UKC

Ok, we’ve all had a moan but ……

My bill/usage for gas and leccy was £611in December - yes, it was cold, yes we were in the house more, but £611 ffs

This is unsustainable at these rates.

(old house, insulation, double glazed etc)

Going to have to start bbq for food, wearing duvets in the house etc 

You need to review your, use, insulation and appliance usage.

You seem to be using 6+ more than our old 4 bed house for December.

Damn, and I thought we had it bad at £300. Spring is not far away!

Had my father in law over for a week. 85 with dementia. In order for me to justify keeping the house toasty warm whilst he was here, our central heating was basically off from November through to when he arrived. Down jackets worn whilst watching tv etc, fewer showers etc. It was a pain, and some damp did appear, but it wasn’t too bad. 

What are your SC and unit rates, and is this actual metered usage or an estimate? 

Someone check my maths, but making some assumptions about gas/leccy split I reckon you've pumped out close to a tonne of CO2 there.

Yes it is.

Your bill means nothing, we need to know your tariffs and unit usage. for example, my cousin now pays 80+p per unit for her electricity........but she has no standing charge.

How does she avoid a standing charge?

Mine was about £450 for November and I think is on track to be over £650 in December and we've tried to be as frugal as we can with heating whilst keeping the house warm enough for a (always wrapped up) baby and toddler. I often wear my thick down jacket whilst working.

4 bedroom 20yo house

Leccy £172

Gas £439

Gas cooker, water and heating.

Cold food, microwave or slow cooker to be used from now on, log burner instead of heating and swimming pool instead of showers

Merry Christmas

I think you'll find that heating your swimming pool uses more energy than taking showers.

How old is your gas boiler?

I wasn't far off then. 

Electricity    
Unit rate: 34.04p per kWh
Standing charge: 46.36p/day = £14.37
spend on units £157.63 => 463 kWh
89kg CO2

Gas     
Unit rate: 10.33p per kilowatt hour (kWh)
Standing charge: 28.49p per day = £8.83
spend on units £430.17 => 4164 kWh 
762kg CO2

F*** me, really?? 4100 kWh in a month?! Jesus.
Is this you:   youtube.com/watch?v=w6U2o1MdY5s& ??

For the whole street?

How hot is your house?! Have you thought about wearing some clothes?

And a happy new climate

[sources: 0.193 kg of CO2e per kWh of electricity and 0.183 kg per kWh of gas https://bulb.co.uk/carbon-tracker/   
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/what-are-the-price-cap-unit-rat...   ]

How was your gas bill arrived at? Is it estimated usage, a manual reading, or a smart meter?

I read my gas meter once a month because otherwise my supplier would (not unreasonably) estimate it instead based partly on previous years’ usage patterns. That wouldn’t take into account the various efforts I’ve made this year to reduce usage. 

We live in a large(ish) Victorian house with solid walls etc so not very efficient. There's only two of us but we're paying less than half what you are and we've only had the heating on slightly less/lower than usual (although we've never been the sort of people who crank the house up to the temperature of a furnace).

Have you done the basic and cheap measures like draught sealing windows, doors and chimneys? That can make a huge difference in an old house? Is your loft well insulated? That's by far the cheapest, easiest and most effective thing you can insulate.

I don't know who your supplier is but we've been with Utility Warehouse for years and swapped several members of our family over to them and they've all saved massively on their bills by doing so.

The way they work is that the more utilities you take out, the cheaper they all become so we have gas, electricity, phone, broadband and mobile. The mother in law got a mobile sim from them even though she doesn't have a mobile because the amount she saved on the other things was more than the cost of the sim card.

Perhaps you should check them out?

That's more than me and I live in a knackered 2 bed static with shot dbl glazing, electric oil fired rads and one lpg fire, plus lpg hot water.  My costs this winter are about 250 - 300pcm 

Wow. 3 bed single story detached, solid walls in the old part (kitchen, living room, bathroom), 1980s uninsulated cavity wall in the newer bits (utility, office, bedrooms). Not a warm house, though I stuck another 300mm roof insulation at the start of the year which seems to have improved things.

Electric £105 (including £67 rebate), so same as yours really

Oil £130 (March 22 prices when we filled up)

Logs £75

We try and keep it around 15 degrees during the day using the oil CH and wear jumpers, then fire the stove up at teatime and keep it going until bedtime, which takes the living room up to about 24 ish. We then open the doors and let the heat run through the kitchen and bedrooms overnight.

This seems to put enough heat into the house so the CH doesn't need to run too much during the day.

Never though I'd be glad to be on oil!

Out of interest, what does a 47kg gas bottle cost you just now? My hot water and radiators run on LPG and I haven't bought any since last spring. I think I'm going to be rudely awakened soon.

£100, delivered

My God! I paid just a few quid more for TWO bottles earlier this year (delivered and connected). I may be confused but do you know if there's any extra government payout (not the £400 everyone gets) for those using things like bottled gas/oil etc for heating? I might be misunderstanding but thought there may be a £100 one-off payment in January.

