Massive gas and electric bills!?

Joelk

Hi all, this is my first post!

I've just moved into a one bed flat in London with my girlfriend. I used to live in a shared three bed flat with two others.

Previously our electric was around £60-70 a month, gas was around £80 a month.

In my new flat, I've done a few calculations after our first week (bare in mind we're out from about 8am-7pm mon-fri at work...!)

So far after just a week, based on the daily standing charge and per unit/KwH charges our electricity is £35-40 (roughly £140-160/mo) and electricity is supposedly £125 for ONE WEEK - around £500 a month - ridiculous, I'm sure you'll agree...

In my old place we had a huge boiler, halogen lights everywhere, loads of TVs, laptops etc., tumble dryer and so on - we weren't exactly a "light usgae" household, and the bills were a lot lower.

I'm just wondering what to do now as the bills are ridiculous.

I'm with EDF on their fixed until March 2013 tariff. I was on EDF at my old house as well.

I called them and told them, they told me to take a meter reading for the next 7 days and then call them with all the readings and they will tell me if they think my meter is running fast.

I think based on how much we're using in our new place something has to be wrong. Next steps are try and get someone round to check the calibration of our meters.

I wonder though, can meters be out by as much as 100%, as I think our bills are roughly double what they should be.

Could someone be stealing my electric/gas? How could I find out/investigate?

rogerblack

Joelk wrote: »

Hi all, this is my first post!

I've just moved into a one bed flat in London with my girlfriend. I used to live in a shared three bed flat with two others.

Previously our electric was around £60-70 a month, gas was around £80 a month.

Do you have gas heating?
First - turn _everything_ off - and see if the meter stops.
Then connect a 1kw load - like a heater, and see if it goes round/flashes at the right rate.

HappyMJ

What usage figures do you get in kWh rather than £££?

Is the gas meter measuring in cubic metres or cubic feet?

Somone could be stealing electric. You can turn off your supply whilst at work and see if anyone complains.

macman

Joelk wrote: »

Hi all, this is my first post!

I've just moved into a one bed flat in London with my girlfriend. I used to live in a shared three bed flat with two others.

Previously our electric was around £60-70 a month, gas was around £80 a month.

In my new flat, I've done a few calculations after our first week (bare in mind we're out from about 8am-7pm mon-fri at work...!)

So far after just a week, based on the daily standing charge and per unit/KwH charges our electricity is £35-40 (roughly £140-160/mo) and electricity is supposedly £125 for ONE WEEK - around £500 a month - ridiculous, I'm sure you'll agree...

In my old place we had a huge boiler, halogen lights everywhere, loads of TVs, laptops etc., tumble dryer and so on - we weren't exactly a "light usgae" household, and the bills were a lot lower.

I'm just wondering what to do now as the bills are ridiculous.

I'm with EDF on their fixed until March 2013 tariff. I was on EDF at my old house as well.

I called them and told them, they told me to take a meter reading for the next 7 days and then call them with all the readings and they will tell me if they think my meter is running fast.

I think based on how much we're using in our new place something has to be wrong. Next steps are try and get someone round to check the calibration of our meters.

I wonder though, can meters be out by as much as 100%, as I think our bills are roughly double what they should be.

Could someone be stealing my electric/gas? How could I find out/investigate?

So which is it? I assume the later figure is for gas?
As stated above, you need to tell us what your actual kWh usage is on each fuel, and how you heat/hot water the flat. £'s tell us nothing.
It's assumed that you have gas CH and DHW, but if this is electric, then you must accept much higher bills, as standard rate electricity is about 3.5 times more per kWh than gas.
And if your bills are now split 2 ways instead of 3, then of course that will also push up costs. You can't compare one property to another, too many variables: boiler efficiency, insulation, etc etc.
Meters rarely go wrong, but it can happen, and invariably people jump to this conclusion when faced with high bills. But the chance of both meters misreading is almost nil. A gas meter cannot be checked on site. It will be replaced, sent for testing, and if found to be accurate then you will be charged for the meter change.

Cardew

Are you sure your initial meter reading was correct? or are you paying some of the previous occupants bill?

Joelk

Hey guys,

Thanks for the replies. Some more info below:

Gas on moving in on March 3rd @ 2.30pm: 4332.8 (m3)
Gas today March 11th at 11.30am: 4359.4 (m3)

Electric on moving in March 3rd at 2.30pm: 35955 units/KwH
Electric today, March 11 @ 11.30am: 36333 units/KwH

All meter readings have been taken by myself.

In terms of bills being split more ways before and thus pushing up bills, that's not the case as I was talking about the total bills, before they were split.

Heating & hot water: Gas Combi Boiler. Heating on about 2 hours in morning, 5 hours at night mon-sun. Two 10 minute showers a day.

Electric: standard stuff - LED TV/wireless router/halogen lights (not the best but we had these at our own place)/washing machine.

