Monthly payments increasing..and already high

polgara

Just had our joint electricity/gas bill in today - and our monthly payment is going up from £144 to £168!

Did some checking and my calculations are:

Over 203 days we used:
4138 units (electricity) - daily average of 20.38
1130 units (gas) - daily average of 5.57 which converts to 63.57 kWh (hope thats right but followed the instructions on the bill - units x calorific unit x volume correction /3.6)

Its an old 4 storey terraced house, gch on 3 floors, double glazing (again on 3 floors), mostly bare floorboards, and lots of electrical equipment etc. The boiler is about 6 years old and is regularly serviced etc.

We're in the process of renovating the 4th floor to extend the central heating and more importantly to add insulation (there's none currently on the ceiling/roof). We had some slipped tiles which allowed the ceiling in the attic rooms to be damaged and there are some significant damage to the plasterboard there.

As we renovate rooms in turn we're replacing the radiators and adding thermastatic values so we can control more and more room heating. We've also three open fireplaces - the living/back room and basement kitchen (waiting for our new woodburning stove to be installed, along with the fan to
push more heat back into the room.

I think our usage is excessive - any advice/suggestions???

savers_united

Your Gas useage is quite good considering the size and nature of the building.
Are you confortable with the heating or does the house still feel cold? are you supplementing the GCH with electric heaters? I ask because you talk about using TRVs etc when at the moment your using proabaly less Gas than the UK average and if your house still feels cold then TRVs will not help but insulation certainly will..
Your electric bill is excessive and will be around 7000kWh for a full year, nearly 2.5x the UK average.

Where is this electricity being used, electric heaters? Underfloor heating? large numbers of GU10 halogen bulbs?

Magentasue

We have a smaller house and are using almost double the gas you're using. However, you're using more electricity than we are, so that seems high. But then you say you use 'lots of electrical equipment etc' so presumably you expect a high electricity bill?

polgara

We don't have electric heaters, underfloor heating but we do have a fair number of GU10s (about 12 over two rooms) - do they use a lot? We are slowing changing over to GU10 leds. All other bulbs are energy saving etc.

We do have a lot of electrical equipment - mainly laptops, phone chargers, computer etc but I try to ensure they are switched off when not in use but usage just seems to keep rising (becoming a total nag about it...which is fun!)

Magentasue

If you have 12 x 50w bulbs on for one hour that's 600 watts. Three hours would be 1.8kwh a day. Whereas 12 x 9w energy saving bulbs would be 324watts.

KimYeovil

(Nul points. Try that second sum again, Magenta )

Magentasue

KimYeovil wrote: »

(Nul points. Try that second sum again, Magenta )

Oh dear. No wine yet and still get same answer.

12 x 9watts = 108 watts an hour x 3 hours = 324 watts (compared to 1.8 watts for normal 50w GU10s).

KimYeovil

Oh. That's shut me up. Crawls away, embarrassed.

Magentasue

No worries, Kim :-)

polgara

Lol - so if we are replacing 50 w bulbs with leds which are the best/closest light wise?

Going to be more proactive about switching things off (tho 13 yrs old tend to apparently need to have the house lit up like Blackpool illuminations all the time!)

Magentasue

I bought an energy monitor and watched it obsessively when we first got it. In the evenings, we use about 800-900watts an hour. If it went higher, I'd summon one of the kids and send one round the house switching off. They soon got into the habit of switching off - they've also been trained to use lamps (with low energy bulbs) rather than multi-bulb ceiling light fittings.