Keeping the house warm is costing a fortune

BorgleBoo

pothole50 wrote: »

£190 a month is expensive, what you need to know is how to slice it more economically.

But as has been established, there is no way to "slice" it more economically. Scottish Hydro already slice it for me with heating and water to one meter, and everything else to the other.

The only way to reduce my bills is to use less. In previous winters we have got the monthly bill down under £140 in the winter by having the temperature down around 15 degrees Celsius.

With a newborn in the house I will not be doing that this year. Even with the prices I am paying the inside of the house still only tends to run around 18 degrees Celsius, and a little warmer in the living room.

It's still not roasting by anyone's standards.

jalexa

BorgleBoo wrote: »

I would prefer my winter electricity costs to not be £190 a month.

However, it seems like that is par for the course on a 3 bedroom house with electric heating in winter.

Well at the heating unit price you are paying that represents a winter consumption of about 70kWhr/day. That is quite a generous consumption and if that is only giving you around 18deg, I would say that indicates a poor standard of insulation.

But if "most of your panel heaters are permanently off at the wall" then the bulk of your heating load must be your storage heaters. Given they use the same price electricity as the panel heaters it would make more sense to increase panel heater use and decrease storage heater use (but note that with THTC you need to maintain a certain minimum storage heating use).

This is (and always was) a matter for the HA, not Hydro-Electric.

grahamc2003

I wish I could get day rate heating for 8p/kWh!

As Jalexa said above (and what a help he/she has been on this thread), it's pretty clear that the cheapest way of using your heating system is to simply forget about the storage heaters, and use the panel heaters when needed. You have to bear in mind the minimum storage heater use though - looks like getting to know how much that is would be an ordeal in itself, probably beyond any helpcentre staff.

You'd alter the temperature profile of your rooms - it would be colder at night and hopefully warm enough during the times you actually need the rooms warm. If the panel heaters themselves don't have enough power to heat the rooms when required, then you may be forced into using storage heaters. Imv, the best way of optimising the decreased use of the stoarge heaters would be the opposite of how you use them now - i.e. I would turn the switch off (or on but the input set very low) at night, and on during the day (again, to avoid heating at night when heating isn't needed, or needed less).

BorgleBoo

The attic has several feet of insulation in it, however the double glazing is over 20 years old and truthfully I don't believe the exterior walls to be especially well insulated. They are often cold to the touch. The front door is also rather draughty.

The HA have no interest in improving these things.

By my reckoning my consumption at the moment is around 63kwh per day, and about 50kwh of that is devoted to running the immersion and storage heaters with 13kwh devoted to everything else. This level of consumption is what the storage heaters do all by themselves. With THTC I am not in control of when they come on and for how long, beyond manually switching them off at the wall. It is just as well I don't follow the HA's advice and leave them all on permanently. I'd be running a £350 bill a month easy.

As to concentrating the heating during the day, this presents its own problems. Our younger children will often wake up crying if the night time temperature drops too far. Without running a couple of storage heaters the temperature around 7am has frequently dropped to around 13 degrees C at this time of year.

Concerning increasing panel heater usage, we have found them very, very expensive in the past which is why we "retired" them. Even though they are charged at the higher rate we've found plug-in oil heaters much cheaper and more effective than the panel heaters. The good thing about oil heaters is they continue radiating heat for a good while after you switch them off, so even though they cost twice as much to run you get at least twice as much heat from them. Wall mounted oil heaters in each room instead of panel and storage heaters would have been much better I think.

I've often wondered about HA's installing electric heating in their properties. The reason they do this is of course it is the cheapest system to install. As soon as the main electrical loop is in, you can just bung em in and away you go. They are however one of the most expensive systems to run, especially in a cold climate like the NE. Given that HA tenants tend to be at the bottom end of the income scale this at best shows a lack of concern for their tenants and at worst utter contempt.

In their latest newsletter they reminded tenants that they absolutely don't want them using bottled gas heaters in their properties.

Gee, I wonder what might have driven some tenants to that?

grahamc2003

BorgleBoo wrote: »

Gee, I wonder what might have driven some tenants to that?

Probably (understandable) ignorance of how to operate the heating system on a quite complex, non-obvious tariff.

