What is a typical household?

biscan25

RSTime said:

Apparently, "for a typical household - one that uses 12,000 kWh of gas a year, and 2,900 kWh of electricity a year - it means an annual bill will not rise above £2,500 from October.".

We live in a fairly modern 3 bedroom well-insulated house and only two of us. Our temperature is set to 18C in winter and our usage is 26,183 kWh for gas and 5877 kWh electricity thus our bills will be over £5k per year. Can someone tell me what a typical household is, I imagine if you have several children usage is likely to be quite high?

We are 2 people in 1930s house. 3 bedroom. SE London. 85sqm. Well insulated, but slightly drafty in places just as older houses are intended to be.
We have the heating on from November to December around 5 hours a day. So probably not at all typical.

Annual usage 1600kWh electric 5400kWh gas.

So that's £492 per year on our old two year fix
£1,097 from August -September 2022
£1,975 from October 2022 onwards

Guess we should massively increase our usage to "get our money's worth" from Liz's subsidy, since we will eventually pay £1700 per head for it in tax..

eastcorkram

RSTime said:

Apparently, "for a typical household - one that uses 12,000 kWh of gas a year, and 2,900 kWh of electricity a year - it means an annual bill will not rise above £2,500 from October.".

We live in a fairly modern 3 bedroom well-insulated house and only two of us. Our temperature is set to 18C in winter and our usage is 26,183 kWh for gas and 5877 kWh electricity thus our bills will be over £5k per year. Can someone tell me what a typical household is, I imagine if you have several children usage is likely to be quite high?

Two people here, in 1950s three bed semi.
You're using more than double our electricity, and treble our gas. 

Coffeekup

RSTime said:

Also, do we ned to get our meters checked?

I would say no you don't need your meters checked, your usage looks fairly common for for 2-4 people.

When I say common.... once people start watching the meters and realise what's costing them x amount a month they become more conscious and turn it off when not in use or replace and old appliance with a newer appliance.
That being said it is on the high side, for gas and electricity.
*Having the thermostat set to auto is probably your gas's biggest drain as it'll be kicking in when you out, at work or in bed, basically throwing your money away. Manually turning it on and off when your both in and remembering to turn it off when your hot, going out or to bed will save you easily 8,000kwh's
*If you don't have loft insulation get some makes a massive difference to keeping the heat in.
*Are you both having super long showers or baths that you keep tipping up with hot water? Again another big drain.
*Combi boiler?

Electric is very high for 2 people

*Do you have an immersion heater?
*Do you have a pond pump, uv lights? Fish tanks? Heat lamp for tropical insects animals?

Take a look at the first few pages of these forums, a good number of people have been posting "why is my usage so high?" 99% of them have resolved their high usage by just make make a few changes.

I would forget typical/average usages it's a vague description. You could live in a street of all the same houses built in the same year with the same number of rooms, and every house would have different usages due to how many people live there, appliances they choose to live with and the hour's they spend at home or out the house.

scobie

Just me here in a 3 bedroom 1830s cottage in Yorkshire. 115sqm.  Gas is around 9000 and electric 1450kwh.   

Kim1965

3 bed semi, 14000kwh gss 4200kwh electric. Just turned off my garage beer fridge and the pond pump. 

RSTime

An area that we perhaps need to look at is cavity insulation. Our house is built from reconstituted stone (with breeze blocks behind) and the stone is porous. We are in the Peak District with a wet climate and sometimes get driving rain. I understand that you need to be careful with cavity insulation with this type of stone. Can anyone advise on what type of cavity insulation would be appropriate or where I could get professional advice from?

molerat

Property type	Under October price cap	Under government Energy Price Guarantee	Difference
All dwellings	£3,550	£2,500	£1,050
Houses	£3,800	£2,650	£1,150
Detached	£4,700	£3,300	£1,400
Semi Detached	£3,800	£2,650	£1,150
End Terraced	£3,500	£2,450	£1,050
Mid Terraced	£3,300	£2,350	£950
Bungalow	£3,500	£2,450	£1,050
Flats	£2,450	£1,750	£700
Converted flat	£2,750	£1,950	£800
Purpose built flat	£2,400	£1,750	£650

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-bills-support/energy-bills-support-factsheet-8-september-2022

"Typical" is the average of all dwellings.

[Deleted User]

Which has to be amongst the least useful government produced data tables ever.

Chrysalis

Typical seems to be quite high usage, I fall at about £950 annual cost on April cap, and the average usage is nearly 2 grand.

[Deleted User]

Chrysalis said:

Typical seems to be quite high usage, I fall at about £950 annual cost on April cap, and the average usage is nearly 2 grand.

It's actually the median consumption of all dual fuel households on single rate meters (excluding anything under 10kWh as OFGEM considers these to be vacant properties), if you want the technical explanation, but I didn't think that's what the OP was thinking about.