Electricity bill regularly high but with no apparent cause

smartie1976

Phonix, naturally I'm a cynic, but if you haven't sorted your problem is there anyway the landlord is having a fiddle with the meter?
Clearly your gas meter is stuck (so you're winning with that one!).

CA

You say that your electricity is high and you are using very little gas even though you use this to heat the water with.

Have you checked that the immersion heater in the water tank is turned off (if you have a tank)?

smartie1976

Another thought, make sure that the temperature of the water is not set too high, and that thermostat is not on mega hot!
(you've prob tried both of these already, but it's worth suggesting).

Phonix

I'm not sure we even have an immersion heater. There are some electrics next to the tank with some strange looking small white boxes on the pipes and a dial that goes from 1-9. If I leave it on below 4, when I put the water on downstairs it doesn't work and the boiler won't light. These electrics seem to power the timer for the gas downstairs.

Incidently, the biggest problem is my flatemate's insistance on having her own fridgefreezer in her room. This wouldn't be such a problem but the massive freezer the other two of us are supposed to be using is completely jam packed with her stuff.

I'm going to drop a subtle hint fairly soon as the other two of us in this house are happy to use the top part freezer part of the fridge to store freezer stuff.

I'm going to give her a deadline of two weeks to clear out the freezer of stuff then I'm going to turn it off and see what difference it makes. out electricty bill is 75 pounds a month and this is bloody crazy, it's stupidly high for what we use.

CA

Does the hot water tank have a circular or hexanganol lump of metal ca 3 inch high and 3 inch diameter near the top with a wire coming out of it?

That would be the immersion heater. Basially this is a very large kettle element. If this is on it will heat the hot water using electricity not gas.

emujuice

hi phonix, we've still not come to any conclusion to our energy problem either
i've just gone and bought 8 energy saving light bulbs today (49p each in John lewis or 99p for 2 in morrisons - phillips 11watt), so i'm going to see how much differnce that makes. i'm also going away this weekend, so i'm going to turn every socket off (including the fish pump) and just leave our rubbishy old fridge freezer on to see how much that uses on it's own over a period of 3 days. I'll let you know if it uses much. if it doesn't then i doubt that will be your problem (or mine).
i think you're in a worst situation, i hope you find a solution. have you tried taking daily readings and phoning your electricity company to discuss it? having noted down what sort of things you've been doing during the days?

bunking_off

emujuice

Including the fish pump? What kind of pump are you talking about - forgive me if you explained this earlier - pond outside, or indoor aquarium? If the latter, what's the pump doing? If it's a filter, or pulling water through a filter, DO NOT TURN IT OFF. The bacteria in the filter will quickly go off (within hours) and will not do your fish any good at all.

Phonix

i've just gone and bought 8 energy saving light bulbs today (49p each in John lewis or 99p for 2 in morrisons - phillips 11watt), so i'm going to see how much differnce that makes. i'm also going away this weekend, so i'm going to turn every socket off (including the fish pump) and just leave our rubbishy old fridge freezer on to see how much that uses on it's own over a period of 3 days. I'll let you know if it uses much. if it doesn't then i doubt that will be your problem (or mine).
i think you're in a worst situation, i hope you find a solution. have you tried taking daily readings and phoning your electricity company to discuss it? having noted down what sort of things you've been doing during the days?

We use energy saving lightbulbs in every room bar the room of th person who uses the most electricity (The one with a fridge freezer, microwave in their room and 100watt often left on side lamp in their room)

Unfortunately because of people moving out of the house I've been landed with almost a £40/month bill for the last two months. They even almost tried to force me to pay £100 for the two months.

emujuice

well we did our experiment. went away for 2 1/2 days and left only the fridge freezer on. which used 10 units. i'm not really sure what that tells me to be honest. at 8-10p a unit, i guess i can estimate that the fridge freezer alone costs around 8 or 9 pounds a month to run. seems a lot to me, but since i've never consdidered how much one normally costs I can't tell if it's a lot. any thooughts?

Ps the fish pump is in my goldfish bowl. they only just had a pump bought for them, so i don't think they missed it for 3 days. they seem happy enough anyway

bunking_off

10 units over 2.5 days = 4kWH per day, ie approx 250W...have to look at the manual for our fridge but it doesn't seem ridiculous.

On the fish pump, the issue wouldn't have been that they haven't had it before, rather that if you had the pump linked to a filter, these filters work by having bacteria build up in them that eat the nitrites etc. Problem is, without a water throughput the bacteria themselves go bad & can pollute the water - ie it's worse than having no filter at all. Sounds like you got away with it this time, but if your pump is driving a filter don't leave it unplugged again or you may not be so lucky...