Gas bill question

sisterk

Hi,

I'm fairly new to gas, after having moved to our first house from an electric only flat last December.

We've recently got a bill through from 09/01/2010 to 16/05/2010 (slightly longer than a quarter as a revised bill was sent after I submitted a meter reading), which has come out at £438, with approx 13500 KWh of usage.

I'm no expert here, but is that not on the high side? I know it was a cold winter, but I was blown away to find it was that much. When signing up, I agreed to pay £50 for elec and £50 for gas each month on DD, and was told that usually people will adjust the electric to be slightly more, and the gas slightly less, but this is over twice as much!

The central heating & hot water is set to come on around 5am (I start work fairly early) with the hot water turning off at around 9:30am, and central heating on until around 8pm as there is always someone in the hosue (set at about 20 on the thermostat).

House is a mid 70's semi, 3 bedrooms, double glazed, cavity wall insulation and thermostatic valves on all the rads.

Oh, and the oven is gas too.

Have I just been burning through gas like it's going out of fashion, or is something amiss here?

Thanks

cybergibbons

That does sound like quite a lot - but you do have the heating on for about 15hrs a day - which is quite a lot.

Does the 13500kWh tally with readings you took? Were the start and end reading estimated or actual?

mjm3346

sisterk wrote: »

The central heating & hot water is set to come on around 5am (I start work fairly early) with the hot water turning off at around 9:30am, and central heating on until around 8pm as there is always someone in the hosue (set at about 20 on the thermostat).
Have I just been burning through gas like it's going out of fashion, or is something amiss here?

Thanks

How many months ago did you switch off the central heating?

sisterk

About a month ago, near the end of april when the weather started picking up

sisterk

cybergibbons wrote: »

That does sound like quite a lot - but you do have the heating on for about 15hrs a day - which is quite a lot.

Does the 13500kWh tally with readings you took? Were the start and end reading estimated or actual?

Yeah I realise 15hours is quite a lot, but the thermostat seems to keep this in check most of the day, with the boiler only kicking in two or three times through the day to top up.

The start reading was estimated, but was only a week after the actualy reading, so was sensibly close. The final reading wasn't estimated, it was supplied by myself.

All the online calculators I've used say that based on the number of units I've used, 13500 KWh is right, so their maths is right on the bill.

Lokolo

Sounds about right to me. If not a little high but this would be due to the 15 hours.

I used to pay £85 a month on a 5 bedroom house which worked itself out right over the whole year. Given we didn't have heating on in summer months I suspect we were using £130+ a month in winter months.

sisterk

Ok thanks for your input. Given the cold winter and the slightly overkill hours, it sounds about right then, hopefully it'll even out over the summer.