But you have had good advice on how to operate it efficiently, and yet seem to simply ignore it and simply carry on as normal.

A night time room temperature below 13C (or even well below) won't harm your kids. Keeping the rooms too warm will, in my view (but I'm not an expert on health issues, just my experience of bringing up my very fit and healthy kids in a relatively coolish environment, while most of their school mates have asthma and almost constant colds.

Your views on panel heaters v oil heaters are very far from the actual situation, let alone when you have cheap electricity to drive your panel heaters and very expensive electricity to drive your oil heaters, but I'll leave others to explain that.

snowcat53

BorgleBoo wrote: »

The attic has several feet of insulation in it,

Several feet? This seems unlikely. What sort of insulation?

I find it hard to credit that a truly well insulated house would cool down overnight by the amount you suggest.

HappyMJ

grahamc2003 wrote: »

A night time room temperature below 13C (or even well below) won't harm your kids. Keeping the rooms too warm will, in my view (but I'm not an expert on health issues, just my experience of bringing up my very fit and healthy kids in a relatively coolish environment, while most of their school mates have asthma and almost constant colds.

They did mention they had a newborn. The NHS recommend a room temperature of somewhere between 16 and 20 at all times and the thermostat should be set at 18 degrees for all the rooms that a baby occupies. Not many people I know set the thermostat to 18 they'll go for much higher.

A night time bedroom temperature of 13 is OK for toddlers and above and I must admit I do wake up when the room temperature drops below 8 and the electric blanket is not on. It is a bit cold. In winter I'll set the heating thermostat to 12 at night. It's coolish but that's warm enough for me at night.

BorgleBoo

There seems to be a lot of incredulity as to my situation. I'm only telling you what I have observed.

The facts of the matter are my bills are running close to 50 quid a week, and that my house is still cold.

Why this should offend people so much is beyond me.

Now that I understand the way in which my tariff works then perhaps I can take steps to try and reduce my bill somewhat. Maybe I'll even rearrange the furniture to bring the panel heaters back online, although as I've said we found them expensive in the past.

None of that changes the fact that this house has a patently lousy heating system installed if every other heater comes with the warning "You can't use that one, it's too expensive". Something is wrong there.

I'm not even asking for it to be cheap. I'd gladly pay £150 a month in the winter if I could have a house that was 18C+ in every room.

But to pay £190 a month and still need to put 3 blankets on the kids beds - well I reckon someone somewhere is taking the mick.

jalexa

BorgleBoo wrote: »

There seems to be a lot of incredulity as to my situation..

There is indeed because most people who have contributed in good faith understand that 1kWhr of electrical energy consumed in any type of heater delivers exactly 1kWhr of heat.

While I have (AFAIAA) correctly stated the THTC wiring specification, have you absolutely satisfied yourself that the panel heaters are being registered on the heating meter?

With a positive outlook you could do a lot more. For example, if the HA will not draught-proof your front door, self-adhesive sealing strip only costs a few pounds. Look out for it on special offer from time to time at Lidl. Ask yourself who would benefit (I mean save) from modest self-help.

I accept that you are not happy with your heating system lot but for some of the points you report (as a fact) to be true, the overall insulation level of the property must be inadequate. The HA may well have a lack of funding but I do not believe they don't have access to funding streams to improve inadequate insulation. Perhaps its time to "name and shame" as one way of "encouraging" them to shape-up their energy efficiency. Or possibly engage your MSP to the problem.

BTW are you in an area where -10deg days occur more than a few days per year?

BorgleBoo

Jalexa, I think you were responding to my previous post pre-edit. I tried to make it sound less indignant

As to the front door most of the draught comes right through the letter box, which as far as I can tell is not able to be fitted with those hairy insulator things. Last winter we stuffed a scarf in it, although that did interfere with our mail! I'll look into that tape for the draught coming around the sides. Truthfully I think houses at this latitude could really do with entrance vestibules. You open the door and all of the heat is sucked out of the hallway.

The temperatures in the previous 2 winters have been down close to -10 for several weeks of the year.

As to "naming and shaming", frankly we're grateful to finally have a property where all our neighbours are not junkies. All of our previous tenancies were of this sort.

I just wish the house were not so bloody cold.