Record breaking utility bills? Advice on renewables etc please

cgray25

Ok, not actually for me but for my parents - I was horried to hear about this and really wanted to help for both financial and environmental reasons.
For combined gas/electric they're paying £400 PER MONTH!
Can anyone beat that? :eek:

This isn't a one-off 'this winter' thing, it's what they've been paying direct debit every month for the last couple of years at least (in fact, I'm sure it'll have gone up after this winter). This isn't a stately home, it is a early 1900s 4-bed bungalow.

Last year they had the old boiler replaced with a condensing combi but it's not made a huge difference. I'll need to check if there's a cavity wall but the jury still seems to be out on CWI.

There's an attic conversion that was built around 20 years ago, so we're not sure if there's any possibilties for insulating the roof when there's a room already in place? There's some glass-wool around the floorspace outside that room but it's minimal.

3 of the rooms are not double-glazed so we're going to look into that but they were reluctant to replace with uPVC as they're original windows (1 stained glass).

My dad has expressed an interest in renewables like PV panels. I've read there's some free-install deals going around but I'm wondering, at this level of expenditure, if it might be worth paying for their own install? It's south-facing but not too bright in soggy Glasgow

He also mentioned geo-thermal, not sure if that'd be an option but any advice welcome.

reeac

It's certainly a vast expenditure. The first thing to do is to express their consumption in kWh of gas and of electricity and look at the unit costs as compared with other suppliers. How is the £400 per month split between gas and electricity? Are they tending to use electricity for heating rather than gas? I would say that better insulation must be the top priority. PV panels yield 8-9% p.a on their capital cost - good, but lower priority than insulation.

dogshome

Hi cgray25 - As reeac has said improving the insulation is the top priority, as whatever other heating systems are installed they will still cost more to run with poor insulation.

That 20 year old loft conversion needs looking at, and I reckon it's worth cutting away a section of the plasterboard that lines the cieling to see what insulation is underneath - To re-insulate with something like Cellotex foam board between the roof timbers and cover with insulative plaster board is not expensive on materials, but it is a messy job.
Likewise, could the non-double glazed windows be fitted with secondary glazing on the inside?

Please post the annual Gas & Elec use in Kwh - Your supplier will tell you if you ask - But even with poor insulation £4,800 a year on Utilities is a huge sum and points up the possibility of there being an error on the Gas meter billing, which is not uncommon

Look the Gas meter - On the front it will marked either m3 which denotes it as a Metric model, or ft3 for an Imperial model
Then look at the line on a bill which shows how many Meter units were used and then converts this to the number Kwh being charged - Divide the number of meter units into the Kwh charged - If the answer is appx 11 you are being billed for a Metric meter, and if the answer is appx 31 you are being billed for an Imperial meter
If in fact you have a metric meter, but are being billed appx 31 Kwh for each meter unit recorded, the bills are nearly three times higher than they should be and should contact the supplier immediately
If indeed there has been this type of mis-billing on the gas, Atlantic will probably owe enough money to your dad to pay for re-insulating the loft conversion

cgray25

Thanks for the info - I will try to get their info in kwh terms and confirm whether the meter's metric or imperial, although tbh, my mum's cold blooded so I doubt there's been any error. I can confirm but I'd say gas usage is probably 60-70% of the usage.

In terms of the attic room, there's no insulation in the roof space whatsoever - there's a bedroom then a little hallway (without cupboard) so to fit anything like kingspan etc (which I did with my own place) would be very difficult, basically all the ceilings would need to come down.