How are we paying so much?

77588p

We live in a 4 bed detached house and just seem to be paying silly costs each month for gas and electric.

We have 3 kids and they do enjoy Xbox time after school. 

Currently we are with Octopus energy and our bill is £170 per month but the debt also keeps increasing each month. Our account balance was minus £700 and must have built up over a period of time. 

On top of the £170 per month i started paying an extra £50-70 per month and got the debt down to £450. 

Just took another monthly meeter reading today and despite paying £170 per month plus the additional £50 the debt has now crept back up to £700. 

Does this seem alot to you or is it just me?

Gerry1

Have you sent meter readings every month?  If not, you're probably paying off debt because your direct debit wasn't sufficient.

MSE DD advice

Are you using electric showers or an immersion heater? Guaranteed to send your bills soaring.

Are you on the cheapest tariffs?

Start comparing with Citizens Advice and 'Which? Switch', entering your annual kWh usage derived from actual meter readings a year apart. Just compare annual costs, always ignore all projections and savings claims. Remember that separate suppliers are often cheaper than dual fuel, so do the sums for both cases. Also have a look at the customer service ratings on Citizens Advice and the 'Add your feedback on energy supplier xxxx...' threads here on the forum.

Ectophile

You need to work out how you're using so much energy.  It's probably not the Xbox.  Look at heating, hot water, laundry, and pretty much anything that gets hot and is turned on for more than a few minutes at a time.  Those are the things that take most energy.

cattom

that seems a lot of money. do you have the old hot water system with a emmersion heater and 60 gallon water cylinder, or is it combi boiler?.

77588p

Thanks for your comments.

We do have an emmersion heater. We have started turning it off and only turning on a few hours before showers etc.

I wonder if we need to change to a combi boiler maybe. Frustrating as the house is only 2 years old.

Gerry1

77588p said:

Thanks for your comments.

We do have an emmersion heater. We have started turning it off and only turning on a few hours before showers etc.

I wonder if we need to change to a combi boiler maybe. Frustrating as the house is only 2 years old.

You shouldn't be using the immersion heater at all.  Costs about five times as much as gas.

Robin9

Can you give us some actual meter reads please - go back into your bills at least a year and find some reads with the letter A against it '  and give us todays reads as well.

As Gerry has said - switch that immersion off and leave it off .

MWT

77588p said:

Just took another monthly meeter reading today and despite paying £170 per month plus the additional £50 the debt has now crept back up to £700.

One of the good things with Octopus is that when you give them a meter reading it will generate a bill...

Enter a reading at least once a month and check your balance, there is no reason to ever be surprised by what you owe, or to have a feeling that the balance 'creeps' up.

We have just come out of a very cold winter so it is entirely possible that £170 a month wasn't covering your costs, but I'm sure you can get the cost down by better understanding your water heating for example, with a gas boiler the immersion heater should never be turned on unless the boiler has broken...

matelodave

Octopus is not the cheapest supplier - I am all electric and the Octopus tariff for where I live is 5.5p/kwh and 10p a day more than I'm presently paying with Neon Reef paying which would cost me a whopping great £432.50 a year or £36 a month more than I'm paying at the moment. So you could probably reduce your costs by finding a cheaper supplier than Octopus, although you'll have to get your arrears down before you can move.

Hpwever that said, you need to find out what is using it all and when you are using it - if you dont know whats going on you cant control it. You should be reading your meters at least monthly and sending the readings into your supplier and checking your monthly bills and stsements - even if you've got smart meters you should be checking that they are using the correct readings.

As MWT says, if you are checking what you are using and what you are paying then you should be in control. As said above, turn off the immersion heater and use the gas boiler to heat the water. Teach the kids to use less hot water and dont waste it. take shorter showers and fewer of them. make sure that stuff is turned off when it's not in use, especially X-boxes, computers and TVs

You now have the advantage that we are coming out of the winter period so you wont be needing to heat the house as much if at all over the next six months so with a bit of effort you should be able to whittle the arrears down quite quickly over the summer. (most people use around 65% of their energy in the five winter months and around 35% in the seven summer months)

Make it a family project and get the kids involved in trying to save energy - set up a spreadsheet and read the meters daily so you can log your consumption and see the effect of your energy saving measures. Set a target to to get the arrears down to zero by the end of October

.  

AnotherJoe

77588p said:

Thanks for your comments.

We do have an emmersion heater. We have started turning it off and only turning on a few hours before showers etc.

I wonder if we need to change to a combi boiler maybe. Frustrating as the house is only 2 years old.

Why are you using it at all ? It's for emergency use. Arrange your hot water timing period so it's long enough for showers baths etc.
The other issue with using the immersion is if you forget and leave it on that can really add up,  

Reed_Richards

Do you have a hot tub?  With the exception of an electric car, things that consume a lot of energy are things that you heat.  And heating with gas is a small fraction of the cost of heating with electricity.