Gas bill, please can someone help me!!!

lucy_b

Hi I am really in need of some help!!

I live in an old house, 3 bedrooms and have a gas combi boiler. We have no other gas appliances, no cooker fire etc, just the boiler.

I live with my husband and 3 children. We have paid 170 a month for 2 years and last October we had a deficit and Scottish power asked us to increase our monthly payments to 250.00. We could not afford this but they would only budge 10 pound-still too high for us- so rightly or wrongly I deleted the Direct Debit and have paid 170 a month every month via internet banking. I presumed the bill would even out over the summer as speaking to family and friends we do pay a lot.


However we now have a bill which shows we now owe 1100 pounds. I have had a million discussions with scottish power over this and looking back through bills our consumption for gas is over 43000 a year. Very high. The average UK household uses 20500 (i got this info from offgem) We have an old boiler, not sure how old maybe nearly 10/11 years (its Vokera 28) but can this really consume 43000 of gas a year??

I can pay to have the meter tested but if I am wrong I have lost 120 pound. Should I accept this or contest it further. I would be really grateful for any opinion or help anyone can offer me.


Ps I am not someone who has the heating on every day all day but with the harsh winter we did have it on a lot.


Lucy:money:

Wywth

lucy_b wrote: »

Hi I am really in need of some help!!

I live in an old house, 3 bedrooms and have a gas combi boiler. We have no other gas appliances, no cooker fire etc, just the boiler.

I live with my husband and 3 children. We have paid 170 a month for 2 years and last October we had a deficit and Scottish power asked us to increase our monthly payments to 250.00. We could not afford this but they would only budge 10 pound-still too high for us- so rightly or wrongly I deleted the Direct Debit and have paid 170 a month every month via internet banking. I presumed the bill would even out over the summer as speaking to family and friends we do pay a lot.


However we now have a bill which shows we now owe 1100 pounds. I have had a million discussions with scottish power over this and looking back through bills our consumption for gas is over 43000 a year. Very high. The average UK household uses 20500 (i got this info from offgem) We have an old boiler, not sure how old maybe nearly 10/11 years (its Vokera 28) but can this really consume 43000 of gas a year??

I can pay to have the meter tested but if I am wrong I have lost 120 pound. Should I accept this or contest it further. I would be really grateful for any opinion or help anyone can offer me.


Ps I am not someone who has the heating on every day all day but with the harsh winter we did have it on a lot.


Lucy:money:

By cancelling your DD, you presumably lost any DD discount.
You may even have been moved to the suppliers standard (expensive) tariff. :eek:

Why did you think when the supplier said you needed to pay £250 a month, just paying £170 a month (£960 a year less) would even itself out over the long term? :huh:

Have you checked what you are being charged for? Are the meter readings actual and correct? Are you being billed based on the correct type of meter?

lucy_b

I know what your saying with the DD but at the time I felt I had no choice, we could not afford to have it raised by 80.00. Probably a silly thing to do but 250 a month is too much for us to pay.

We were under a tariff fixed for 2 years and this ended in june this year.

The meter readings are correct, Scottish power say it could be running fast as its a high consumption but we have to pay 120 to get it tested. My question really is over the amount we have used ? Has anyone else used this over a year with a boiler or is it worth trying to get the money to get it tested?

Thanks for the reply- its my first time posting:mad:

molerat

That use is very high but not impossible.

Are you being billed in the correct units, look at your bill and divide the kWh by the units used. If the answer is around 32 you are being billed in imperial, if around 11 then you are being billed in metric. Now check to see what is marked on the front of the meter, either cu ft for imperial or m3 for metric, does that match the calculation above ?

(Assuming a Linea 28) Your boiler is a 28kW output with an efficiency of 78% so can consume a maximum of 37kWh of gas. Take an exact meter reading down to the last number after the decimal point. Turn your boiler on to max and run it for 15 minutes measuring how long it is actually burning for in that time, it will run in bursts so you will need to add them together. Read meter again. Divide 37 by 60 then multiply by minutes burning which will give you the kWh used. Divide that number by 11.2 and that should come to around the same as the meter reading and should show if the meter is way off.

must_try_harder_2

We got a huge bill winter before last. EDF were saying we had used £250 worth of gas in 6 weeks.

