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

jkgray

In case anyone misunderstands, the figures I am quoting are is the usage from late December to now. My brother's figures are the same.

I was just surprising why my figures were so much more than his.

Looking at my annual usage (well almost 23.2.10 - 1.2.11) think my figures are more normal:

Gas - 26,092 kWh (cost £692.59)


Electric - 3901 kWh (cost £469.08)

Although different bodies use different average domestic consumption figures - the most commonly used seem to be 20,500 kWh for gas and 3,300kWh for Electricity as used by Ofgem/Energywatch. My annual consumption therefore seems to be about 25% than average which is what I would expect given size and age of house.

Overall my total annual cost - £1161.67 which averaged over 12 months is gas £57.72/mo; elec £39.09/mo; combined £96.81 / month. So again what I would say is about right. I think my brother's is just v low.

Tixy

Your loft conversion could well mean that your insulation is less than a lot of people here who are quoting lower bills.
And single glazing makes a huge difference - do you have thick curtains, make sure they are always closed before it gets dark etc?

Have you actually checked you are with a competitive supplier and on the best tariff. You say your heating is on about the same amount of time as your brother but are you trying to heat your houses to the same temp? maybe you like a house to be a lot warmer than him.

60quid for elec seems high for 2 people who are out most of the day. Are you using any elec heating? do you use a tumble drier a lot or other hungry appliances?

27col

If you have a loft conversion and your brother doesn't then presumably you are heating a larger volume than he is. If you have no wall cavities then your heat losses will be much higher than the newer house. He has double glazing, you don't. You really are not comparing like with like.

jkgray

27col wrote: »

If you have a loft conversion and your brother doesn't then presumably you are heating a larger volume than he is. If you have no wall cavities then your heat losses will be much higher than the newer house. He has double glazing, you don't. You really are not comparing like with like.

I'm not trying to compare like with like. I'm simply putting up for discussion - my combined bills at the moment are £220, his are £80. Who would have thought that having an old house would make that much difference.

macman

Compare his annual consumption with yours, not the monthly DD's. The latter are meaningless unless you are on identical tariffs. He could be paying 20% less than you for his fuel.

dander

The age of the house might make a difference to the heating costs, but if you heat with gas, it shouldn't make a difference to electricity. A difference in electricity would simply be down to you using more of it - that could be leaving lights on, inefficient appliances, leaving things on standby or chargers plugged in, just having more electrical appliances or using things like washers and dryers more often.

My feeling is that a fair amount of the difference is likely to be lifestyle.

Idonex

I live in a 1900s 3 bed victorian mid terrace with no double glazing (yet) and no wall insulation but i do have 270mm loft insulation, and what i would consider in the rest of the house to be poorly insulated (poorly fitted exterior doors etc - yet to fix everything!). Plus a cellar that cold air blows into from a grate on the floor by the outside of the front door. Our gas bill the last quarter has been £77/m and electricity is about £27 /m. The quarter before last (summer) was 44/m for gas. We have gas central heating and a gas oven. We do have an A rated combi boiler though.

Your gas bill seems astronomic. Bear in mind we do also have the heating on quite a lot (maybe 12 hours a day since my gf is on maternity leave looking after baby, so she'sin quite a lot), but all radiators have thermostatic valves on, with most set half way and the water & heating water temp on the boiler is only half way. Always seems to keep the house around 19 degrees which is warm enough for us.

This is on some standard British Gas dual fuel tariff i have yet to price compare..

Slinky_Malinky

You might want to check for a gas leak around your meter. A friend of mine was having high bills despite being out at work all day and only having their heating on for the odd hour or so. Turned out the gas was leaking outside where the pipe came out of the meter so they were paying for the leaked gas.

Yorkie1

I was listening to local radio this morning and they were interviewing someone who had an old end-of-terrace house which they'd done a lot to in order to reduce their carbon footprint / bills.

One thing they mentioned was insulating wallpaper. Called sempatec or something like that. Apparently it's about 1cm thick, a little spongy, and you use it on the (inside of the) external walls only. Put lining paper over it and then can paint or wallpaper in the usual way. Added to loft insulation, they've increased the temps in each room significantly and halved their carbon footprint.

They also have solar panels but that's not for everyone.

27col

If you think that 1cm thick insulation is likely to provide any significant insulation then you are sadly misinformed. If 1cm of insulation provided any improvement why would anyone ever need to install anything thicker.