My gas and electric bill is £242 per month!!

[Meltinthemiddle]

For 3 bed end terrace. 2 adults and 2 kids! We are with SSE and out electric £162 and gas £80. I've tried looking at others on u switch but apparently this is one of the cheaper one only saving £10 with some others. Why is it so expensive 😭

£130 a month with octopus - actual readings not estimated. 4 bed detached house, electric hob and oven, dishwasher, tumble drier, use washer a LOT, 2 teenage daughters who shower and do their hair daily.

Did you provide meter readings when you moved in - are you paying the previous occupiers arrears maybe?

No, something's wrong there. It won't be your son's hairdryer! Energy theft or a mistake with readings/previous records of these. You may be paying off arrears from when property was empty before you bought it.

Electric is 6133kWh and Gas 2976kWh 3 bed terrace. 5 occupants. Home all day

There us something seriously wrong with your gas! Ring them.

Ask them to come and check your meters aren't faulty or that someone else isn't hooked up to your supply! Also check moving in reading was correct.
I've found pure planet to be good although they do charge more in winter instead of spreading it out evenly throughout the year.

There is no rhyme or reason to it. We have paid £80 week and £80 a month for the same sized property, same usage, in same area. (We've lived in 3 properties over the past 5 years). If your bill is massive, move to a other supplier. But it's yet another deeply unfair scandal under this government.

I use 7396.4 kWh electricity per year and 16273 kWh gas per year and pay £170 per month with e-on.

Three bed semi with two teenagers who are on a mission to leave all the lights on, and DH works from home. We have the hearing on full blast all winter because I hate being cold (and because of lockdown DCs were at home all day for most of the winter)

Your gas use is high, OP.

At one point my DD increased massively- similar to the OPs and I thought they'd over estimated how much energy I would use over the winter, and insisted on paying less - I was right, my direct debit didn't need to be that high. How much is your account in credit? You should build up credit over the summer so it evens out over the winter, but you don't need to be over paying drastically. Have you made sure you're on the cheapest tariff? You don't always need to change supplier, just the tariff you're on.

We used this last year:

Elec - 3530 kWh

Gas - 28400.62 kWh

We have a big old drafty 4 bed so use a lot of gas in the winter. We don't moderate what we use. There's only two of us though.

We only pay £134 pcm. And it was £105 until I had to renew a few months back.

my parents who live in a 5 bed with my 4 siblings and have 2 living rooms and lots of devices, tv's in every room 2 fridge freezers etc. thought they were paying a lot and switched but there's was about 200 and now they've switched it's about 170, that seems a crazy amount, I would definitely look at what is using a high amount and really search again for quotes it should at the very least be under 200

Oh my god my electric bill is £367 per month !!

No tumble drier, dont use oven, no heating on, but do have 3 freezers,

Something not right ,

We have 4 of us in a 3 bed and both WFH. Ours is £100 pcm for gas and elec combind x

You may be paying off arrears from when property was empty before you bought it.

I had this on a rental. Contract for electric, key meter for gas. They wouldn't put gas in my name insisted it had to be in landlords name. I changed company and the gas bill halved. I know they were using me to pay off an existing debt, which was not my debt. Landlord had only just bought the property so it wasn't their debt either.

Other thing is does property have a damp problem? Makes the property feel cold somehow so you end up using more heating.

OP, for comparison we use about 14000 gas and maybe around 4000 electric. Are those your actual annual averages? You're using about 50% more gas than us and nearly twice as much electricity. Our electricity use is already above average so yours is huge.

We're 2 people in a well insulated 2 bed semi with a large ground floor extension with a combi boiler gch and electric oven, shower and dishwasher.

I WFH and did put the heating on quite a bit in the daytime last winter, but it didn't put the bills up a huge amount. We're also not as good as we should be at turning lights off etc, but we only use the dryer in winter and line or airer dry as much as possible.

Is your shower electric? Does your DS take really long in the shower? Someone worked out on a previous thread like this that a lot of long showers with an electric shower could cost £30 a month on its own.

You can get cheap electric use meters that work out the use of plug in appliances but if your shower is electric, you'll have to do the maths to work it out.

I'm in a 2 bed ground floor flat, have the heating on if the outside temperature drops below 17, I have it on from 7.00am to 10.00am & 3.00pm to 9.30pm, have most of the lights on from when it starts to go to dusk, dry everything in the tumble dryer, have a dishwasher & electric shower & only pay £69 with EonNext. I've even had money back in previous years, I do get the £140 Warm homes discount because I'm disabled & on benefits.

Some ideas, OP. Besides checking for faults and changing supplier!

