Electricity costing a fortune!!!

bimbo82

Hi

We currently live in privately rented accommodation in the middle of no where and as such we have no gas none of the houses in our road they have oild filled GCH. So we have those nasty electric storage heaters.

Now the problem I have is that there was a mix up between us & Scottish Power when we first moved in and as such didn't pay any electricity for about a year so we had a hefty bill of over £1,000 which we came to an arrangement with about settling. So currently we are paying £221.00 per month that is for the old stuff plus new bills.

Now I have just had to give a meter readings and thank god our bill was rather small as its summer so was £237.89 as oppose to £600 plus per quarter. My main problem is that we are still £936.70 in debit (including this bill) and I just feel like we are never going to clear this debt and just have our usual bills quarterly. £221 is only just managable and last quarter they wanted to increase it to over £300 per month which we just cannot afford.

I guess my question is does anyone have any thoughts/recommendations on how I can sort this?

We have now purchased a log burner for our living room in hope this will aid with heating the house so that we do not need the electric heaters on all the time as they are what drains the electiricity.

Thanks for reading.

bob_bank_spanker

bimbo82 wrote: »

Hi

We currently live in privately rented accommodation in the middle of no where and as such we have no gas none of the houses in our road they have oild filled GCH. So we have those nasty electric storage heaters.

Now the problem I have is that there was a mix up between us & Scottish Power when we first moved in and as such didn't pay any electricity for about a year so we had a hefty bill of over £1,000 which we came to an arrangement with about settling. So currently we are paying £221.00 per month that is for the old stuff plus new bills.

Now I have just had to give a meter readings and thank god our bill was rather small as its summer so was £237.89 as oppose to £600 plus per quarter. My main problem is that we are still £936.70 in debit (including this bill) and I just feel like we are never going to clear this debt and just have our usual bills quarterly. £221 is only just managable and last quarter they wanted to increase it to over £300 per month which we just cannot afford.

I guess my question is does anyone have any thoughts/recommendations on how I can sort this?

We have now purchased a log burner for our living room in hope this will aid with heating the house so that we do not need the electric heaters on all the time as they are what drains the electiricity.

Thanks for reading.

Why do you want your bills quarterly? It's cheaper to pay by MDD, you will be throwing money away by doing that.

What happened to the money for a year that should have being going on bills?

The average payment in the UK for energy is approx £110 a month (excluding paying off debts), without getting detailed consumption info it's impossible to be exact, but it appears from the info given so far that you fit into this category.

HappyMJ

bob_bank_spanker wrote: »

Why do you want your bills quarterly? It's cheaper to pay by MDD, you will be throwing money away by doing that.

What happened to the money for a year that should have being going on bills?

The average payment in the UK for energy is approx £110 a month (excluding paying off debts), without getting detailed consumption info it's impossible to be exact, but it appears from the info given so far that you fit into this category.

The average home being gas and electric. An all electric property will cost more. Depending on how many storage heaters the OP has and how many hours they use a convector heater will determine the size of the bill £150-£200 in my opinion would be closer to average.

OP you will clear it eventually don't worry if it never looks like it's going to be cleared low usage over summer will help you catch up.....and try and use the heating less this winter.

victor2

£221 per month is £663 per quarter, so substantially more than your summer bills and possibly a bit more than even your winter bills. If the "£600 plus" refers to last winter, it was particularly harsh, so hopefully won't be as bad this year.
You should therefore clear the debt (possibly in a year) at the current payment level. Also make sure you are on the best tariff for your circumstances with SP. You can't switch to another provider with such a debt, but there should be no problem switching tariffs within SP. Look online to see what the best SP tariff should be for you and if you're not on it already, call their customer services to see if you can move over to it without incurring any sort of penalty.

bimbo82

bob bank spanker I am not sure asking what happened to the money is realy relevant and quite frankly is none of your business.

I never moaned about the debt I am paying it and appreciate it was my fault there were many factors involved in this not everything is black & white.

I would love to use the heaters less this winter, lets hope we don't get -15 which we had last winter. We have done things over the summer to try and help improve the situation, we have had a new back door fitted, we have had a log burner installed instead of the open fire all in an attempt to keep our old house warm this winter.

I will just keep paying and hope that the amount reduces over these remaining summer months.

Thanks

lstar337

Bimbo82, do you mind giving some more detailed info about your heaters (location, size, type), along with yhow you heat your water, and some of your other appliances?

This will help us to give some advice on how you can try and reduce your consumption.

