I think my average daily useage is high .. does anyone agree?

Phantomdog

Hi All,

Apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong place, but I didn't think any of the stickeys were quite right.

I'm afraid I've not kept my eye on the ball (perhaps that should be bill!) but have just left the direct debits going for my gas and electricity for years now. Anyway, having just received my latest bills it shows my average daily consumption over the last year as follows:
Electric - 64kWh per day (23,521 per year)
Gas - 41kWh per day (14,969 per year)

It's just my wife and I in a 4 bed detatched house, pretty good insulation in walls, roof, double glazing etc. We only use gas for central heating, and have economy 7 for electric water heating overnight. My wife is home during the day.

I've tried looking for average consumption figures, but have seen wildly different figures so am not sure if I'm just stunned at the cost now I look at it in detail or if there is something wrong?

My DD for electric is £135 per month and gas £52 per month, and the latest bills say I owe over £158 on the gas and £968 on the electric!!

I'd be very interested in anyones thoughts or comments as I've not really got anything to compare it with? People at work seem to think its high compared to what they pay?

I briefly spoke to the company who said that they can send someone to check the meters but that if there was nothing wrong there would be a charge (£152), so before I do that I thought I'd ask here.

Thanks for your time.

JSR

Your gas usage is normal but electricity is very high. The national average is about 10 kW/h per day. (3600 kW/h per year.) I use about 5 kW/h per day on average but it's just me here.

Might be worth getting that electric water heater checked!

eurmalian

Your gas is fairly standard but that's an awful lot of electric to be using. If you're on E7, what is the day/night split for it? You should have the two of them separate on the bill to check.

To let you know, the average that we work on for electric usage is arround 3,500kWh a year. That's a very general average over all of the country, so with 4 bedrooms I'd expect you to be using over that, but not that much over...

The other thing to check is does that average continue back over more than one bill? As basing your yearly usage on on winter bill could end up with some quite badly incorrect figures.

loracan1

The electricity consumption is incredibly high! My usage is between 60 and 80 a week(family of 3)...It used to be 110(ish) until I pulled it down and now use low energy lightbulbs, turn items off etc. Most things on their own don't make much difference but lots of little savings mount up.

Do you have the option to heat water using the central heating, using electric seems an expensive option?


Not sure about the gas usage, mine is ~ 15000 a year but I get confused which units are which.

Phantomdog

Thanks for such a quick response. The breakdown of the electric figure is 3119kWh at night rate, 900 at standard day and 19501 at discounted day.

grahamc2003

Yes, your electricity use is high (very high I'd say) for the circumstances you describe. At the moment, my all electric large house with 4 people uses about 100kwh/week, but we more or less minimise use for a comfortable lifestyle. In winter, the highest we've got through is 100kwh/day, but probvably averages 60/80kwh/day during the mid winter months, which of course includes all electric heating, except for a woodburner in the lounge.

Take a few meter readings every day for a few days at the same time of day, and post the results here. You may be better coming off e7.

Do you heat your house at all with electric heaters? That's where the main very large usage comes from - and are you sure your water immersion heater isn't on all the time, and not just during e7 hours?

Phantomdog

Thanks for the adviice, I will start those readings today. The only electric heating we have in the house is underfloor conservatory heating, which is on a timer for about 2 hours a day. I'm pretty sure the water heater isn't on all day because you can actually hear it at night when its on. Also we do occasionally run out of hot water during the day so I'm pretty sure its not heating the whole time. Anyway, will check old bills tonight and start readings, see whats going on where. Thanks again.

eurmalian

With that split you're definitely loosing money by being on E7, so a good start will be to come off of that. It also shows that it's not the water heaters that are using all of the electric. It's something that you're running during the day that's using it all.

Do you have anything you can think of that would use a lot? You don't have a fully heated swimming pool in the garden or anything like that do you?

dogshome

Hi Phantomdog - Your Gas consumption for a 4 bed house is good, but your Elec use is unbelievably high, and whilst using ECO7 to cook up cheap hot water overnight might seem a good idea, ECO7 tariffs charge a premium for every Kw you use during the day.

Check that the day-time booster switch on the Hot water tank has not been left on 24/7
Check that the meter No. on your bills matches that on your meter
Check the accuracy of the meter by turning everything off and reading the meter. Then plug in a Fan heater with known consumption, (1 or 2Kw) - Run it for an hour and check that the meter has only recorded what the heater used.
Check for a wiring fault by turning off everything and look at the meter to see if it's still recording -With an ECO7 set up, you will have to repeat this in the wee small hours.

It would be very worthwhile buying a Wattmeter for around a tenner - These plug into a wall socket and an appliance plugs into it, the screen shows just how much power the appliance is using - Old freezers are notorious for consuming a lot of power

If your gas boiler is capable of producing Hot Water, there are serious question marks as to whether you should be an an ECO7 tariff at all, but solving the huge Elec. consumption puzzle has to come first.

grahamc2003

Phantomdog wrote: »

Thanks for such a quick response. The breakdown of the electric figure is 3119kWh at night rate, 900 at standard day and 19501 at discounted day.

Just realised the 900 are (probably) your tier 1 units, and the 19500 are the tier 2 units (lol, I've never thoiught of them as discounted! don't put marketting ideas into supplier's heads!).

It looks pretty certain you'd be better off coming off an e7 tariff if you want to make the same usage cheaper.

Doesn't help your main problem though of your high day usage - I'd check the timeswitch controlling your underfloor heating is working correctly - 2 hours at say 4kw would only account for 8kwh per day, still leaving a large amount unaccounted for.

Phantomdog

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.
If I do have a heated swimming pool in the garden, the wife must have had it hidden under the shed
I must say I didn't realise that you pay more for day time units if you're on E7. I will do all teh checks suggested and I also have one of those OWL whatchamacallits that I must set up.
Unfortunately gas for water heating and cooking is a bit of a no go. When we moved in there was no gas in the village, so it was oil fired from what looked like an oil drum in the kitchen, that sounded like a jet engine everytime it lit up. We got rid of that ASAP and lived without heating for 9 months until gas arrived then we just had a bolier fitted for the heating and not the water.
Anyway, as you say. Sort out the electric puzzle first.

I was reading online where someone had a similar issue and it turned out a neighbour had spliced into their power supply and was using it for heated lamps to grow cannabis in their shed!! I'm pretty sure none of my neighbours looked anymore spaced out than normal though, so that's probably out

One silly question, is it possible for electricity to "leak" i.e. some short or something that wouldnt blow a fuse/breaker but through which power could be drained to say heat the earth or a wall or something ? Just a thought.