£400 Gas and Water Bill - Climate Change Levy and VAT

cannugec5

Am I reading the bill correctly? 

You are expected to pay over £200 for them to heat the hot water, and then you pay again to actually use the hot water you have already paid to be heated? 

The use of 12 cubic metres of water in total is not excessive. 

What does the tenancy agreement say about bills? 

Netexporter

The use of 12 cubic metres of water in total is not excessive.

It is for a month. I use less water than that in a quarter.

cannugec5

Netexporter said:

The use of 12 cubic metres of water in total is not excessive.

It is for a month. I use less water than that in a quarter.

Sorry. 

I had to Google usage as we don’t have meters. SouthWestWater state that an ‘average’ household would use 12-14 cubic metres per month. That is what I based my comment on. 

deano2099

Do you have a hot water tank? Is it being left on continuously, so the boiler constantly kicks in to heat it when it drops below a certain temperature? And if so, what temperature is the thermostat at?

That's the only explanation I can think of for hot water being legitimately that much. 

Robin9

deano2099 said:

That's the only explanation I can think of for hot water being legitimately that much. 

Or possibly a meter mix-up 

Jandre3000

cannugec5 said:

Am I reading the bill correctly? 

You are expected to pay over £200 for them to heat the hot water, and then you pay again to actually use the hot water you have already paid to be heated? 

The use of 12 cubic metres of water in total is not excessive. 

What does the tenancy agreement say about bills? 

So the m3 is the actual amount of water that we use and the kwh is the cost of heating that water. The reason for this is because it is a communal boiler for everyone in the building so the water is heated centrally and there's a hot water inlet into each flat which is metered, the kwh usage is calculated from the cost to heat 1 m3 of water x amount of water used. 

The tenancy agreement says virtually nothing about bills other than that we shall 'pay promptly to the authorities to whom they are due...' there is nothing about the arrangements 

Jandre3000

deano2099 said:

Do you have a hot water tank? Is it being left on continuously, so the boiler constantly kicks in to heat it when it drops below a certain temperature? And if so, what temperature is the thermostat at?

That's the only explanation I can think of for hot water being legitimately that much. 

So I learnt to day that there is a boiler room where the water is heated centrally for use across the entire building, and the hot water that flows to our flat is then metered, the amount of gas used to heat the water we used
 is calculated from the amount of gas needed to heat 1 m3 of water x amount of water used. 

Where the amount of gas needed to heat 1 m3 of water is calculated by dividing the total gas used by the boiler to heat water by the total hot water used by all of the premises. 

QrizB

cannugec5 said:

Netexporter said:

The use of 12 cubic metres of water in total is not excessive.

It is for a month. I use less water than that in a quarter.

SouthWestWater state that an ‘average’ household would use 12-14 cubic metres per month.

We're a household of three/four (depending on term times) and we use about 300 litres a day, 10 cubic metres a month.

Using 12 cubic metres in a quarter would suggest that Netexporter is using about 130 litres a day.

Jandre3000 said:

So the m3 is the actual amount of water that we use and the kwh is the cost of heating that water.

There's something very weird there.

You have used 6.5 cubic metres of hot water - 6500 litres - and you've been charged for 1800kWh of gas to heat it.

That's 0.277kWh per litre, roughly 1 megajoule per litre.

1 megajoule is enough energy to heat a litre of water by 240 degrees C.

Put another way, heating 6.5 cubic metres of water from 10C to 60C should only require 380kWh. You've been charged for between 4x and 5x as much gas as you really should.

Netexporter

Using 12 cubic metres in a quarter would suggest that Netexporter is using about 130 litres a day.

I actually use a lot less than that. About half the national average.

Jandre3000

QrizB said:

 

There's something very weird there.

You have used 6.5 cubic metres of hot water - 6500 litres - and you've been charged for 1800kWh of gas to heat it.

That's 0.277kWh per litre, roughly 1 megajoule per litre.

1 megajoule is enough energy to heat a litre of water by 240 degrees C.

Put another way, heating 6.5 cubic metres of water from 10C to 60C should only require 380kWh. You've been charged for between 4x and 5x as much gas as you really should.

Thank you so much for spelling it out like that, I can't begin to explain how helpful it is in showing something is wrong here.

Another thing I've looked at is the variance of our bills and the amount of kWh in relation to our m3 usage :



So in August we used 7.51 m3 which 'only' took 817 kWh to heat, in November we used 6.52 m3 but 1797 kwh, I know it's significantly colder in November than it is in August but would it really take twice the amount of gas?