Smart meters - how accurate are they?

[Zaphodsotherhead]

I've just moved into a new house. Tiny cottage, two (and a half) bedrroms, downstairs bathroom. Heating is two new-fangled gel filled radiators downstairs, no heating upstairs (well, plug in radiators but I've not even tried plugging them in yet). Immersion tank.

Moved in mid Jan. Got my first electricity bill a couple of weeks ago. Apparently I have a smart meter (never wanted nor asked for one, but I assume the previous owner left one) and my actual bill, for one month, is, apparently nearly £200!

Now, I know things got a bit lax when I was moving, heating on more than usual to warm up the house which had been empty, so I'm paying up on this one. I've turned the immersion tank to only come on for 1 hour a day and only have the heating on for an hour in the evening, but my question is...how accurate are smart meters? Does £200 for a month in a tiny cottage even sound feasable, and what do I do if next month it's similarly high? Is there any way I can query it?

I don't have the little 'viewer' thing for the smart meter which I guess would alert me to high drain devices. Apparently it's somewhere in the house, guess I ought to dig that one out.

This is what they don’t tell you about rural living, it’s bloody freezing and costs a fortune but I heard on r4 the government wants gas phasing out as a source of fuel so I don’t think they’ll be in any rush to connect villages.

Our neighbours had a gas tank, 10 years ago it cost her £500 a month to heat the house in winter. It was a 5 bed detached basically on the edge of a field.

Fluffy - yes! The old house was oil fired heating, and I literally could not afford, as a single person, to put oil in the tank. One tank (£500) would heat the old house for about a month!

Sigh. I've already paid the extortionate bill. HouseofCrayCray, I realised there was a reference number on the NEW bill, but I didn't have that until after I'd moved. I wanted to switch before I moved, but obviously couldn't. Now I have one bill with a reference number I can switch any time. I'm going to wait to see what the next bill (due any minute) is. Good point about it maybe covering days before I moved in. The immersion tank was still firing up twice a day and the heating was on low before I moved in, so that may have accounted for some of it.

There's no thermostat on the immersion tank. About four people have looked. (so it may be internal). I wanted to turn it down after the first time I was scalded, but we settled for having it on less. Can't put the washer outside, there's no water or power to the shed and nowhere else for it to go - and I prefer clean clothes and putting a little bit of effort into the dishes!

It’d be very unusual to not have a stat on a tank, if the name of the tanks visible you could google the instruction manual.

Mil asked me to turn down the water temp on her gas combi boiler and the bill reduced and stayed down.

I think they set them high for legionnaires disease but your more likely to catch that from not putting screenwash additive in your car washer bottle than from a domestic water supply from what I’ve read.

Did you let the supplier know you'd moved in though, was the bill addressed to yourself?

How long are your radiators on for?

No, no visible thermostat. We've googled and got inconclusive answers, now it's down to once a day I'm not quite so worried!

Yes, HouseofCrayCray, there have been many, many many phone calls to the supplier (geting them to acknowledge I'd moved out of one house was bad enough) and the bill was addressed to me.

Dodie66 the radiators were left on for too long when I was first moving in, I think that may have been part of the problem. During the process I was sort of living in two houses as I swapped over (I've only moved 100 yards) and getting to grips with the new radiators was a challenge. Now I usually only have one on (it's a very small house!) for about an hour a day, but it depends, obviously, on the weather. I'm not bothering with the programmable option on them, I work random shifts so it's not worth programming for 7 days and then having to reprogramme next week - I'll just shove them on for a bit if it gets cold (and turn them off before I go to work.)

Thanks for all the help, encouragement, sympathy and advice.

I feel your pain, I live naturally, no gas. I had 2 oil filled radiators on during the day and just switch on the immersion when I need a bath but try and shower at work when I can. My electricity is £180 a month in winter. On my immersion there is a round plastic cover at the bottom covering the element, you unscrew this then there is a tiny blue plastic screw which you turn with a screw driver to adjust the temp (it does have temp numbers around it)

Thanks, Bsforbert. I'm going to have a poke later, see if I can find the thermostat. There must be one!

It;s just the cost that worried me. I'm single, and £200 is a third of my monthly income, i can't keep that sort of level up for long!

Is there a separate heating control panel anywhere that also controls hot water?.

I wonder if they fitted the tank back to front and the stats hidden from view?. Which would be a major fuck up.

No, each radiator has separate manual controls and the water heater is completely separate (it's not central heating, just radiators). Immersion tank has been in for a while and all looks correctly fitted. i even, to my shame, got a 'bloke who knows about these things' to have a look (my experience with electrical heating items is limited) and HE couldn't find the thermostat either! I'm going to go down and have a prod later in case it's hidden by a plastic cover masquerading as something else, as suggested by Befor.

If all else fails I'll text the previous owner and ask him if he knows where it is. Although now I've knocked the timer down to once a day I'm hoping that the immersion tank won't be such an issue. As someone said above, it really is just a giant kettle, isn't it?

If it’s not central heating and you have to put the heaters on manually there probably won’t be a thermostat. We have electric radiators and the thermostat is on the radiator no in the room. You can set the read Ia tor’s to different levels and they turn off and on to keep at the set temperature. Hope that helps

It's the thermostat in the immersion tank that's in question, *Dodie66, so I can turn the water temperature down. I know there's no thermostat for the heating (well, there sort of is, there will be one built in to each radiator so it turns off when the desired temperature is reached).