how to approach landlord suspected of using our electric...

Sadie23

Hi, myself and my partner moved into our flat in Jan 2016, it is a 2 bed flat (on 2 floors). We both work full time (8-5 mon-fri).


When we moved in, we signed up with GB energy (now to be co-op!) and our forecast was £49 a month on low usage due to only really being used evening and weekends. However, our usage is massive.


There is a storage room on the ground floor which our landlord still has usage of and converted it into a rather plush area (bedroom and showeroom) for when she is in the area. My concern is there is electricity being used in that particular room, which I believe to be electric underfloor heating (!!!!) on timed. She dropped this into a conversation when we first moved in.


Anyway our bills have been massively higher than predicted, and we are using (Somehow) in excess of 800kwh of electric each month which I think cant be right? costing us £152 a month now for dual fuel.


I'm not sure how to approach this... do I confront private landlord? I don't know where to turn for advice!


Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated!

lincroft1710

Odd just to have electric underfloor heating in 1 room.

What are you wanting LL to do?

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

Turn everything off in your flat - everything. Go to meter. Is meter turning?

G_M

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays wrote: »

Turn everything off in your flat - everything. Go to meter. Is meter turning?

Then post the result back here and we'll talk you through cake-baking.......

downhillfast

The only way to know for sure is to pick a time when you think that the underfloor heating might be turned on and then turn EVERYTHING in your property off - fridges, freezers, EVERYTHING! If the electric meter is still advancing then something is using your power!

Once you know for sure then I would be looking to raise it with them as soon as possible!

moneyistooshorttomention

There must be a way that your electric supply can be isolated from the rest of the building. Personally - after having done the "turn all your electric" off test I'd be looking for an electrician to chat to about how to do that/likely costs of doing that.

I've seen electric theft going on before now - and alerted the victims of this to the fact. Daft wotnames didn't believe me as to why their bills were so high - but I was correct. So some people do do this.

Your bills can't possibly be that high legitimately. I've got a (small) detached house and am retired and use however much heat I want - and mine are around £60 per month for both gas and electric.

HouseBuyer77

You could get one of those power monitor things that clip onto the incoming supply cable that many energy suppliers were giving out free or cheap (very easy to do, simply clip something over one of the cables coming out of the meter). I'm sure you could buy one online. See what the power usage looks like when everything is switched off.

One I had in a previous house had a USB cable so you could connect it to your laptop and see a history of the past 24 hours. So you could identify something power hungry like electric heating switching on and off.

Have you asked the landlord if the storage room is on a seperate meter? Is it actually attached to your flat?

[edit]Amazon has one here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Efergy-Technologies-ELITE-CLASSIC-3-0/dp/B001Q1G4WK has historic information feature [/edit]

DigForVictory

Carefully & with facts.

Won't be cheap but £152 a month merits pretty severe investigation, by you to start with.

Andyjflet

HouseBuyer77 wrote: »

You could get one of those power monitor things that clip onto the incoming supply cable that many energy suppliers were giving out free or cheap (very easy to do, simply clip something over one of the cables coming out of the meter). I'm sure you could buy one online. See what the power usage looks like when everything is switched off.

One I had in a previous house had a USB cable so you could connect it to your laptop and see a history of the past 24 hours. So you could identify something power hungry like electric heating switching on and off.

Have you asked the landlord if the storage room is on a seperate meter? Is it actually attached to your flat?

[edit]Amazon has one here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Efergy-Technologies-ELITE-CLASSIC-3-0/dp/B001Q1G4WK has historic information feature [/edit]

I would start with that too, just tell her your electric company have contacted you due to an abnormally high power usage, but turning off everything on the mains would mean she would come in to cold room and shower as well :-)

DaftyDuck

G_M wrote: »

Then post the result back here and we'll talk you through cake-baking.......

.... but only if you have a gas oven!

From your description of the landlord's Glory Hole, surely you would expect some electricity to be used, underfloor heating or no? Is there anything in the contract about bill-sharing and, if not, why not?

As you were with GB Energy (as was I), you will have submitted monthly readings. Do they show a substantial increase before you turned on any electrical heating?

Sadie23

Hi everyone, thank you for your responses so far.


There is only 4 Meters in the electricity cupboard downstairs that I can see. the room in question in is right next to the cupboard so easy access to get any wires going in there I guess...


Yet to try turning everything off and checking meter, purely because i'm about 99% sure that its nothing in our property that is causing the bills. We even have the electric under floor heating in our shower room (by WarmWell) that she had previously installed but we only had that switched on the first few days we were there until we figured out how to turn it off trying to be prudent.


However, as soon as I get home from work I will try that and go and eyeball the meter to see if anything else is still making it go.


Testing waters I have previously asked how her electricity bills were when she was in property because ours are incredibly high, and she just palmed it off to being SSE and them being expensive. hmmmm