were so expensive. We bought a couple of calor gas fires and bought gas bottles instead. We had one on the top landing with the bedroom doors open and one in the living room. These can increase condensation problems though so you do need to make sure you have adequate ventilation. They were cheaper to run than the storage heaters.

What tariff are you on? When we had the storage heaters we also had the cheaper night time tariff so the heaters were heating on the cheaper rate. Do you have two rates or are you just on the standard rate all the time?

Magentasue

Storage heaters very expensive to run and prepayment meters often a more expensive option. You'd be better off paying by DD in most cases.

Most important - you need Econ 7. If you don't have it, get it.
Calor gas heaters potentially dangerous and toxic - consider with caution. Not cheap to run and cause a lot of condensation.
Plug in heaters more flexible than storage heaters if you're hardly ever at home but expensive to run because they use expensive day time electricity.
Oil CH more expensive to run than gas CH but probably cheaper than electric - have a look on the fuel and heating board.
Elec CH - I've never had this (closest was electric ceiling heating - efficient but expensive) but a friend moved house because of it, once she had kids and needed to heat the house.

mardatha

Don't use storage heaters --we've been there ! We live in a very high and cold village, and when we first moved here we used them and it was unbelievably expensive and still very cold.
Think about calor gas heaters but mind condensation, ventilate well. Or if you have any money at all look at wood burning stoves. Have you got any open fireplaces? If yes then buy coal & logs and keep the living room toasty warm & maybe an oil filled radiator in the rooms for half an hour before bed. berst of luck, my oh had 3 heart attacks and its such a disruption and worry xxx

Premier_2

How do you plan to put a CH system in if you have no money and are unlikely to get a loan since your otherhalf is off work?

Why didn't you think about paying on receipt of bill if you didn't like the pay monthly method? It's often cheaper than with a PPM.

Have you looked at changing supplier? It was probably a better suggestion than you first thought. Use the comparison sites in the resource bar above to see if you could save anything.

espresso

pigphysio wrote: »

i then rang our electrician who told us to change our supplier......very helpful!!

So who is your supplier and what tariff are you on? e.g. how much do you pay per kWh? E7? Simply changing to a cheaper supplier could be very cost effective with very little effort!

GOLDIE

Hya we changed our Electricity to npower online. We had no gas installed in the house so we bought Calor gas heaters and as I hated cooking on electric i went on Ebay and bought a full size Calor gas cooker. we bought a big orange Calor gas for £40 in February which is still got some left in. our electric bill for this month was just less than £35. Doing it this way has really saved us money.

pigphysio

hi, thank you to all.
my supplier is southern electric, we are on economy 7, we are charged 18.56 day rate and 6.90 night rate.
no idea how we would afford a new heating system, clutching at straws really and we dont have any open fire places mores the pity!
have now gone down to 1 storage heater on and still not made much difference in the usage, have also turned thermostat right down on emmersion heater.
as for quarterly bills, we just don`t have the finances to pay it, hence the pre payment meter.

espresso

pigphysio wrote: »

hi, thank you to all.
my supplier is southern electric, we are on economy 7, we are charged 18.56 day rate and 6.90 night rate.

That sounds expensive! Have you entered your details into a comparison site e.g. here Switching to a cheaper supplier would be quick, easy and cost effective.

PopIsDead_UK

Yeah, those prices are expensive for Economy 7. Average seems to be about :
Standing charge(per day) - 18.8600 p
Rate 1 - 10.1710 p/kWh
Rate 2 - none
Rate 3 - 4.7620 p/kWh (Evening Rate)

rothers8080

I was about to upgrade our heating to fan assisted storage but I've decided to go for a heat inverter unit instead - you might want to look in to these as they are the best solution for electric heating by far as long as you have somewhere to mount/place the external unit - I've done the maths and looked in to LPG, Oil, Storage etc.

The 13000Btu inverter cost me £449, I'm installing it at the moment.