Central Heating Bills Now Sky High With New Heating Installed

closing_2

After going through the recent cold snap with poor central heating I've just had a new refit of the central heating. A new condensing boiler was installed along with new radiators and piping.

I live in a fairly small house and now have 7 radiators, 4 are thermostatically controlled and the others are always on. When it was installed and told that it would be approx 25 % more efficient.

However after several days of usage to just keep the house warm the cost of this is quite alarming. When I say several days I dont mean that it's been on all that time.

Basically I've worked out that with the radiators all set to 5 (new installation so was told to keep it on that) for an hour costs me just over £1

I'm on a prepay meter at a rate of 6.940p per Kwh

Looking at other threads on here, gas heating per month is approx £40

£40 / .694 = 57.75 Kwh of energy

my usage is per hour
£1 / .694 = 1.45 Kwh

So if i take the average consumption based of 57.75 kwh / 1.45 kwh = 38 hours

38 hours of gas in a month to stop the cost going over £40

Do these figures seem right? Thats just a little over an hour a day for heating the house which seems a touch steep.

Anyone here care to post their usage patterns etc just to see if its not me going mad?

Fire_Fox

Your maths is wrong by a factor of ten 6.94p = £0.0694

Cardew

closing wrote: »

Do these figures seem right?

No your figures are incorrect in a number of ways.

Firstly you don't pay 6.94p/kWh for gas. The majority will be at 3p to 3.5p.

Secondly the average consumption per year is 20,500kWh per year in UK, so £700+ or £60 a month - not the £40 you believe - and that is averaged out over the year including months when heating is not required.

It would be quite normal to use £100 a month or more in winter.

I can't think why you were told to have all the radiators set to 5.

closing_2

Thanks for the feedback

I used the figures for an apprimation from this thread at MSE

At the moment the house has a pre pay meter installed which always gives a higher rate of gas than normal (a hangover from the previous tennant) British Gas Link (pdf)

Im working this on being on a teir 1 at the moment and then the rate should drop to the 3p ish rate.

As its a bran new installation of radiators and boiler the plumber said to keep them all on 5 for a few days when using it to test the system out.

670 Kwh * 6.94 (approx) per quater =
£464 per quarter before dropping down to a lower rate

if
£1 / .694 = 1.45 Kwh (trying to work out here how much gas I get from a quid)
then 670 / 1.45 = 462 hours ?

462 hours / 24 = 19.5 days

If I go on a better tarif i.e not pre pay
223 Kwh * 6.94 (approx) per month =
£154 per month before dropping down to a lower rate
per quarter that means that its 154 * 3 = 464
223 / 1.45 = 153 hours ? of usage before dropping down to 3p a unit

153 hours / 24 = 6.3 days

So all in all there isnt that much of a difference between pre pay and direct debit?

Premier_2

For PAYG customers, tier 1 applies to the initial 2680kWh per year ... or 7.342 kWh per day.

If it's costing you a quid an hour, that's a lot more than 7.342 kWh alone.

Cardew

Tier 1 only applies to the first 670kwh a quarter. However you are using a price of 69.4p for a kWh not 6.94p (as pointed out by Fire Fox above)

So at Tier 1 rates you get 14.4kWh for £1 and when you have used 670kWh in the quarter you will get 31.3kWh for £1

closing_2

Ok, thanks. I'm going to adjust my figures now. Just had the heating on for half an hour with all rad's set on level 3 instead of 5. That cost 40p.

Cardew

closing wrote: »

Ok, thanks. I'm going to adjust my figures now. Just had the heating on for half an hour with all rad's set on level 3 instead of 5. That cost 40p.

It really makes no sense to calculate using tier 1 rates.

There are 2,680kWh at Tier1 rate per year. They are charged pro-rata per day - so approx 7.3kWh a day.

The difference between tier 1 and tier 2 rates is 3.75p so just accept that you pay a standing charge of 27p a day for gas and use the tier 2 rates for your calculations.

closing_2

The reason I was basing it on Tier 1 as it states on the prices thats what you get charged for the gas until you used that amount?

I'm glad this isnt getting complicated lol So to make it simplier, does it sound about right for £15 a week for gas then :d

markharding557

You ought to get thermostats on the other rads as well