Cheapest Way to Heat a home

Leodogger

My sister has a 4 bedroomed detached house and leaves her heating on all day at 21c because they can't have a gas fire, we have a 2 bed semi detached bungalow and have the heating on approx. 8 hrs a day at 18c and are in all day so when the house cools down we have our gas fire on. We were discussing our bills and she says she pays £95 per month, we pay £90 per month. She was surprised at the size of our bills considering the size of her property and the fact that they have the heating on all day and so was I! Is it cheaper for us in a bungalow just to leave the C/H on all day?

Neil_Jones

What other people pay and what you pay are irrelevant because the direct debits are only payments towards the total energy usage over the year. The properties of the houses in question are of more interest as to how well they can hold heat.

A poorly insulated house with single glazed windows and no cavity insulation built on a plot of land on its own in the 1800s will lose heat like there's no tomorrow so will cost more to run, whereas a house with double glazing, insulation and attached to another house will hold its heat better and reduce the need for the heating to come on.

Gas will always be cheaper for heating purposes considering its a quarter of the cost of electricity and central heating can heat multiple rooms at the same time from one system, whereas the gas fire will only do the room its in, obviously.

Leodogger

My sister's house is about 30 yrs old, our bungalow is about 50 yrs old but both are well insulated. Seems to me a 4 bed detached modern property and a 2 bed modern bungalow should take very different amounts to heat.

JJ_Egan

Depends also on the equipment used to heat .
Your heating method may well be less effective and you could also be on a higher tariff .

Undervalued

Leodogger wrote: »

My sister's house is about 30 yrs old, our bungalow is about 50 yrs old but both are well insulated. Seems to me a 4 bed detached modern property and a 2 bed modern bungalow should take very different amounts to heat.

Everything else being equal a bungalow will be less energy efficient. Any heat that gets through the loft insulation will be lost but with a house heat lost from the downstairs rooms helps to heat the upstairs.

The same applies to the floor. All rooms in a bungalow sit directly on the ground.

matelodave

As Undervalued says, your bungalow probably covers twice the physical area of a normal two storey house, so instead of getting the benefit of heat from downstairs percolating up to warm the upstairs rooms, you've got twice the roof area to lose it all.

Likewise the sort of heating system you've got, the way the controls are set, your use of the gas fire and the tariff that you are on will make a significant difference to your costs.

If you really want to compare, then you need to be comparing the consumption in kwh, rather than £££'s unless you are both on exactly the same tariff (both s/c and kwh). You cannot really compare DD's either, especially if one of you ends up in credit at the end of 12 months and the other has accumulated a debit.
You really need to be using the same 12 month period, ideally in a similar neighbourhood to compare your annual consumption, otherwise there are too many variables to take into account.

Even two identical houses side by side could end up with significantly different energy costs depending on how the systems are set up and used.

We now live in a large detached bungalow thats twice the size of our old four bedroom two storey house, but its got a better heating system although its all electric, rather than gas. We are now at home all day instead of at work and we use a lot less energy than we ever did before - it also costs us a lot less than it did 10 years ago even though the heating is now on all day every day.

Leodogger

What you say makes a lot of sense, I suppose it is like comparing apples and pears. Our boiler is a combi which is serviced regularly and all the radiators were new when we moved in(we have 6 radiators only) but the boiler is approx. 6 or 7 yrs old and is a Valiant Ecomax Combi. Also I never took into account the amount of ground a bungalow covers and although our loft is very well insulated, I guess some heat still does manage to get through the roof. Perhaps we should just try watching the meter to see how much just the fire takes on its own per hour and how much the heating takes per hour and compare the two ?

AndyPK

The direct debits could be wrong (probably are), you will be on different tariffs

So don't base any decisions on this

Robin9

Leodogger wrote: »

................... We were discussing our bills and she says she pays £95 per month, we pay £90 per month. ................

OP - Do you have actual kWh annual consumption for the two homes?

Flt._Lt._Biggles

Leodogger wrote: »

My sister has a 4 bedroomed detached house and leaves her heating on all day at 21c because they can't have a gas fire, we have a 2 bed semi detached bungalow and have the heating on approx. 8 hrs a day at 18c and are in all day so when the house cools down we have our gas fire on. We were discussing our bills and she says she pays £95 per month, we pay £90 per month. She was surprised at the size of our bills considering the size of her property and the fact that they have the heating on all day and so was I! Is it cheaper for us in a bungalow just to leave the C/H on all day?

No, but your sister could save money by only having the heating on when required.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/energy-saving-myths/

and asscociated, long, existing thread here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4327195/energy-myth-busting-is-it-cheaper-to-have-heating-on-all-day

Leodogger

What surprised me was when we returned to our property after renting it out for 3 yrs. It was rented out to an elderly lady and her monthly direct debits with the same energy company (purely by coincidence as we did a comparison website and decided to go with Scottish Power which is the same one as the renter used) and the welcome letter arrived with the amount she used last year and her direct debit of £57 per month, yet when we lived here before we rented approx. 3 yrs ago we were paying £85 per month so not quite sure why that is. Of course everyone uses their heating differently and it may be that she had the temperature lower (although unlikely considering she was 75 yrs old) or she didn't use the gas fire, or a combination of both. Yet we have only been back in the property 7 weeks and I checked the smart meter and we have already used £153 since she moved out which works out to approx. what we were using before based on monthly usage. Obviously as well there are two of us so using slightly more for showers etc., but still seems a big difference in monthly direct debits. The other solution may be that she was never in the property, always out visiting or on holiday ?