Energy bill help?

douknowdawae

Hi, thanks for you reply. Yes everything is electric. We've checked the meter this evening and its gone from 10520 to 11252 which is concerning as the bill estimate is another whopping £100 for 26 days with our new provider. The water tank is very small in fact it's compact enough to fit under the sink. We will check to see if we can find out how much is uses but the water tank is kept on for about an hour a day maximum. The heating has been turned off completely so now struggling to see what is possibly using so much electricity. All the appliances we have are rated A+ and there is no way the TV or our laptops etc are using that much. What are we doing wrong?

douknowdawae

We've checked the water tank, that's a rating of D and the consumption is 1446kWh per year.

Smodlet

This probably does not apply but are you certain there is only one hot water tank, OP? You say it is under the sink, so one would assume it heats the water for its hot tap but could there perhaps be another tank for the bath/shower/whatever you have somewhere else?

Sorry if this is a red herring, just a thought that occurred to me.

macman

Forget your laptops, with the heating on at 21C your bills are bound to be high. How many hours per day is this for?

douknowdawae

As far as we're concerned there is only one tank that we know of under the sink and only one switch in the entire flat to warm it. We know its only one and small because the hot water runs out after 20 minutes of continuous usage. The heating was on for 4 hours a day in total throughout the week.

System

As posted above, some more details on your electric central heating would be helpful. The small tank under your sink, I suspect, has nothing to do with the heating system if there are wet radiators fitted. Domestic heating and hot water are separated from each other. If they weren't, then your radiators would corrode and you would get rusty water through your taps. This is typical of an electric wet central heating system:

https://www.mcdonald-engineers.com/products/Electric-wet-central-heating-system

I suspect that the problem that you are having is partly down to the way that you are running the heating system. It is often cheaper just to get a building up to temperature and then turn it down by a few degrees if you are out rather than heat/cool/heat/cool........

FWiW, usage of 27kWhs day isn't extraordinarily high. We use somewhere between 6 and 8kWhs a day just to power normal electrical appliances. We have gas CH.

Robin9

Are these "radiators" wired in to a switch at the side of them ?

douknowdawae

we don't run our heating as heat/cool. that's ridiculous. we heat to around 15 and just turn it off but the problem is the insulation causes the temp to drop rapidly. we've just come back from another holiday and left the heating at 8 degrees and it only used 8 units. so pleased about that, however the property has REALLY bad insulation and we had to heat it for about an hour to get back to liveable conditions as it was freezing and where we live it had been about -4 and snowing. For an hour an a half of heating, we used 26 units from midnight to 4pm, went to bed at 3am because we were flicking through edf bills and woke up at 2pm. normal or not, idk? Only a couple of lights were left on, TV was running for only 30 mins, nothing else was on which is becoming ridiculous since the temp overall drops really quickly. granted we used all radiators in the flat as it was ridiculously cold (5). I think we're going to have to get portable heaters as it's becoming stupid now money wise, and I get it's likely it's just for the winter period but we also have laundry to dry which can't dry correctly and often ends up smelling BAD if we don't use the heaters.


we know that the heating and water are separate I meant that there is only one switch to heat the water so there are no other switches that have possibly been left on.

caeler

Hi OP - until you get to know the property and your usage, why don't you take weekly meter readings so you can see what you are using. Then you can adjust accordingly. I swear by it - then I know what 'normal' is!

boliston

i'm trying to figure out how 616 units can possibly cost £114

lets assume about £10 of this is standing charges, then this leaves £104 meaning each unit is almost 17p!!