Sky-high electricity Bill - Please advise!

guitarbloke

Hi everyone,

I really hope someone here can give me some advice as I'm so worried at the moment...

My girlfriend and I moved into our first place together exactly 4 weeks ago - it's a rented 1 bedroom 'cottage' (imagine a very small 1 bed bungalow) - combined living room/kitchen and a separate bedroom and bathroom.

It is electricity only - no gas - the heating installed by the landlord is these funny kind of plug in radiators - they look like flat metal plates fixed to the wall. There is one in the living room and one in the bedroom but that's it. The ceilings are very high and the whole place is cold all the time. We bought 2 x 1kw oil-filled radiators from B&Q which we have in the bedroom and leave on all day and night - we turn them way down when we leave for work in the morning and have them on about 1/2 - 3/4 heat when we are home.

There is also an electric fire in the living room which is switched on the moment we get home to warm the place up - we tend to leave this on for 2 or 3 hours each evening.

We don't have any computers there and the only electrical appliances we run are the kitchen bits - oven/fridgefreezer - and TV/DVD player/Sky box.

Our landlord called and gave Eon the meter reading when we first moved in, and this morning I called Eon myself and gave an updated reading.

They say that using the new reading I gave them today, they can see that in the last 4 weeks we have used £155 electricity.

Can this be right? We are out at work for 10 hours each day during the week and watch TV for maybe 4 hours a night. We don't use the hot water apart from washing up (there is no shower installed so we are going to my girlfriend's mum's house each day for showers until the landlord fits us a mixer shower).

Problem is, we can't go on paying £155 a month in electricity; surely that's a crazy amount?

Is there anything you can point out that we are doing wrong that could run up such a bill - i.e the oil-filled radiators/fire etc? I can't believe that they would cost that much though - can they??

The landlord reckons that he stayed in the property for 6 months while his house was renovated last year and paid £50 a month in electricity.

He built the place himself, so I'm assuming it's all insulated properly etc.

Sorry if this message is a bit garbled, I'm still reeling from the news of our first bill amount, and pulling my hair out trying to work out how to get it down without turning off the heating and freezing to death!!

Thanks

Sean

casper_g

Sounds on the high side for such a small property, but not unbelievable. Bear in mind the last four weeks have been fairly chilly! I pay £75 a month for gas and electricity combined, but that's the monthly direct debit over the year; the monthly usage at this time of year could easily be double that, and remember you're paying more as you're an all-electric household.

It doesn't really matter much what form of electric heating you use -- the oil-filled rads, panel heaters and electric fire will all give the same result. The key questions to ask yourself if you want to reduce the heating bill are:
1) Does the place need to be as warm as you've had it over the last month? Could you wear another jumper?
2) Are you using unnecessary heating when it's not needed?
3) Is there anything you can do to reduce heat loss/increase insulation? As the cottage sounds like it's modern there probably aren't any great big gaps with draughts coming through them, but a bit of creative thinking might find something you could do.

ETA: What time of year was it when the landlord lived there? At the height of summer you don't need much heating.

worbikeman

guitarbloke wrote: »

We bought 2 x 1kw oil-filled radiators from B&Q which we have in the bedroom and leave on all day and night - we turn them way down when we leave for work in the morning and have them on about 1/2 - 3/4 heat when we are home.

That's your main problem right there - you need to turn off all electrical appliances at the wall (except fridge/freezer) when not at home. I take it your cooker is electric as well - if you use the oven much it will eat units for Britain. Heating everything by electric is real expensive!

ALIBOBSY

The easiest way to test the amount you use is to take a reading first thing in the morning, then last thing at night. Work out a daily rate and you will see if the £155 seems about right for your usage.
I would be concerned about the initial reading coming from the landlord, he may be genuine, but it would be tempting to give Eon a reading from when the last tenants left so you end up paying any bits he has used say to clean up the house etc. However the landlord may have been perfectly honest (many of them are perfectly honest business people) and this would have only made a small difference unless the house was empty for a long time with him coming in doing lots of jobs?
I would have done the start reading myself, but as I said this may not be an issue at all.

The way you are using power sounds like you would use alot, both the wall plug in type and the ones you have in the bedroom gobble up power. Why on earth would you heat a bedroom all day, especially when you are not in the house? Even on a low setting the radiators draw power when plugged in.
We have a 2 year old and I am at home all day (8 months pregnant) and our heating especially upstairs is not on for most of the day.
We have fluffy throws all about to wrap up in and use jumpers inside if required. We aren't obsessed with every little bit of usage and our biggest spend is probably the PC which is on most times of the day. There are 5 of us (soon to be 6) I am home at the mo and of course although kids try they do forget to turn things off etc. In a 3 bed semi we use about £55 a month on electric, but our heating and water is an energy efficent gas boiler. During the last very cold quarter we used about £65-£70 of gas per month as well. But that will be much lower now things are warming up. So i would say last 4 wks we would have used around £100 total for gas and electric, so yours still sound high.

May be worth investing in a plug in energy reader, so you can see which items use the most.

good luck
ali x

Tucker

It sounds like you are using alot if you have 2 X 1kw rads on the go all the time and therefore it seems entirely possible that you are using the amount quoted.