I just put the heating on for an hour and took the meter reading before and after. The boiler was using a ridiculous amount of gas (and the house wasn't even warm still!). I know it is the boiler at fault and not the meter as the meter doesn't go round when the heating is off, and I have a gas fire and when I put that on the gas usage wasn't excessive.

So turns out our boiler is useless (and it is only 3 years old!) and it was costing over £1.50 for every hour we had the heating on. If yours is equally as bad (potentially worse) then it wouldn't be hard to use over £200 of gas every month.

lucy_b

Yes it seems to match. 535 divided by 48=11.14 and the meter says m3 on the front. Thats kind of what I need to know. Its an old bill so I will check the rest online-thanks.We had a new meter put in in 2010.

Everyones saying we pay a fortune just for the boiler but if it is possible, maybe we have used this much!I read online a mansion uses 28000! I have put extra blankets on all the beds, no heating for us this year!!

lucy_b

must_try_harder wrote: »

We got a huge bill winter before last. EDF were saying we had used £250 worth of gas in 6 weeks.

I just put the heating on for an hour and took the meter reading before and after. The boiler was using a ridiculous amount of gas (and the house wasn't even warm still!). I know it is the boiler at fault and not the meter as the meter doesn't go round when the heating is off, and I have a gas fire and when I put that on the gas usage wasn't excessive.

So turns out our boiler is useless (and it is only 3 years old!) and it was costing over £1.50 for every hour we had the heating on. If yours is equally as bad (potentially worse) then it wouldn't be hard to use over £200 of gas every month.

Thanks for that, this is really helping! It does make sense in that way, the boiler is old and may be using loads so we probably need a new boiler as well as 1100 to pay this bill!! Happy days. At least you have been in the same situation, family and friends say they pay 2p and have the warmest of houses!! Did you get another boiler then?

molerat

Replacing the boiler with a more efficient one is unlikely to be a major cost saving, how long will it take to recoup the £2K? cost outlay, usually between 5 and 10 years, with the added problem that newer boilers are not as reliable as old ones. Mine is 28 years old and still going strong with very little maintenance, the last breakdown repair was 10 years ago.

must_try_harder_2

lucy_b wrote: »

Thanks for that, this is really helping! It does make sense in that way, the boiler is old and may be using loads so we probably need a new boiler as well as 1100 to pay this bill!! Happy days. At least you have been in the same situation, family and friends say they pay 2p and have the warmest of houses!! Did you get another boiler then?

We stopped using the heating as much as possible and started using the fire instead. We also turned the radiators down as much as possible and turned them off completely in the rooms where they weren't essential. We have also done the extra blankets on bed things and wearing a jumper in the house.

A new boiler is still on the must-buy list though.

In our previous house our gas cost £15 a month and the house was always boiling!

closed

10 years isn't old.

take some readings 24 hours apart when the boiler isn't heating the house (ie just hot water), and when it is, and when it's doing nothing.

typical consumption figures based on median values are down to 16500kwh/pa, so check your bill is based on actuals not estimates - m3 not £.

lucy_b

see now I don't know what to think. I know what you are saying long term re paying for the boiler- but we cannot afford this gas and I will not be putting the heating on at all until it is paid. I provided a reading last week and the debt is on that reading, so the readings are correct.

I have input them in on the website a few times in the past few years. I feel I should have the meter tested just to put my mind at ease but 120 is 120 towards a boiler or the bill.

Confused!

I have loads of bills online, one is from june 29th-july 14th so 16 days and the gas charged for this is £26.38. 199.0 kwh. Obviously no heating, just shower baths.

The biggest chunk is the one from 8/1/13 to 5/4/13 which is £735.00 and 1489 kWh? Snow?!