Dual Fuel - £48 per month

50Twuncle

Just had our fuel costs lowered by Scottish Power by £10 per month - to a reasonable £48 per month
This was on account of being in credit
We live in a 3 bed semi in SW England - and use gas for water heating, and have 2 wall fires as well as full GCH

I fail to understand how they can say that the average user pays £100+ per month.
The house is well insulated and has double glazing - and we don't get cold (if it is cold - we put the heating on) - we both have hot showers daily too....

DUTR

That's good going, I live on my own and although I have an old boiler system, I would be hard pressed to get it down to those sort of levels that you are paying, some of my colleagues are pying near £200 per month

50Twuncle

DUTR wrote: »

That's good going, I live on my own and although I have an old boiler system, I would be hard pressed to get it down to those sort of levels that you are paying, some of my colleagues are pying near £200 per month

Exactly - how do they run their central heating - is it just turned on in October and off again in April - with no controller or thermostat ?
Sometimes I think that they do......
We have a new boiler - a condenser Worcester - but it is used when needed - so how why do some people pay so much ?

jackieb

I am in a 4 bedroomed detached house in Scotland. I pay about £220 a month for both gas and electric - although I did get back an overpayment of £400 (£200 each from the gas and electricity) in March this year, yet they haven't taken down my direct debits at all. I haven't been able to get on to British Gas website to give my readings or read my bill for about 2 months now - although i've just reported it today.

Our hot water is on for 2 hours a day. Our heating has been on for about 5 hours in total this summer. We don't use a tumble dryer, but my washer is on a lot and we have a few tv's, computers, game consoles etc. Got the loft insulated last September and have needed on the heating a lot less since.

During the winter the heating is on the timer - 2 hours in the morning and 5 in the evening, but I do turn it on or off if it's needed more or less - definitely not left on 24/7. The bath is never used - only showers for us, 5 of us in the house. We never use the gas fire in the living room. We have double glazing, and we have a portable gas fire for when it's especially cold in the kitchen (large kitchen, small radiator). Last year was mild and we only used one canister of calor gas, which cost about £30 - the year before we used about 3.

50Twuncle

jackieb wrote: »

I am in a 4 bedroomed detached house. I pay about £220 a month for both gas and electric - although I did get back an overpayment of £400 (£200 each from the gas and electricity) in March this year, yet they haven't taken down my direct debits at all. I haven't been able to get on to British Gas website to give my readings or read my bill for about 2 months now - although i've just reported it today.

Our hot water is on for 2 hours a day. Our heating has been on for about 5 hours in total this summer. We don't use a tumble dryer, but my washer is on a lot and we have a few tv's, computers, game consoles etc. Got the loft insulated last September and have needed on the heating a lot less since.

£220 per month ?
That is ridiculous - You obviously use an immersion heater for hot water - they are expensive to run but not £220 worth
I would expect perhaps half this amount
Are you sure that your neighbours are not nicking buckets of juice ?

jackieb

We use the gas boiler to heat the water.

50Twuncle

jackieb wrote: »

We use the gas boiler to heat the water.

So let me get this right ...
You heat your water up for 2 hours per day - and store this hot water in a tank (so that it can cool down slowly during the day) - rather than using a combi boiler that heats your water on demand

I think that that's where your problem lies ...
You need to spend about £1500 on a replacement boiler....
this will save money in the long run.

macman

21Twinkle wrote: »

Just had our fuel costs lowered by Scottish Power by £10 per month - to a reasonable £48 per month
This was on account of being in credit
We live in a 3 bed semi in SW England - and use gas for water heating, and have 2 wall fires as well as full GCH

I fail to understand how they can say that the average user pays £100+ per month.
The house is well insulated and has double glazing - and we don't get cold (if it is cold - we put the heating on) - we both have hot showers daily too....

But if you are in credit, then your new DD of £48 does not reflect your actual average monthly consumption,
What matters is your kWh usage, not what arbitrary level your DD is set at. Your consumption may well be costing £58pm, but your DD is lower because you have built up some excess credit.
The 'average' consumer lives in a less well insulated property than yourselves.

50Twuncle

We started on no credit/debt - therefore over the long term (2 years) - our average bill is £38 (across all seasons) - so the fact that we are now £100 in credit is reflected by the reduced average bill !!
We only have "normal" cavity wall & loft insulation and double glazing !!

jackieb

21Twinkle wrote: »

So let me get this right ...
You heat your water up for 2 hours per day - and store this hot water in a tank (so that it can cool down slowly during the day) - rather than using a combi boiler that heats your water on demand

I think that that's where your problem lies ...
You need to spend about £1500 on a replacement boiler....
this will save money in the long run.

The boiler isn't that old (5yrs) and the plumber who services it says it's a good one. Hardly worth swapping over when it's only heating the water 2 hours a day - and we very rarely run out of hot water - the tank is well insulated.

I do think we're using less than we used to - hence the £400 overpayment we got back. BG said that if we'd left it to run until the next review they estimated we would have got £600 back - but it hasn't been updated yet, and I want to put in readings in as I haven't put one in since March, but not having much joy getting the bills to load online.

The reason our direct debits are so high isn't because we're paying arrears or anything - we've paid by direct debit for over 10 years and never had a missed payment.

macman

21Twinkle wrote: »

We started on no credit/debt - therefore over the long term (2 years) - our average bill is £38 (across all seasons) - so the fact that we are now £100 in credit is reflected by the reduced average bill !!
We only have "normal" cavity wall & loft insulation and double glazing !!

An account should be in credit by at least £100 at the height of 'summer' (looks out window at the driving rain...).
If you go into the heating season in October without that credit, then you'll be in debt by the end of winter, which will result in a steep DD increase at the catch up point.
The point I was making is that there is no automatic correlation between consumption and DD setting. To have a meaningful discussion, you need to give your annual kWh consumption, not your DD monthly amount.