First thing, are you on the best tariff that your supplier can offer? Most energy firms bring out a new tariff every few months to compete for new custom. They will put exisiting customers on it but only if they request it, otherwise you stay on an uncompetitive rate unaware you are paying more than you need.

Ask your supplier to do a calc based on your recent useage and that they inform you of their best tariff for your use and then get swapped to it.

My electric bill is about £650 per year using the best tariff I can get (I change it at least once a year with the current supplier and also check it across the market too). I have gas heating, but the rest is all electric. I got an energy reader as the above poster has suggested (it was free from British Gas, via our local energy show house, run by our council).

My normal useage when we are home with low engery lights on, a 42inch plasma on the go is 400 to 600 watts. Clearly, yours is somewhere in excess fo 4 times this at well over 2kw.

When we are not in and during the night, the useage from just fridges and freezers and anything that needs to be on standby is 80 to 90 watts.

Yours is going to be over 1kw!! 10 times as much, because you are leaving 2 oil filled rads on the go, albeit on a low setting.

So, yes, in my view, you'll be hemorrhaging cash based on your habits and on an expensive tariff.

Get an energy reader and see what you are using. They are dead easy to fit. You clamp a lead with a transmitter around the main wire on the meter and the display works wirelessly from it and gives you a constant real time reading of your useage.

E.ON_Company_Representative

Hi guitarbloke,

Firstly all electric heating compared to gas central heating is very expensive.

It’s worth checking the accuracy of the starting readings as suggested, however if the readings used to start the account match those recorded on the tenancy agreement then disputing this will be difficult.

Did the tenancy agreement state the readings taken for when you moved in?

I’d hope that the L/L has been honest and the readings are correct, I’d be more inclined to think that this is an accurate bill, but it’s high due to you not understanding the heating cost and the best ways to maximise your heating systems.

Is the property double glazed? Insulated? From your description I’m assuming not.

Check the two panel heaters for their running costs, they may show how much energy they use per hour.

If the oil filled radiators use 1 kWh each and are on all day that’s 48 kWh already, at 10 pence a unit, you’re looking at almost £5 a day for just the oil radiators (this will be less as you have them on a lower setting, but for comparative purposes this seems relevant).

Try and write down all the appliances and their running costs (like the oil rads) and call the E.ON consumption team; they’ll happily talk through the appliances with you and tell you what’s using what.

They can give you a range of advice on how best to use the appliances and heating to maximise it’s effectiveness and hopefully bring down these costs.

Brian

savemoney

Electric is 3x more expensive to use as heat than gas. You aren't on a cheap E7 tariff by sound of it. I just paid out £80 on gas just for heating the other week this was for just under 4 weeks usage

E.ON_Company_Representative

Hi Sean,

Just noticed you did say insulated! Apologies, do we know if it's to recommended standards?

Brian

WestonDave

It doesn't seem that surprising to me working the figures back. On a good tariff to run up that sort of bill you would be using about 42Kwh per day. Now you've told us that you have 2x 1Kw radiators on 24/7 which ignoring times when the thermostat cycles them off would clock up 48Kwh alone in a 24 hour period. I suspect the fire is at least 1kw rated so 4 hours of that per day is another 4 if not 8 or 12 Kwh so on the face of it heating alone could be using up to 60Kwh per day, before you start thinking about lighting, cooking and other electrical devices.

Obvious answer to me is turn the radiators off when you go out in the morning, and experiment with how long before you go up to bed you need to turn them on to make the room tolerable. I'd be surprised if it didn't heat up enough in the 4hrs you are home, and maybe as little as one hour before bed would be enough. Similarly do you really need them on once you are under a decent thickness duvet.

macman

Did you take your own reading when you moved in, rather than relying o the landlord's?
If not, the calculation you have made is not necessarily accurate.
However, given that you are heating an empty house for much of the day, your consumption may well be correct. 2x1Kwh heaters on 24/7 is going to cost around £140 per month alone

guitarbloke

Wow thank you so much to everyone who has replied so far! Your comments and advice are really appreciated!

Unfortunately (stupidly) we didn't make a note of the initial meter reading - the landlord took it down whilst I stood by him and then he called Eon the next day.

Brian - thanks for posting - the property is insulated - I don’t know to what standard though - however the landlord did say when we moved in that the council had required him to put loads of insulation in when he built the place. All the windows are double glazed and we can't really feel any draughts as such. We just assumed that because the ceilings were so high that was the reason it was taking so long to warm up.

I forgot to mention - popped onto Eon's website this morning after I spoke with them and changed my tariff to their "Fixonline 6" which will apparently save 19% of our bill, so am interested to see what difference that makes next month.

I will look into getting an energy reader - although I’m not 100% certain exactly where the main cable is to attach it - I'm sure the landlord can point me in the right direction. Once I know what each appliance is running at, I'll give the Eon consumption team a call as suggested above and see what they say.

I'll also pop to B&Q tonight and pick up some timers for the plug sockets on the 2 oil-filled radiators - maybe I'll just set them to come on an hour or so hours before we arrive home in the evenings and a couple of hours before we wake up.

This is probably really obvious stuff to most of you, so apologies if any of this sounds a bit dumb! It's just a bit of a system shock moving into our own place and having to start thinking about these kinds of things which never crossed our minds in the past!