Advice needed - extremely high gas bill

Gopes

Folks,
We have just received our quarterly gas bill from Southern Electric, which is an eye-watering £690!!!

Our house is a (large) 3 bedroom Victorian end of terrace. It is double-glazed throughout, and has new loft-insulation installed. The property actually has two boilers - an old Brittony IIT for hot water and a Glow-worm boiler for central heating)

Central heating is on for about 3 hours in the morning and 5 hours in the evening. The thermostat is set between 18 and 20 C, which feels ok. We have an electric stove, so gas only used for heating and hot water.

By way of background, we moved in to our house on 30 October 2012. The Gas Meter reading at the time was 3528 m3. In early December, we received an (estimated) bill of £72, which seemed reasonable. The gas man came last week, to take a reading, which came in at 5015 m3, resulting in a bill of £690... So in total, since 30 October (4.5 months), we have consumed c1500m3 of gas, at an aggregate cost of nearly £800!!!

I also had a gas technician in just before Christmas to cap off a gas pipe, and as part of that he did a test to ensure there were no gas leaks (there had been a very slight leak previously).

Does that bill seem reasonable? Could there be a fault with the meter? I have read on the internet that it is extremely rare for a meter to be faulty, but almost £200 per month is a bit eye-watering - even if the winter has been cold? It is not like we are keeping the house baking hot 24/7.

Whilst we are at it, the aggregate Electricity bill for the same period comes to £300 (c2000KWh) - does that seem reasonable for 4.5 months?

I realise that we should probably shop around, to get the best deal (something we haven't yet done), but I just want to establish whether the actual consumption over the 4.5 month period (1500m3 of gas and 2000 KWh of electricity) seems unfeasibly high, and hence worth getting an engineer to check meters, etc.

Apologies for seemingly naive question - we have always lived previously in house-shares, where somebody else sorted out the bills (and we would then pay our proportion).

Cheers
Gopes

northernsoul

Just for comparison, i used 938m3 over the same period to heat a small 3 bed terrace house. At my unit rate thats approx £400. So i would say, for a large house its probably not unusual
My electricity (3 people) was in the same period was 2100Kwh or about £280 (i think)

Fire_Fox

Sound plausible. End terrace has more outside walls than mid terrace or flat.

Eight hours of heating a day is loads, do you need three hours in the morning? Many people manage fine with one hour if they are off to work, two if a couple don't start at the same time. Where is the room thermostat located? If it's in cool room like the hall you probably have your living areas way over 20C which is pretty warm, you could save quite a bit by maintaining the living areas at 18-20C and wearing another layer. Every 1C really can make a serious dent in on your bills.

How are your showers/ baths heated, are they drawn from the gas hot water or do you have an electric power shower? Highly recommend reading the meters regularly, especially whenever you get an estimated bill.