Huge £467 per month gas bill ??

moneyworrier_3

Hi, we have recently moved to a new house and until 6 weeks ago had no central heating. The first two weeks of having heating and hot water gave us a whopping gas bill of £220, we put it down to installation or something and paid and updated the meter readings. I then sent another meter reading this month and the bill has now been calculated as £467.

It is a large edwardian house, 5 bed and three floors, single glazed apart form the top floor. We do not use the top floor and have rads turned off. Thermostat is set to 19, each rad has TRV which are tweaked to keep rooms at a sinsible temp. We use coal fire in the living room and maybe have 1 1/2 baths a day on average. The heating is on for 8 hrs a day. ( I'm at home with the kids every day)

We are just in shock at how much the bill is - I mean I know there is lots we can do to reduce the bills - we've not been very frugal tbh. But this is three times what we estimated the bill to be on running this kind of house when we were running budget planners before moving. At this rate we'll have to seriously consider if we can stay here long term as fuel bills are just going to get higher!

The house is a project and installing one floor of windows, fixing the roof, and replacing the boiler has just about emptied our savings - the plan was to save as quickly as possible to replace the other windows but bills like this are seriously damaging our ability to save:(

have checked meter readings and calculations on bill - all looks good. I guess my question is... can one brand new worcester bosch greenline 30 cdi boiler possible cost £467 a month to run?

Strebor

Make sure the volume units on the meter are the same as the bill. If the meter has m3 and the bill has ft3, then the bill would be about 3 times higher than it should be.

Don't know why this sort of mistake happens, but it happened to me when I switched to npower, and they were awful and didn't correct it properly. I switched away and then it happened again, but first utility corrected it in a couple of months or so, but still could not correct bills, just added credit.

Not sure whether that is reasonable gas usage for your property, so can't comment.

moneyworrier_3

Thanks strebor I've checked that and both seem to be in m3 so both metric.

Moomum

Sounds like it might be right, we have a four bed Victorian, sash windows, large rooms. We have heating on 5-10am and then again 5-10 pm. We pay about £3.5 k a year for gas.

pleasedelete

My house is 6 bed edwardian- 3 storey. I also have a gas aga. £340 gas and electric combined. Was £400 until I had loft insulated. My house is rarely really hot just mildly warm! We have 2 boilers which probably doesnt help- each 20 years old. Had a quote to replace and the BG guy was a bit stumped as the predicted savings were tiny- they say the new boiler will pay for itself- ours wouldn't in 20 years!

We heat about 5 hours a day maybe-no more. We turn boiler off on 1st April until 1st October- use immersion for water. In those months it would be very rare for me to relent and put the heating on

Turn boiler down (what is it running at?). Ours were set to 9 when we moved in - turning them to 7 saved about £500 a year. Is your boiler doing water- maybe immersion will be cheaper.

CKhalvashi

Ours is about £380 a month with various insulation for combined gas/elec for a 5 bed 1 reception, plus 50ft kitchen/dining room, so it (unfortunately for you) sounds like it could be right.

CK

I_have_spoken

Could the boiler be undersized?

Biggles

Sounds about right for a large house in the winter. Don't forget it will be much less in the summer.

aqua111

Wow!!!!!!
Reading this post in my small but cosy 2 bed semi I would have to find a warm building to use during the day!!
I am so lucky!!!

pawlala

aqua111 wrote: »

I am so lucky!!!

Well done you. But this thread is about a large 5-bed Edwardian house, not a small 2-bed semi detached.

Cardew

pleasedelete wrote: »

Turn boiler down (what is it running at?). Ours were set to 9 when we moved in - turning them to 7 saved about £500 a year. Is your boiler doing water- maybe immersion will be cheaper.

Turning the boiler* down on your 20 year old boilers(i.e. the water temperature for CH,) shouldn't make any difference to heating costs.


Hotter water to the radiators, heats the house quicker and the trvs/wall thermostat will cut in earlier. So the boiler will use more gas but for a shorter period - 'swings and roundabouts.' Although difficult to quantify some maintain that boilers are marginally more efficient operating at higher water temperatures.


* Modern condensing boilers, like the OP has installed, will benefit from operating at a lower temperature to enable them to operate in 'condensing mode'; however the difference is not huge.


Regarding the Immersion heater. Electricity is about 3 times the cost of gas. So with a modern condensing boiler - the OP has a brand new worcester bosch greenline 30 cdi boiler - there is no way that the immersion would be cheaper.