If you have a large 5 bedroom house, what is your electricity spend per month?

[hmcReborn]

Assuming that you have a boiler and gas central heating and hot water.

I am almost too embarrassed to declare ours. I never normally monitor bills , and confess I haven't really noticed before, but I just had to take the recent bill out of the filing cabinet and photocopy it for proof of ID, and noticed that it was (oh God, here goes) £160 for the month. Is this normal ?!?!

We are a bit lax with leaving lights on and tv on - will change my habits for my pocket and the planet, but we're not that lax

[pennygirl26]

ours is around 55 a month for 5 bedrooms.

[hmcReborn]

Thanks pennygirl, but flipping heck - where am I going wrong!

[wonkylegs]

Ours is around £65 per month, I work from home (5beds,6receptions)
Ours dropped significantly when we changed the halogen spots to LEDs

[0ddsocks]

We have a direct debit of £55pm and have to top that up a bit in winter. I work from home some days and on other days at home with DC.

OP are you sure that's not a combined gas and electric bill?

[hmcReborn]

Hmmm - mine is way more. First step - I am going to check the meter reading against what the bill says about estimated consumption.

Are you guys very on top of monitoring electricity consumption - do you try not to use a tumble drier / keep the number of washing loads down to a minimum, never leave tv on standby etc etc?

[Verypissedoffwife]

Ours is 70 per month. It's come down significantly due to using led light bulbs, double AA appliances - dryer, washer, dishwasher.

We were spending 240 a month on gas and electricity at one time which is ridiculous. We've also brought the gas down by insulating everywhere we can (can't have cavity insulation due to the type of stone apparently) installing a wood burner and replacing the windows. I want solar panels next. Our house is old so it will never be an A rating whatever we do.

[Verypissedoffwife]

I always use my drier. Even in summer because I'm lazy. I do put the towels over the radiators in the cellar though.

[Sotonwhere]

Look into whether you can get a cheaper deal elsewhere - you could be on a much too expensive tariff.
If your gas and elec are with different companies then switch to one provider giving both.

If you switch via quidco you'll get some cashbask too.

I recently switched to a green energy tariff and saved quite a bit (though not as much as if I switched to the cheapest tariff) so if you want to help your pocket and the planet and aren't trying to save absolute every penny possible that could be a good happy medium.

[hmcReborn]

Right - led light bulbs and double AA appliances for us in future. We are moving shortly to a new, similar sized house - I think I need to look at solar panels. We have wood burners in the new house. Our current house is only 14 years old and well insulated, so the mystery deepens.

[Sotonwhere]

Pissedoff get solar panels now! They're slashing the subsidy by 87% soon (April I think) so if you can it's really worth doing this ASAP

[hmcReborn]

Cripes, thanks Soton. Top of priority list for new house when we move in November then

[Verypissedoffwife]

soton thanks for the heads up I will look into it. I think I seem to remember that when we looked into it the payback was only about 18 months and then we'd be into profit.

Our house us over 100 years old with no insulation on the walls at all. If course that won't affect the electricity though just the gas. What are your gas bills like?

[Verypissedoffwife]

Led light bulbs are expensive (the ones we have are 10 quid each and we have hundreds of them - literally. But the type we bought last for years and use such a tiny amount of electricity they do pay for themselves. Probably best to wait for the new house though.

My husband had his own electrical company though so I assume he "aquired" them through work.

[hmcReborn]

Gas was quite high too - £88

[Verypissedoffwife]

Probably another tip for the new house but I've just ordered one of those "hive" control panels for the heating. I got this at half price through another ex husband. Haven't installed it yet but that's supposed to cut heating bills drastically too. It controls the temperature of each zone independently (so bedrooms can be cooler than say the lounge) and can even be operated remotely.

[hmcReborn]

Thanks Verypissedoffwife - I shall certainly look into that. I have seen the ads for Hive and wondered about it

[Nishky]

I only have a large 5 bed roomed house in my dreams -so probably wouldn't be much help

[Verypissedoffwife]

Your gas is high too. I think ours average a similar amount but your house will be so much better insulated. I like our house toasty warm. I mainly work outside the home though so just have the heating on and weekends and then maybe one/two days a week if I work from home.

[hmcReborn]

Nishky - if its any consolation, cleaning takes a lot longer and the utility bills can be high

[hmcReborn]

Yes, I am determined to make this a project for the new house Verypissedoffwife - mission: cut energy bills

[PigletJohn]

Lighting and TV are not the big culprits, it will be heating (and cooling) appliances such as immersion heater, fan heater, tumble drier, air conditioner, electric underfloor heating, and the cooker if you run a cafe or cake business. Big American-style fridge freezers are often inefficient.

The amount on one bill is not a good guide. You need to look at the actual (not estimated) meter readings between two dates and calculate the average electricity usage in kWh per day for that period. It is likely to be much higher in winter than in summer. If you have gas heating, be aware that the cost of energy from gas is about one-third the cost of energy from electricity.

Obviously you should have been using energy-saving bulbs for the past twenty years, and you should have avoided downlighters and spotlights which are absurdly inefficient, and you should not have halogen floodlights illuminating your garden.

LEDs are coming down in price and will soon be at a level where they make economic sense. Until then, the lamps which are on for long periods such as hall, landing, porch and living room should be fitted with Warm White CFLs. Osram are particularly good but the supermarket own brands are good value. They take some seconds to come to full brightness but are much faster than they were twenty years ago when some people took against them. Being so much cheaper than LEDs they have a faster payback. I just looked at Tesco and their own brands are about £3.50 - £4.00. Don't buy dim lamps. A 100 watt incandescent bulb gives out about 1250 lumens of light so look at the packaging, you will need at least that amount of light from a room pendant, and about half that from a table lamp. Powerful LED lamps are not yet widely available at sensible prices but probably will be within a year, so don't spend a lot of money on LEDs that will soon be obsolete. They are more reasonable at lower powers.

[Pico2]

We pay £131 for gas and electricity together. Have you checked that you are on the best tariff you can get?

[NattyGolfJerkin]

Also look at upgrading insulation and things where possible.

[hanahsaunt]

We have a big 5 bed house which is unoccupied during school hours but otherwise has 4 children rampaging on lots of different electronic items and we pay £66 per month and are sitting at £100 in credit with our supplier (Ovo so green energy tariff).

[wickedwaterwitch]

Ours is £420 a month for gas and electricity

I'm about to change supplier