The gas usage seems very very high. We use about 4000kWh in a whole year. That's for a 3/4  bedroom detached place built in 1998 with reasonable insulation. 

Recently paid £ 83 for a 47 kg bottle from Flo Gas

Allegedly its 200£, but I don't know how it's going to get paid, possible via the LA? No direct relationship with my electricity supplier here so still haven't seen any of the 400£ either..

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/vital-help-with-energy-bills-on-the-way-.... 

£85 here for a 47kg bottle swap. Only use it for the gas hob so lasts a couple of years per bottle. It has gone up though. Last bottle was £60.

No sign of any additional payout for being on oil so far.

Have you tried IPHAS (Independent Park Home Advisory Service)? They're able to advise on all this kind of stuff (free). It's only £6 pa but there's information available on their website to anyone. There's stuff there about people who are in all kinds of situations regarding the energy payments.

I might be misunderstanding but I think something might be due in January. If so, hopefully via the local authority. Octopus are being paid my £66/7 grants and are useless at returning the credit to my bank. I hardly use any electricity relative to the LPG.

That seems bonkers. Are you sure your readings are correct? I'm in a large 1 bed flat - no insulation, no double glazing, and December has worked out at £42. This is before applying the rebate.

Do you know what you have used roughly in November and / or December, or on a particularly cold day in December (if you have a smart meter)? Our November usage was 1848kwh on gas, in August it was 312kwh. In December it's been as high as 150-180 on (what I am assuming) were the coldest days. My house was built in about 2004 I think and is 4 bedrooms so might be a fairly similar comparison....

Thanks, i'll have a look. According to that link I posted there's a website being launched Jan 23 that will hold the keys to the kingdom, with payments made via the Local Authority 

My understanding on the £200 rebate is it will automatically be paid as credit on electricity bills for all houses where no mains gas connection is available. I.e. it will be paid in the same way as the existing £400 of support.  Haven't seen a confirmed date, just a vague 'in the coming months'

Based on the link above it seems there will be a way to claim if you don't have an electricity supply, I assume numbers are so low that it will be a pretty manual process.

Thanks for posting that. Hope you're eligible for the full £400.

No, I don't know the daily usage as we don't have a smart meter. 

I do take monthly readings though as I need to do those so our supplier can calculate the bills. Last year we used around 70 units of gas in each of December and January and less other months, obviously more when it's cold. In the summer we only use 4-5 units max of gas a month (no heating on and gas is just used for hot water as our hob is electric).

If you work out the kWh for 70 units it's roughly 774 kWh for each of December and January. 

Our previous house used about double the above in kWh. Where we are now holds the heat once warm and heats up fast - about 6C an hour. Once the place is warm the thermostat turns the boiler off. Our old place had such cack insulation the boiler went full pelt the whole time. 

We'll be looking at something similar. Two 16 month old babies and a three year old. House occupied at all times so no chance to have it lower. 17.5 daytime, 15 nighttime. Old thatched cottage, listed.

Everyone talks as if the entire house is heated. Surely one or two rooms sufficient?

Indeed that's what we do, most rooms are set to low and just the lounge is toasty. The hall also gets warm as that's where our main thermostat is and also where the pass through radiator (the one without a TRV that all the water runs through) is.

However, if you've little ones then you'll need to keep their bedroom(s) warm too and maybe bathroom so that bathtime is not a chilly experience. 

UK Gov have announced a reworked Energy Company Obligation for next year. Unlike the current iteration primarily aimed at low income/benefit eligible households the next round also included 'hard to heat' properties, with no benenfit requirement. Might be something in it for you for the winter 2023/24 heating season

Thanks, I'll keep an eye out.

Looks like prices will be going back towards pre-invasion levels in a few months.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/29/european-gas-prices-fal...

Just bear in mind that pre-invasion prices were spooked due to the possibility/probability of invasion so it's not quite as rosy as that article paints.

Gas prices of 15 to 20 Euro cents/MWh were common in the past decade, it's currently something like 85 to 130c now so still a factor of 5 more than what could be considered normal - just less than the 250-350 that was seen at the peak.

Our December usage 232kwh leccy and 1506kwh gas. About £200 with the rebate. That's for a 4 bed Victorian terrace, single glazed but not usually heated during the day and sparingly at other times.

Just got my bill (old stone flat on two floors) and it's come in at about £50 per month for each of electricity and gas for the last three months. So a total of about £33 per month with the discount. So slowly chipping away at the credit I had built up since cutting right back on usage earlier in the year (hardly any heating and limited hot water) but not submitting meter readings for a while.

Your starting point here has to be read the meters, today and then the same time tomorrow. See what actual usage is over 24hr then go from there. 

What is this massive bill based upon - estimated reads, or actual reads? If the previous one was an estimate and the new one an actual for example then this 611 quid could be a correction over time for historical underestimates.

And if you do, feel free to get in touch as I am one of their distributing partners. (Utility Warehouse)

Happy to help anyone out with a cost comparison and help people save money.>