Gas and electric bill ridiculous!

Fire_Fox

Lilith1980 wrote: »

Hi all, well I checked the meters and the electric meter was lower than their estimate but our gas meter was slightly higher than their estimate. So I'm assuming that next month the bill will be higher?

I spoke to our landlady who couldn't understand why it was £200 for one month's gas,although she said there had been a price increase not long ago . Any tips people can give to get the bill down would be great please...

Something is very wrong here - I would think this was crazy for an electrically heated flat, and electric is more expensive than gas. The only other way you could be paying this much is if you have been keeping the hot water on 24/7 and heating at t-shirt temperature AND the place has no insulation but even then ...

Have you checked the meter you are reading is definitely for your flat? Have you tried turning your gas appliances off for a few hours at peak time and checking the meter is not still moving? Have you checked the serial number on the meter against your bill, and that your meter is in the same units as your bill (cubic feet or cubic metres)? Can you post the price per KWH you are paying for others to comment if you are on an expensive tariff?

Lilith1980

Hi all,

I think I have found the problem....

I looked at the boiler manual and the two dials on the front DO control the water and heating temperatures. They were up almost 3/4s of the way until I turned them down the other day!

I don't know who has been fiddling but I guess this is why the heating has been so high - it's been set to about 60c!

The heating did pack up over the winter and the landlady came in and then an engineer came to fiddle with the boiler and they got it back up and runnning again. Looks like they put the dials up and didn't put them back down - we should have noticed really.

You live and learn....the hard way

Andy_WSM

Lilith1980 wrote: »

Hi all,

I think I have found the problem....

I looked at the boiler manual and the two dials on the front DO control the water and heating temperatures. They were up almost 3/4s of the way until I turned them down the other day!

I don't know who has been fiddling but I guess this is why the heating has been so high - it's been set to about 60c!

The heating did pack up over the winter and the landlady came in and then an engineer came to fiddle with the boiler and they got it back up and runnning again. Looks like they put the dials up and didn't put them back down - we should have noticed really.

You live and learn....the hard way

Actually, the heating at 60 is fine. Up to 80C is fine for the heating. A lower temperature means that it will take longer for the house to reach the optimum temperature before the boiler shuts down, so you will use the same amount of gas, just over a longer time!

The hot water needs to be between 45C & 60C (Higher if you often have baths, but not as high needed if you only use water for washing up & showering).

Lilith1980

Thanks, so the higher settings wouldn't have made a difference to my bill then? I am confused again now lol

I checked the gas meter when I got home last night and we'd used 2 units since the same time the previous day.

A friend who works at NPower figured out that we'd been using 6 units per day over December and January. Is this 'normal' for winter months?

I'll carry on checking the meter each day for a while just to keep an eye on the units used I think.

LittleMissAspie

Imperial or metric units? If imperial then 6 a day is tons. We have used just under 1 imperial unit a day in the last month, to heat a 1-bed house. Well the house is cold but then our boiler is extremely inefficient. If we had a combi we'd be toasty on the same usage.

Andy_WSM

As said above by LittleMissAspie - Imperial or Metric? A "unit" of gas doesn't mean anything without knowing this.

The meter will either have M3 of Ft3 written next to the digits. - or may even have the words Feet or Meters written on it somewhere.

M3 = Metric

Ft3 = Imperial.

Gemsgalore

I am completely astounded at your bills!! :eek:

I certainly couldn't cope with only having my heating on for a couple of hours in the morning and evening as someone suggested. The temperature in the house would then go so low during the day that 2 hours in the evening wouldn't be sufficient for it to heat up again! It would also surely be more cost efficient to keep the radiators on rather than having them heat up from scratch.
I have my gas central heating on from 5am till 10pm every day so thats 17 hours per day and the highest winter gas bill I've had was my one last winter, which was £275 for the 3 months. I occasionally switch it off for a couple of hours here and there when house gets too hot as I have 7 very large radiators. I have a very old system (boiler is nearly 20 years old) so the boilers being fitted now should be cheaper as they should be much more efficient surely??

Lilith1980

Thanks for all your replies, just went down to the cellar to check the gas meter and it's got ft3 on it - so imperial.

What does this mean in terms of using 6 units per day over the winter, is that more reasonable?

Checked again last night and it's still at 2 units so seems to have settled.

dogshome

Hi Lilith1980 - On your Imperial meter each unit it records is converted into *approxiamately 31.5Kw for chargeing, so your 6 meter units a day becomes 189 chargeable units

*It's approxiamate because the conversion factor changes slightly according to the quality of the gas
All the best

Lilith1980

LittleMissAspie wrote: »

Imperial or metric units? If imperial then 6 a day is tons. We have used just under 1 imperial unit a day in the last month, to heat a 1-bed house. Well the house is cold but then our boiler is extremely inefficient. If we had a combi we'd be toasty on the same usage.

Over the winter we had the heating on pretty much all the time (apart from when we were at work), this included over-night on some occasions, but not all the radiators were on. However the temperature gauge was probably up high as that is what I discovered the other day. Plus the radiators that were on were on the highest setting because we have floorboards pretty much throughout the whole place and it takes time to warm it up.

Would this still not have caused the 6 units per day useage?