Halved my bills

Robin9

Exodi said:

Robin9 said:

@Exodi     Do you cook by gas ?

Hi Robin, yes we have a gas range cooker (though we recently purchased a multi cooker to prevent situations like using the whole oven to heat a couple of pork chops).

If your question was understanding how we use ~220 kWh of gas in the summer, we also have a hot water tank that the boiler heats for about 1 hour a day.

There's still lots of improvements we can make (we recently installed a new boiler and we will set up proper timers for our thermostats) - I'm optimistic we can make good improvements on last winters usage.

Nonetheless, I'm surprised to read Ofgems typical values put typical gas usage for our circumstances at 12,000 kWh (where we used 7590!). Perhaps we are better at watching our energy usage than I thought.

Energy Use	Example – home type and number of residents	Typical annual gas use (kWh)	Typical annual electricity use (kWh)
Low	Flat or 1-bedroom house; 1 to 2 people	8,000	1,800
Medium	2-3 bedroom house; 2 to 3 people	12,000	2,900
High	4+ bedroom home; 4 to 5 people	17,000	4,300

Yes - that was the basis of my question.

"Typical" has a wide range of meanings. We are a pair of OAPs in a 4 bed gas ch.  Our summer  gas is nearer 100 kWh but year total is that 12,000 - perhaps we like our house warmer or you are out at work.

But we deviate - the OP has made  a decision which most of us think is flawed.

matt_drummer

Robin9 said:

Yes - that was the basis of my question.

"Typical" has a wide range of meanings. We are a pair of OAPs in a 4 bed gas ch.  Our summer  gas is nearer 100 kWh but year total is that 12,000 - perhaps we like our house warmer or you are out at work.

But we deviate - the OP has made  a decision which most of us think is flawed.

My gas use was similar to yours, actually almost identical for a four bedroom detached house.

Our house is well insulated and pretty efficient overall, your use sounds about right.

We did not cook on gas.

We have an air source heat pump now so no gas at all which I am very happy about!

Jyana

Welp! Given the choice I would have gone down the route of insulating as much as possible, considering this is a flat, and TVR controls on the radiators instead. digital ones if necessary/possible to give me full control as not fully mobile myself or when I am out of the home.

Being on disability benefits myself I would be concerned at being able to afford to heat all the rooms during a cold winter, hence damp forming in unused rooms and feeling the cold by not having them all on in the room I am in. Just about every conversation I have seen from owners of infrared talk about how expensive they are to run, and the only happy ones seem to be those that use it as a secondary heating source or who have seriously oversized their system by placing them on the ceilings as well going for the high mounted option mentioned here.

Gerry1

Another downvote for going all electric I'm afraid.  Not intended to add to what I fear will be the OP's winter woes, but to stop anyone else making the same catastrophic mistakes.

To recap, when comparing always use kWh consumption from actual meter readings.  Working in ££ muddies the waters because of the dramatic changes in tariff prices and government subsidies, and working with DD payments is even worse because a DD amount isn't your bill.

DeeQS

We bought an all electric flat (not storage heaters, just panel radiators) which is EPC B. At the time electricity was 11p/kwh, and we only ever set heating to 18c. It was fine...

Once electricity hit 34p kw/h it's been painful. Octopus Tracker has helped to limit the bills somewhat. It 'only' uses 20-30kwh a day to keep warm, but that's still £10 A DAY!. A wet gas heating, would have been more like £3 a day, like we used to pay when electricity was 10pkwh.

I'd never recommend an all electric panel heating system. I've even considered swapping our the radiators to storage heaters but the pay back time doesn't add up either.

wrf12345

Using infrared for spot heating for a single person (ie having it pointed at that person) is cheaper that running central heating for the whole house, I know because I have done this but in the end decided I was more concerned with the health of the house during a couple of winter months that getting one over on the energy companies. I have also used a radiant gas fire to heat one room (and the rest of the house by leaving the door open in the night and letting the residual heat circulate when turned off), the gas fire on the lowest setting for most of the time for ten hours a day cost about the same as a modern combi boiler heating the whole house for two hours a day. Lower end infra red heaters are £20 to £40 on Amazon etc (not the silly little ones that fall over and burn the house down) against a minimum of £1500 for a new gas central heating system (a 15 year old one is probably going to be seventy percent efficient at best, half that lost through the pipework). If it is an old flat with other flats warming up the adjoining walls it might not need much heat, anyway. There is a heatpump that comes as all-in-one and is mounted to an interior wall (two large holes drilled thru it) so that might work for a flat, £500-1000 on eBay depending on stock/greed levels of the vendors. If I was renovating a house with an old gas system it would be junked and the gas mains capped off (free from some energy companies) and I'd spend the money on DIY super-insulating the property, including removal of most of the non-south facing windows.

Gerry1

wrf12345 said:

If I was renovating a house with an old gas system it would be junked and the gas mains capped off (free from some energy companies) and I'd spend the money on DIY super-insulating the property, including removal of most of the non-south facing windows.

Might become interesting when trying to sell such a property.  Some potential buyers might not be particularly keen on living in a cave.

markin

DeeQS said:

We bought an all electric flat (not storage heaters, just panel radiators) which is EPC B. At the time electricity was 11p/kwh, and we only ever set heating to 18c. It was fine...

Once electricity hit 34p kw/h it's been painful. Octopus Tracker has helped to limit the bills somewhat. It 'only' uses 20-30kwh a day to keep warm, but that's still £10 A DAY!. A wet gas heating, would have been more like £3 a day, like we used to pay when electricity was 10pkwh.

I'd never recommend an all electric panel heating system. I've even considered swapping our the radiators to storage heaters but the pay back time doesn't add up either.

The payback should be under 6 years, And they should last 25+ years. The last time i calculated it for a thread using data provided it was just 3 years, But with a very poor EPC.

Without any data so very basic sums! If we say you heat for 5 months the different of £10 vs £3 would be around £1K on an E7 tariff, Even at half that £500 a year would give a payback in 6 years, You usually don't need them in the bedrooms a 20 min top up before bed with the panel heaters is often enough for most people.

FreeBear

wrf12345 said: Lower end infra red heaters are £20 to £40 on Amazon etc (not the silly little ones that fall over and burn the house down) against a minimum of £1500 for a new gas central heating system (a 15 year old one is probably going to be seventy percent efficient at best, half that lost through the pipework). If it is an old flat with other flats warming up the adjoining walls it might not need much heat, anyway. There is a heatpump that comes as all-in-one and is mounted to an interior wall (two large holes drilled thru it) so that might work for a flat, £500-1000 on eBay depending on stock/greed levels of the vendors.

Your heat losses will be through walls, ceilings/floors, and windows (oh, and doors too). Any heat lost from uninsulated CH pipes will just add to the output from the radiators and add a very small temperature gain. And if you are looking at replacing the whole system, £4,000 to £8,000 would be a more realistic budget - You'd probably get a budget boiler swap for £1,500, but end up paying for regular breakdowns...

Certainly worth investing in insulation as it will cut energy consumption in the long term. But in a flat, some discussions would need to take place with the freeholder as to the extent of the work - Same for fitting a heat pump. If big holes are needed in a wall, freeholder consent would be required.

BUFF

I haven't read all of page 2 & 3 but would point out that my gas (heating & hw) usage was down 37% last winter with no changes to my behaviour - it was a very mild winter here.

Having said that, I believe that in certain cases radiant heating can be a valid & cost effective solution.