Am I paying for someone else's electricity??

CharlieLM

My fiance and I live in a 2 bed flat. Our energy is all electric, and we're paying £128/month, which seems ridiculously high.

We have a fair amount of electrical equipment, but bar the landline phone and refrigerator we turn off everything when it's not in use at the wall. The living room has 13 50w spotlight lightbulbs, and the kitchen has 10, but realising that this would use up electricity we light both rooms with lamps fitted with energy saving lightbulbs. We only ever use a heater in the bedroom (where we have been camping out all winter because the rest of the flat is so freezing!) which is not left on for extended periods of time. We do part tumble dry our clothes because otherwise they don't dry for about a week, but apart from that we don't use any ridiculous amounts of energy.

I'm wondering whether somehow some of the neighbours' electricity consumption is being fed into our meter. Our flat used to be the basement of the hairdressers above - could some of their electricity be going through our meter?? I've tried switching off our meter and checked whether the lights in the flats above ours go out, which they don't. It seems a little odd that for the two months after we moved in our electricity bill was £30/month, and our meter recorded lower usage in the 5 months between May-September last year (when no-one was living in the flat upstairs) than we apparently used in the month and a bit between March-April (when there were people living upstairs).

Anyone got any ideas about what I can do?

Andy_WSM

CharlieLM wrote: »

Anyone got any ideas about what I can do?

Turn off everything in your flat for a few hours and see if the meter still registers any consumption. Don't turn off at the fuse board as you may disconnect the above flat also if they are feeding from your supply. I mean physically unplug / turn off everything.

Gurn_2

you what! surely if he turns off from the fuse board and it turns off the supply elsewhere then he is feeding there electric from his consumer unit!!!!
Switch the lot off and if its a mechanical meter see if the wheel stops turning!

amcluesent

>Switch the lot off and if its a mechanical meter see if the wheel stops turning<

And 1+1 = 2. The point is to see if the meter is turning when all power use in their flat is removed.

Kev27

Buy an Npower/E.on Energy monitor off ebay, you will soon know what is eating your money and if there is any foul play involved . Kev :money:

DVardysShadow

amcluesent wrote: »

>Switch the lot off and if its a mechanical meter see if the wheel stops turning<

And 1+1 = 2. The point is to see if the meter is turning when all power use in their flat is removed.

True enough, but equally, you could just turn it all off in the evening and nip outside to see whether their lights go off

t0rt0ise

DVardysShadow wrote: »

True enough, but equally, you could just turn it all off in the evening and nip outside to see whether their lights go off

They've done that.. the OP said so.