is my gas use excessive

mrs_baggins

perhaps i should wait until I get home so I can get an indication of useage from past bills but I will probably forget when i get back home so doing it now! My house is nearly 17 years old and has always been a very cold house. I admit I do have laminate floors all downstairs but thats only been the last couple of years. I also admit that I am a very cold blooded person and am very rarely warm. theres only 2 of us at home now and gas is used for central heating and water heating and at the moment is on for an hour in the morning and 2 hours at night (the water-not the heating which isnt on yet) I am trying to not put heating on until I have to so sit watching tv with a duvet on me! My dd for the gas has just gone up recently as they calculated my useage and put the monthly figure up slightly to £47 a month. To me this seems really high. We have 4 bedrooms but rads are switched off. at the height of winter heating is usually on from about 5 pm to 10 pm but not excessively high - i think about 21 degrees . Does this payment seem a lot? or do I really need to sort out exactly how much I am using?

Cardew

We cannot really comment on your gas use until you give kWh pa

viktory

Cardew wrote:

We cannot really comment on your gas use until you give kWh pa

I can! My gas costs £35 pm for a 2 bed house (with Powergen). Mind you I have no idea if it is enough or not as I have not received a bill yet (moved in April 06).

Not a lot of use that, but I thought I would let you know what I am paying. When I lived in a three bed house my gas payment was via pre-payment meter and averaged out at about £40 PM in the winter and less than £10 PM in summer.

melbury

mrs_baggins wrote:

perhaps i should wait until I get home so I can get an indication of useage from past bills but I will probably forget when i get back home so doing it now! My house is nearly 17 years old and has always been a very cold house. I admit I do have laminate floors all downstairs but thats only been the last couple of years. I also admit that I am a very cold blooded person and am very rarely warm. theres only 2 of us at home now and gas is used for central heating and water heating and at the moment is on for an hour in the morning and 2 hours at night (the water-not the heating which isnt on yet) I am trying to not put heating on until I have to so sit watching tv with a duvet on me! My dd for the gas has just gone up recently as they calculated my useage and put the monthly figure up slightly to £47 a month. To me this seems really high. We have 4 bedrooms but rads are switched off. at the height of winter heating is usually on from about 5 pm to 10 pm but not excessively high - i think about 21 degrees . Does this payment seem a lot? or do I really need to sort out exactly how much I am using?

No this doesn't sound at all excessive to me. We are out at work all day and have the heating on in winter for about 2 hours in the morning and then about 6 hours in the evening, obviously less in spring and autumn and hopefully just a bit for heating hot water in summer. Last direct debit was increased to £89 per month - have now switched to Ebico. We only use gas for heating and hot water and like you never set the thermostat at above 20 degrees.

mrs_baggins

thanks for posting that. I will have to have a look at my last bills to see what amount I am using to compare with others.

mrs_baggins

Duh! just wrote a big long post then found out I wasnt logged in!

Anyway I have just found my last bill so now i have some figures. This bill was estimated but I do remember that it was so close to the proper number I didnt bother getting a new one so will assume its about right.

Since the bill reading I appear to have used about 480 kWh gas. this is for heating hot water about hour in morning and 2-3 hours at night with possibly a bit more at weekends. probably for about 6-7 weeks. cooking is nominal really as up to now I havent really done that much.

my last bill is really difficult to work out whats what on it as there are som many different figures but I think it reads that in the period I used 4184 kWh. the period is from 13/4 to 8/7 so would also include some central heating but dont know how much. so comments please!!! does this seem to be a lot ogf gas used?? it does to me and ver recently I have altered the timer to only give a small amount of hot water in morning as its only me that showers then and less of an evening. I am delaying using heating for as long as poss and have switched radiotars off in 2 unused rooms.

Rikki

I am billed quarterly by powergen for my gas and last years bill came to £706 for a 4 bedroom detached house. Which would be a monthly DD of £58.83. HTH.