Energy bill spiralling out of control - help!

Lilly3012

I hope anyone can help! Our energy bill has been spiralling out of control during the last year or so. We have just received our new bill and are now due to pay £193 a month - £60 more than before! - which we think is ridiculous and something must be seriously wrong.

We have checked all the metre readings (my OH went as far as reading them on a daily basis for a couple of months to make sure they are correct) and yes, they are fine so there is no fault on our supplier's side.

But how can we use that much energy? We are both working all day and during the day everything is switched off. We make sure to close the doors when we are at home so not to waste energy, we don't have a tumble drier or other high energy using appliances, and we are energy wise in general (e.g. TV or computers not on standby but switched off etc).

We DO have ceiling heating though which we suspect uses a lot (and wastes a lot) but as we had this all the time and haven't changed anything recently we still can't explain what is happening. It feels like someone is using energy on our behalf but how could they? We live in a terraced house in a quiet courtyard are, on our own with no tennants etc, and our metre (which is outside) looks fine and if anyone tampered with it we would certainly notice.

We also suspect our windows might have detoriated over the years as we don't have proper double glazing, just a cheapish "sort-of" double glazing and wooden frames, and we can feel a hell of a draft coming through these.

Or is it just the cost that have rocketed up sky high? Or are we just getting paranoid?

Any clue would be highly appreciated :-)

Lilly and Andrew

worried_jim

Start using http://imeasure.org.uk/ to record your weekly usage, then compare it against properties of a similar size. Dose sound expensive though.

Prices have certainly gone up. I have four years worth of weekly records now and I have gone from paying £36 all in a month 10 years ago to £76 now for the same usage.

macman

What you pay per month tell us nothing about your actual energy consumption. Post your annual kWh figures if you want meaningful advice.And advise how the property is heated and hot watered, and what tariff you are on.
You can tell quite easily if it's prices or usage that are pushing your bills up-just compare your quarterly or annual usage year on year.