Living alone, is a £150 annual heating budget possible?

lstar337

berbastrike wrote: »

Fridge/Freezer - 200kw

Better be a good fridge freezer, even our A+ rate one uses 226kW/year.

Smiley_Dan

£0 annual heating budget is possible, depends on the heat losses from your house.

HappyMJ

berbastrike wrote: »

a small room? wearing a jumper, would I still feel cold?

will 1kw heat a room?

No. I've tried it. It'll give a nice low level of background heat overnight but when it's really cold it just won't be able to keep up. I'm talking about a room about 3m by 3m. Do you just want one room warm?

An electric blanket helps keep costs down overnight but do you really want to be in bed all the time.

A 3kW heater with 3 heat settings and a good quality thermostat is best for getting heat into the room very fast then using the settings on it to reduce the output down to 1kW to maintain the room temperature and when the room temperature drops too much use the settings on it to switch it back to 3kW for a bit and get some more heat. When you think about going to bed turn it off 30 minutes to an hour before you actually leave the room and it'll be much cheaper. When it gets cold then go to bed.

The lowest my combined duel fuel bill ever was was around £180 per year about 5 years ago when NPower did not have standing charges and were giving cash back for paying by direct debit.

Before I discovered that tariff I used to switch supplier going onto variable tariffs every 4 months through Quidco which got me a lot of cash back which reduced my net annual cost to around £200.

Now these days I pick the best annual tariff, switching to get cash back and pay monthly by direct debit and it's costing me around £400 per year.

Smiley_Dan

berbastrike wrote: »

a small room? wearing a jumper, would I still feel cold?

will 1kw heat a room?

It depends how large the room is, what temp delta, what the walls are made of, how large and the type of windows, what's above the room...

See http://www.cityplumbing.co.uk/heatLossCalculator . The heat loss in watts will give you a rough guide.

Nada666

It depends on insulation. I have used no heating (pretty much) for three or more years. Admittedly the landlord-heated hallway is also a big contributor to 'free' warmth.

I would say £150 is high for a heating bill. That's a thousand kWh of electricity or 2,600 kWh gas (at Ebico prices). Over 90 days that's 11 kWh per day - not exactly low for a single room. (Your five months is too many - no way will you need heat 150 days per year.)

Do you have a gas boiler or combi-boiler? Or a gas cooker? I would query using electricity if you have those.

As to temperatures, it depends on you - even when cold day sunlight can heat things to 16 or 17 degrees by evening. How comfortable/old/active are you? If you're out and about all day or working and not sitting down all evening the 18 to 21 degrees recommendation is unnecessary.

It really is a case of suck it and see. If you have gas you may also want to look at First Utility standard tariff - only £10 per year standing charge and cheap unit rates so you have the freedom to choose whether or not to whack the heat on (unlike if trapped with Ebico).

With the reintroduction of standing charges it is often not worth cutting back. I certainly will be trebling or quintupling by use this winter (thanks, Ofgem - sequential 80 and 90% increases in my annual bill despite no change in usage. Tripling my usage this winter will only add 20% to my bill. Insane.)

System

If living in a semi detached, would the neighbours heated house, heat my house?

Same question for a flat.

macman

Heat rises-very little goes sideways. The heating effect through a semi's party wall would be negligible.
In a flat, more so if you are in the flat above, but of course dependent on the internal insulation.

NeoVR2k6

I lived in a modern one bed apartment, 4th floor, built 2006 from 2009-2013
It was surrounded on all sides with other apartments, and it never dropped below 16c. I only used to turn the heating on in the cold winters when i had friends over.. and it only took half an hour to heat the place.. My (elec only) energy bill was still about £500 a year though

sniggings

probably easier to work out how to make £200 to add to your fuel bill than try and live on £150, next to impossible and it would affect your quality of life.

Serendipitious

macman wrote: »

Heat rises-very little goes sideways. The heating effect through a semi's party wall would be negligible.
In a flat, more so if you are in the flat above, but of course dependent on the internal insulation.

When I lived in a terraced house, the heating bill was low to begin with, around 60 a month for gas and electric combined. Neighbours on one side were a family with very young children so their heating was on high all winter, and an older person with health problems on the other side also had heating on during the day. When both houses were vacated, my heating bill rose dramatically to just under 100 a month. Some of it was due to the energy price hike, but I remember thinking at the time there must be some sideways effect.