Winter is coming - are people ready?

Novice_investor101

I got my 6 monthly BG bill for dual fuel & spent £500 from March to Sept. Small amount of gas usage in that from March & April & then nothing on gas except standing charge. Electric usage has gone up slightly because I’m WFH more this summer. 

I had £195 credit left after the bill & BG recommended I reduce my DD from £100pm to £58pm. Which sounds ludicrous! My smart meter tells me I’m consistently using around £55pm in electric (inc SC cost) & I have a spreadsheet to work out the cost of the gas (dumb meter). Considering the gas SC is about £16pm even before the cost of the actual gas, I’d be massively in debt by the time of the next bill in 6 months! 

I increased it to £117pm & I’ll keep on top of my spreadsheet to track how much I’m using & make sure I’m not slipping into debt. 

These 6 monthly billing cycles are not helping people to control their spending when there’s nothing to help them track their usage (no bills, smart meters that are dumb & don’t work etc). 

EssexHebridean

This winter is going to be an interesting one for us having just moved from the (almost) all electric flat we'd been in for 20 years to a three bed house with a combination of GCH & some electric underfloor heating.  Downstairs layout is a large kitchen diner (living room)  at the back of the house and a smaller separate sitting room at the front - that has a small open fire. EPC is C71 from memory. There is also an office outbuilding which MrEH will use for WFH - that also uses EFH and again has its own thermostat - that we suspect will be the interesting one in terms of cost of heating so we'll be keeping a close eye on that. 

So far I'm completely astonished how cheap heating water with gas is - that one has really astonished me. I can get a full bath for around what a quick shower would have cost me at the flat - amazing! I'm finding the smart meters incredibly useful for being able to see how much our use is and also how much it varies from the flat to the house. Having switched from cooking on gas to cooking with electric it's also interesting to be able to see how different cooking methods will influence our use - and the acquisition of a multi-cooker is definitely going to be occurring! Thanks to the Bright app I also have the advantage of being able to see what the house used last winter which will be interesting for comparison. 

Having not lived with a boiler for a lot of years I've got a fair bit of learning to do as far as the heating side goes I know, and we're planning to get the boiler serviced in the next few weeks as well. Another plan is to get a quote for having a heated towel rail run off the CH in the bathroom - if we do then we anticipate this will limit how much the UFH gets used in there which should in turn reduce the costs. The fittings are there for fitting the rail - so it just depends if they are al OK to plumb in to - our heating engineer will no doubt be able to tell us that.

UFH is also installed in the kitchen, but we're not expecting to use that much at all - our predecessors apparently used it only when the temperatures dropped significantly low outside. Both the areas of UFH are controlled on their own thermostats, with a digital thermostat for the main heating for the house. 

Loft is insulated and mostly boarded out - a job for the next couple of months is to identify the areas we aren't intending to use for storage and then start to add some additional insulation. We will also be buying thermal curtains for the front door and its adjacent window, and for the windows and french doors in the living room, and a thermal blind for the bathroom. Of the bedrooms, ours has already had heavy curtains purchased and hung, one of the other two already has heavy curtains left by our sellers, and the other now has our old bedroom curtains from the flat hung in it - those are thin but are doubled up by means of fleece blankets hung behind and are very cosy. 

So for us it's not so much a case of whether we're ready - it's about a completely new experience and learning how things work, what we need to change in terms of behaviour, and how we can make our new home a comfortable place to live while still keeping our footprint (and our costs!) as low as possible.

badmemory

What no-one has ever been able to explain to me is why it should be a good idea to feel really cold in August just because it is August and not December.  So not going to happen in this house & anyway would be a really bad idea as all my (not getting any younger) joints will sieze up.

EssexHebridean

I've never been able to understand that logic either badmemory - rather different in the set up we had previously where there was no thermostat and we had to plan a day ahead of heating was needed - but with central heating it really is surely as simply as having your own mental baseline temperature and then let the thermostat ensure that you don't go below that?

strawb_shortcake

I've just had an email from EON to say with the price cap from October my estimated energy use will fall by £95 a year. With the reduction of people in the house I should easily be able to get my energy closer in line with my DD leaving most of my credit unused

WhoisDannie

badmemory said:

What no-one has ever been able to explain to me is why it should be a good idea to feel really cold in August just because it is August and not December.  So not going to happen in this house & anyway would be a really bad idea as all my (not getting any younger) joints will sieze up.

Same with me I've just put my heating on, starting yesterday, it's cold and miserable outside but I am nice and cosy inside.

michaels

EssexHebridean said:

I've never been able to understand that logic either badmemory - rather different in the set up we had previously where there was no thermostat and we had to plan a day ahead of heating was needed - but with central heating it really is surely as simply as having your own mental baseline temperature and then let the thermostat ensure that you don't go below that?

WE used to leave the heating on all year and just have it come on when cold, problem was it would come on on a cool 'summer' morning and then the house would end up too hot later in the day as it warms up well via solar gain so is better starting at 15c at 7am than at 21c and ending up much too hot.

Novice_investor101

It’s still 20c throughout the day in my house & only been dropping to 19c overnight. It’s not particularly cold outside, but that wind does bite a bit. Definitely autumnal but not ready to fire the boiler up yet. 

MultiFuelBurner

18-22oC here predicted into the strat of October.

No heating will be put on here but then we have an energy efficient house and use the south and west facing rooms more than others.

badmemory

Mine has been on all summer but has only come on once in over 4 months never been heard of before.  It has been an unusual summer.