Can an old house really cost that much more than a new house to heat?!

jkgray

My current utility bills are about £160 / mo for gas and £60 / mo for electricity.

I was speaking to my brother and he says that his gas and electricity are about £80 / month combined! He has a smart meter so says that is his actual bill not estimated / averaged over the year.

I live in a 4 bed, 3 story double fronted mid-terrance built 1910. Solid walls, single glazing.

He lives in a 5 bed, 3 story large detached built 2009. Double glazed, presumably cavity walls.

Most other things are similar - gas central heating, gas hob, elctric oven, etc. Couple in each house, no kids, etc. Think we probably have the heating on the same; during week few hours in the morning then say 7 pm till bed, then all day at weekend.

Can the difference really just be the age of the house? Discuss.

MX5huggy

Basically yes, plus how old is your boiler? Your electric usage looks high compared with his.

What loft insulation have you got?

His walls will have a u value of maybe 0.35 yours 1.5, windows his 2.0 or less yours 5 or so. and so on.

Gloomendoom

jkgray wrote: »

My current utility bills are about £160 / mo for gas and £60 / mo for electricity.

I was speaking to my brother and he says that his gas and electricity are about £80 / month combined! He has a smart meter so says that is his actual bill not estimated / averaged over the year.

I live in a 4 bed, 3 story double fronted mid-terrance built 1910. Solid walls, single glazing.

He lives in a 5 bed, 3 story large detached built 2009. Double glazed, presumably cavity walls.

Most other things are similar - gas central heating, gas hob, elctric oven, etc. Couple in each house, no kids, etc. Think we probably have the heating on the same; during week few hours in the morning then say 7 pm till bed, then all day at weekend.

Can the difference really just be the age of the house? Discuss.

Your bills look high to me. I live in a very old stone house with 35 year old gas boiler, solid stone walls and no double glazing.

My gas and electricity combined is half yours.

Perhaps the older the house the cheaper they are to heat etc.

loracan1

Your bills seem incredibly high for just two people, how many units/day or week are you using?

(my bills are currently an accurate £80/month combined for stone terrace, rubbish d/g, with 3 of us living here, but I took action when our bills hit £146 a month.)

will-he-payitoff

Yes old houses do cost more to heat, when we moved from a old 3 bed semi to a new 4 bed detached our heating bills went down.

ormus

as above, your gas/lecky bills are very high.
3 bed semi here c1935. cavity walls/loft insulated to spec. and DG. with a modern vaillant combi boiler.
combined energy bills are 120 per month. and we have the heating on nearly all day, every day.

jkgray

MX5huggy wrote: »

Basically yes, plus how old is your boiler? Your electric usage looks high compared with his.

What loft insulation have you got?

His walls will have a u value of maybe 0.35 yours 1.5, windows his 2.0 or less yours 5 or so. and so on.

Boiler was fitted before we moved in (2 years ago) so not exactly sure but it is a WB combi condensor and doesn't look that old.

Loft is converted (have checked it was granted planning in 2004, so can only assume then passed building regs?)- difficult to assess insulation save that looking in eaves cupboards can see torching on back of tiles. Have staped put foil backed insulation to visible rafters to try to do best I can with that.

jkgray

A couple of months ago I once worked out that it cost something like £0.27 per hour my boiler was on. Therefore if it is on for say 6 hours per day in the week (2 hours AM / 4 hours PM) then it would cost £1.62 per weekday and say 16 hours at weekend then £3.24 per weekend day. That would be £30.78 per week. So £123.12 per month. The £160 per month figure for last couple of months includes Xmas when we were at home more so sounds about right.

More just puzzled why ours is so much more than his.

jennifernil

I don't think you can go on just number of rooms, you should go on total floor area, or even cubic capacity.

Our detached house (1988) (2 floors) is 280 sq metres floor area, we pay £64 per month for heating and hot water, we are home all day as retired.

Electricity is £34 per month.

Just to add....

We have good insulation and DG everywhere, thermostatic valves everywhere, HW on constantly. cooking is by electricity.

angelavdavis

I think your bill is very high.

I live in a three storey 7 bedroomed, high ceilinged Victorian semi built in 1880. We have loft insulation (done in 2004) and no wall insulation. All rooms, except three have single glazed windows. I have no idea what the sq footage is of my house - but I have 6 rooms which are over 14ft x 20ft in size.

We have 20 radiators in total (including 4 towel radiators) to heat using gas, gas hob, electric cooker. Our boiler was replaced in 2003. We also have two electric showers and put the water on to heat once a day for maximum of an hour. I replaced 14 of the radiators (fitting trv's onto them at the time), relocating some using new pipework two years ago. Many of the radiators I removed were half full of rust! No wonder the house was never warm. Now it is warm all the time and the trvs mean we can control the heat too.

A total of four of us live in the house. My retired parents are in the house all day, so the heating is on permanently during winter.

Yet my bills are £185 total per month for gas and electricity.

Suggested checklist:

- Do you have thermostatic valves on all radiators?
- How old is your boiler?
- When was the last time your central heating was serviced?
- When was the last time you checked your gas/electricity deal?
- Do you check your meter reading when you get a bill?
- Check that you can't smell gas around the meter. If so, call out Transco and report it to your energy supplier.
- Switch off all electric appliances in the house and check the meter to ensure that your meter isn't still moving. If it is, call out your energy supplier.
- Check you are not simply paying over the odds for your direct debit and wildly in credit. In September, I got an automated "we are increasing your direct debit to £250 per month!" message from Eon. I phoned them and pointed out that, at the time, we were £360 in credit and that the next quarter's bill had never been more than £165. I then requested £200 refund and them to lower the direct debit back to £175. They have since sent a notification that they were increasing it again to £185 per month (even though the annual statement said we were only using £170 work of power according to their records!)

penelopedee_2

Our house is over 100 yrs old, 3 bed terraced but the downstairs is virtually open plan. Our gas and electric together is about £90 a month this time of year. 20 year old boiler, water on for a couple of hours a day, heating on most the day until 7pm. The electric bill is high due to a teenager and game consoles etc! We do have double glazing.