I will try turning off ALL electric appliances at the main fuse box later today for a full hour and see what the meter goes up by. I tried this yesterday and the aluminium disk continued to rotate quite quickly... Does this mean one of a) the meter is broke or b) someone is "stealing" my electricity from between the meter and the fuse box?

Thanks for all your help and comments !

notbritishgas

Joelk wrote: »

Hey guys,

Thanks for the replies. Some more info below:

Gas on moving in on March 3rd @ 2.30pm: 4332.8 (m3)
Gas today March 11th at 11.30am: 4359.4 (m3)

Electric on moving in March 3rd at 2.30pm: 35955 units/KwH
Electric today, March 11 @ 11.30am: 36333 units/KwH

All meter readings have been taken by myself.

In terms of bills being split more ways before and thus pushing up bills, that's not the case as I was talking about the total bills, before they were split.

Heating & hot water: Gas Combi Boiler. Heating on about 2 hours in morning, 5 hours at night mon-sun. Two 10 minute showers a day.

Electric: standard stuff - LED TV/wireless router/halogen lights (not the best but we had these at our own place)/washing machine.

I will try turning off ALL electric appliances at the main fuse box later today for a full hour and see what the meter goes up by. I tried this yesterday and the aluminium disk continued to rotate quite quickly... Does this mean one of a) the meter is broke or b) someone is "stealing" my electricity from between the meter and the fuse box?

Thanks for all your help and comments !

Well firstly I think you have miscalculated your gas. I make it 26.6 Cu m which is about 297 kwh and if we take a typical kwh price of 4p that is about £11.88 for just over a week, with the heating still going that is quite cheap.

However all is not rosy because your electric is very high, 378 kwh in just over a week costing I would say about £45, I would say for someone with gas heating you should be no more than 100 kwh, I manage about 65kwh per week.

Can you recheck the readings, also start taking daily readings to see if you are really using that amount.

Just reread your post and see the meter still rotates when all is off. If you switch the main switch on the consumer unit off then that should not happen. Can you check the tails from the meter, are there only one set that goes straight to the consumer unit?

Another edit: when you did your workings out you did not use the Tier 1 unit rates did you?

Joelk

Thanks for your reply.

In my calculations I used the unit prices EDF supplied me:

Daily standing charge Gas: 23.1p
Daily standing charge Electric: 22.05p

Per KwH charge gas: 3.760p (I was told to x12 my cubic metres to get KwH from the m3)
Per KwH charge electric: 11.27p

What are tier 1 charges?

I just popped out to Tesco as well, turned off everything whilst I was out by flicking off the "main" switch on my fuse box. Meter reading went from 36346.7 to 36348.2 in about 20-30mins. Clearly something here isn't quite right..!

Just checked the cables coming from the meter. There are six cables. Two that are black and look rather old - potentially the inputs.

Then there are four others. Two black, which go to my fuse box and then two others - one red one blue (positive and negative) that go off somewhere else.

Potentially herein the issue lies - is someone stealing my electricity...?

Perhaps the next best step is a message to my landlord...?

t0rt0ise

Sounds like you got the decimal point in the wrong place for the gas calculation and got £125 instead of £12.50

I only point that out because it's useful to know what went wrong for the next time.

HappyMJ

Joelk wrote: »

Thanks for your reply.

In my calculations I used the unit prices EDF supplied me:

Daily standing charge Gas: 23.1p
Daily standing charge Electric: 22.05p

Per KwH charge gas: 3.760p (I was told to x12 my cubic metres to get KwH from the m3)
Per KwH charge electric: 11.27p

What are tier 1 charges?

I just popped out to Tesco as well, turned off everything whilst I was out by flicking off the "main" switch on my fuse box. Meter reading went from 36346.7 to 36348.2 in about 20-30mins. Clearly something here isn't quite right..!

Just checked the cables coming from the meter. There are six cables. Two that are black and look rather old - potentially the inputs.

Then there are four others. Two black, which go to my fuse box and then two others - one red one blue (positive and negative) that go off somewhere else.

Potentially herein the issue lies - is someone stealing my electricity...?

Perhaps the next best step is a message to my landlord...?

I don't suppose you have a 3kWh immersion heater heating the water in your hot water cylinder and that was left on when you tripped the other one (possibly the RCD switch). It shouldn't be running constantly unless you have a leak and the water is running cold. It also shouldn't be used at all with a gas boiler heating the water for less cost.

Do you have another mains switch in the meter cupboard maybe before the meter that could be switched off for a half hour?

Joelk

Thanks for the help guys!

There are no other fuse boxes and we don't have an immersion heater.

Whoops on the decimal point - at least lets me know the gas isn't the problem.

I do have a feeling someone else may be enjoying free electricity at my expense, as the blue and red cables I spoke about in my last post bypass my fuse box and disappear off into the floorboards above.

Is there anywhere I can look to see what rights I have in a rented property if I think my electric is being stolen?