Cost of Biomass heating

tdp2012

Hi all

I wonder if anyone could share some advice with me on the following.

I rent a cottage (3 bedroom) on a farm and the landlord has recently installed a Biomass heating system that serves all the cottages on their farm. We used to be on Oil central heating, so imagined that our costs would be considerably less once going onto this new system. We have just had our first bill from the landlord which states the following:

4793Kwh @ 5.5p per Kwhr = £263.61!!

This figure is for one calendar month of use, which to me seems very high. Im not really disputing the charge per Kwh as after a bit of searching it seems a fair rate, but to me the total Kwh used in a month seems very high. Ive checked the meter and readings are correct. Also my neighbour has been charged for approx 5000 kwh too. We have a timer to control our use and typically we only use heating for about 8-10 hours a day as the heating is off when we are at work etc. Since getting this bill i have monitored useage on a daily basis and it is costing me about £1.00 per hour to heat my house. Seems extortionate to me!

Anyone had similar issues or can offer any advice before i approach landlord?

P.S there has been no contracts etc discussed before moving onto system and we were just hit with bill.

Thanks in advance

Swipe

That is horrendous. You need to either turn the heating down or have it timed to come on less. What temps are you heating the house to? At that cost I'd try 19C in the living room and 16C for the rest of the house. That should lower the bill significantly.

grahamc2003

Even worse than horrendous when you consider the farmer is also almost certainly getting a very large rhi payment, which at least covers the fuel costs. Almost certainly metered too - so the more the op uses, the more the farmer gets! Certainly beats growing food I expect!

tdp2012

Thanks for replies guys!

Regarding temp, the thermostat/timer we have been supplied with is set to 20.5 deg and 17.0 deg (ie when switched on the heating will stop once at 20.5 and when off it will turn on if temp drops below 17.0) we have timer set to come on from 4.30 to 9pm at night then 4am to 6.30 in morning. Rest of time it is off. Have basically had it on this setting since day one (bar a few days). Someone else said to me that to use that many kwh in a month I would have to have the heating on pretty much 24/7 full blast all months with windows open.