I take it you have made sure you are on an economy 7 type tariff?

Wywth

bimbo82 wrote: »

Hi

We currently live in privately rented accommodation in the middle of no where and as such we have no gas none of the houses in our road they have oild filled GCH. So we have those nasty electric storage heaters.

Now the problem I have is that there was a mix up between us & Scottish Power when we first moved in and as such didn't pay any electricity for about a year so we had a hefty bill of over £1,000 which we came to an arrangement with about settling. So currently we are paying £221.00 per month that is for the old stuff plus new bills.

Now I have just had to give a meter readings and thank god our bill was rather small as its summer so was £237.89 as oppose to £600 plus per quarter. My main problem is that we are still £936.70 in debit (including this bill) and I just feel like we are never going to clear this debt and just have our usual bills quarterly. £221 is only just managable and last quarter they wanted to increase it to over £300 per month which we just cannot afford.

I guess my question is does anyone have any thoughts/recommendations on how I can sort this?

We have now purchased a log burner for our living room in hope this will aid with heating the house so that we do not need the electric heaters on all the time as they are what drains the electiricity.

Thanks for reading.

Post deleted. I see the OP has already abused those trying to help :cool:

SuiDreams

As a previous poster said check your on the cheapest tarriff for you with Scottish Power. Look at where you use the rest of your electric as well, can you cut down there are well? Lots of small changes can add up. Assuming your on economy 7 rate can you use other appliances (washer/dryer etc) at the cheaper rate?

Have you looked at the energy saving trust website they list a lot of small changes that will save you money.

bimbo82

What is OP???? Sorry I am new to this

We currently have 6 electric storage heaters of varying sizes to be honest. BAsically 1 in each room not that they are particular good. We have an emersion heater which we have on a timer to heat the water which is only twice a day, morning & evening.

I already go round turning everything off at the plug when we are not using it so not sure what else I can do.

Not sure about the economy 7 rate thing I will need to check that out - thanks.

HappyMJ

bimbo82 wrote: »

What is OP???? Sorry I am new to this

We currently have 6 electric storage heaters of varying sizes to be honest. BAsically 1 in each room not that they are particular good. We have an emersion heater which we have on a timer to heat the water which is only twice a day, morning & evening.

I already go round turning everything off at the plug when we are not using it so not sure what else I can do.

Not sure about the economy 7 rate thing I will need to check that out - thanks.

You are the OP...the Original Poster...lol..you'll get used to all these acronyms soon.

You ave 6 storage heaters...right..that's too many. You DO NOT need them in the bedrooms so turn them all off. The bedrooms are unoccupied during the day and in the evening it's cheaper to use a convector heater for half an hour to take the chill off than have a small amount of remaining heat from the storage heater. You can leave the convector heater or an oil filled heater on low all night. It'll be cheap to run as it'll mostly use the E7 hours.

The immersion heater should only be timed to run during the 7 hours at night usually sometime between midnight and 7am. Your area may be slightly different check your meter...the supplier may not even know your hours as all areas are different.

With your storage heaters do you have them set correctly. The output should be set to the minimum setting all the time. Then when you are in the room you turn them up and more heat will be released..wen you leave the room you turn the output right down.

Do you use any convector, oil filled, halogen or bar heaters around the house? They can be expensive but used for up to an hour a day it's cheaper than a whole night of storage heating when you may not be able to use the heat.

Any storage heaters in the hall? Turn them off..not needed...close the door to the lounge and keep the heat in. If you have thick curtains keep them closed as much as possible. Remember to air the house out every now and again.

bimbo82

Oh thanks!!!!! LOL!

Right the problem is that the house is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO cold! We are doing all we can to improve it and make it warmer. We found out last year that the extension part of the loft had not a shred of insulation in it, so my husband made a loft hatch and we filled it with that! We had an internal door as a back door which has now been replaced. But I still think it is going to be cold as I don't think it has any cavity wall insulation! The hallway does need the heater as the front porch is poorly built and there is like a gale forced wind that comes through there in winter and at times it was colder in our hallway than outside. Our dining room and bedroom both have wooden floorboards which are really gappy and let cold air up which is why we have them. It is just so hard.

Yes we do have them on the correct settings one of our electrician friends showed us how to use them. Obviously we have had all the heaters turned off since the weather got warmer in June time which is why our bill is reasonable this month.

Sorry I seem to have just thrown negative comments in to all your fantastic advice, I didn't mean to x