Appliances plugged in but not in use, can use up to 5 or 10% of your bill (I've seen different estimates) - I have smart plugs that turn things like TVs, lights etc off at bedtime or when not in use.

I did some work to reduce draughts, which kept the place warmer = less heating. I bought some foam weather stripping and put it where there were gaps in exterior doors/windows. At the bottom of the external doors, I put door sweeps and inside, door snakes. There was a noticible improvement in the indoor temperature.

I bought an electric throw blanket and wear jumpers, slippers etc inside to minimise heating. In summer, I draw the curtains to keep the heat out and use a fan rather than put the aircon on. But of course I don't let it get uncomfortable, I'm just using it when I really need it.

Oh and I do my washing at 30c - the heating of the water is quite a bit of the cost per load. I put in laundry sanitiser to deal with any nasties and it comes out clean.

Wow your usage is very high. We have an electric car and a green fuel tariff and still not that high in a north-facing 4 bed home, with 2 pple wfh full time. Seems to me something is wrong.

Even with smart meters things go wrong; my mum wasnt billed for gas for an entire year, I phoned twice and they just said, "oh the meter is dodgy, not always [or apparently ever!] taking readings, it will catch up" and eventually it did. Very odd.

I'd suspect something is wrong in the other direction in your case. Ideas:

• Have a boiler service, check nothing leaking.
• run the tap - if it's scalding you can afford turn it down a few degrees at the boiler
• stop having very long power showers. 5 mins tops.
• heating only flicks on if house goes below 16 degrees in late evening/overnight.
• check appliances and relevant chargers are being turned off /put on standby at night
• stop using the tumble dryer. Use a heated drying rack with a cover in one of your colder rooms - we have ours in a chilly extension where there's no central heating, it makes the room toasty.
• on a cold day stand by your doors and windows. If it feels cold or even draughty your window seals might be faulty.
• do you have a fireplace? Ours funnelled in cold air. We bought a chimney sheep to help with the draughtiness.
• check energy ratings on appliances

But it's yet another deeply unfair scandal under this government.
Oh dear.

* But it's yet another deeply unfair scandal under this government*

Oh don’t be daft
You can see on this thread that most people have far lower bills

Does your son have a big computer/gaming station he leaves on? Our electric use dropped loads when our son moved out.

But you do need to check to see if you are paying off debt with that gas charge. You can work out the actual usage from the meter reading s so you need to do that as priority.

If it turns out you are paying off a debt it can be a pain to sort out unfortunately. Citizens advice might have useful info on their website, they deal with energy companies a lot.

Goodness and I was moaning to myself last night that our bill has gone upto £85 pm from £79pm. I’m in a 4 bed detached, it is new build though and I do notice a huge difference from the older property we were in. We are with EDF.

@Meltinthemiddle Our annual Kwh is similar to yours, our electricity is 5500 though, we pay £159 a month with Octopus which was a Uswitch deal and we are £357 in credit as at 1st September.

You need to switch suppliers and do a cost comparison on the standing charge rates as well as the cost per Kwh for both gas and electricity.

energy suckers

• games consoles. insist on them being switched off when not in use
• power shower. add shower to combi boiler if possible. or switch to a shower with timer.
• spa bathtubs with heating element
• immersion heater
• electric underfloor heating. took us ages to figure out what that switch was doing...
• summer house with electricity
• halogen lights
• aircon units
• fan heaters
• short cycles on washer or dishwasher
• tumble dryer

Definitely something wrong with that bill if you have a combi boiler (ie no separate water heater) and you haven't been using the heating.

Can you switch all devices off for one hour and switch them back on room by room and monitor the meter?

@Peanutsandchilli

5 bed detached, at home all the time as my husband is wfh. 5 children, loads of devices, washing and dryer on constantly and we pay less than £200 a month for both gas and electric. Yours seems rather high to me.

Who are you with if you don't mind me asking? Very similar situation to you and I've just been told our bill is going up by £100, to £350 pm. Checked usage compared to last 2 years and hasn't changed!

Our gas and electric useage are almost identical @Meltinthemiddle and we’re in a 4 bed detached house. It’s gone up a bit in the last couple of years because we’ve been home more plus we’ve added a second fridge freezer, a chest freezer and we seem to have a lot of devices that need charging etc.

Our bill has almost doubled in the last year even though the increase in usage is nothing like double. We were in a great fixed rate that we can’t touch now. We have a smart meter now and are with Octopus. Not sure they’re the cheapest but do think their customer service is excellent and using them is very straightforward.

Your usage and costs seem very high for your property so definitely need investigation.