Can I ask about power bills - shocked really!

[Ozgirl75]

So, my DH and I are currently in Australia and are moving back to the U.K. and renting at first. We’ve been asking about power bills and have been absolutely taken aback at how high they are and I wondered if this was just how it is, or if we’re looking to rent from people who just have the heating on all the time!

4 bed houses, normally 1-2 living areas, energy costs coming in at around £800-1000 a month? I knew they had gone up in the U.K. but this seems so high? We pay about £200 a month here, and maybe £300 in the hot summer months.

This seems to be the feedback whether there’s a mixture of oil and electricity, gas, or just electricity.

So are families of 4 mainly paying around £1000 a month on all power or does this seem really high? We’re not looking at mansions, just normal 4 bed family homes.

This was my usage last month. Will have used a bit more this month as we've had colder weather. 4 bed detached house in Scotland

I think it’s naive to think a log burner heats the whole of a large house. It simply doesn’t. It will keep one room warm but wood is about £100 per builders bag (which would last about ten days max if keeping the fire going all day)

A log fire keeps the downstairs pleasant and then a little burst of heating in the morning. The house we grew up in had no central heating (old cottage) and although it was chilly in the morning, it wasn’t unbearable. My parents still live there now and pay about £10 a day on electricity and have a log delivery.
This is reassuring - thanks for sharing your bills, it’s eased my mind a bit!

Can't speak to Oil heating costs as we are standard gas and electricity. We are a small 4 bed, with 3 adults all of whom work from home. We are moderate with the heating, so hung on until the really cold snap in mid/late November to put it on during the day but we do now have it on all day from 7am until around 8pm set at 19 degrees. Have usual amounts of washing, use dishwasher daily and tumble dryer probably just once or twice a week for towels/bedding.

We pay £280 per month at the new price cap prices and are forecast to be a couple of hundred in credit after a period of 12 months. We have been with the same supplier for several years now so they have good historic usage data to base that prediction on (and have always been pretty accurate in the past) and we have smart meters so those figures are based on actual usage rather than estimates.

Unless you're really profligate with the heating then I should think you could budget around £300 per month to be comfortable. You need other opinions for oil however as I have no experience of that.

I'd say a 4 bed with two living areas is big for the UK, not a typical family home. A family of four would be more likely to be in a three bed semi. If you look online at the EPC for a house you might be interested in it will tell you the estimated energy usage for basic use, lighting, heating, hot water I think. Ignore the costs as they will be outdated.

Do bear in mind that the price cap will go up to £3k for average usage in April as well.
If people are giving the figure at current prices and with the £66 a month discount currently in place it may well rise.

Mine is currently about £66 a month after the discounts so it would be £130 so call that £150-160 and I keep the house pretty cool, and also have a small house. I have colleagues running big (i.e. 4 or 5 bed detached) houses who are paying £400 currently so it could be nearly £600 once the £66 has gone and the price cap has moved.

Mum and dad use probably 1000L of oil every 8 months or so maybe? Decent sized 3 bed, poorly insulated. They keep the heating at 18. 1000L in 49 days is bonkers.

Well we’re now looking to rent a place with a budget of £1000 for energy bills and then hopefully we’ll be pleasantly surprised 😄
It does mean we’re spending less on rent but that’s only a good thing!

4 bed house in East Anglia (so a relatively mild climate). Detached (so no one else's heating to benefit from). Approx 24 years old, so reasonably well insulation but not current standards.

Use approx 1,200-1,500 litres of oil a YEAR, depending on how cold the winters is. 1,000 in a month is very high usage.

BUT I'd be wary of houses where you are being told these kind of figures, as they do relate to those specific houses not mine or another posters.

I have friends paying over £1000 a month for energy. Both have very old Victorian houses, not large, but difficult to insulate

We have a large 4 bed detached, currently spending around £350 a month although will be £450ish this month due to the cold snap.

Heating generally around 19 degrees, electric fire in one room that’s probably on an hour or so a day and we tumble dry maybe 1-2 loads a day.

and we’re on pay as you go so unit charge will be higher than DD - we’re on PAYG because the supplier wanted to up our direct debit to £800 per month…so we said no!

Ours is currently around £20 per day, but there's 2 of us working from home and 3 kids off school. This month is going to be really high, I'm expecting around £650, but I think it's an outlier. I pay £270 a month direct debit.

I work from home in a 4bed, we use the dishwasher, tumble dryer and washing machine daily. Daily baths and showers and quite high heating use, it's set for 3hrs every morning, maybe oan hour or so during the day and then about 3 hours of an evening and my most recent bill was £450. I'm expecting the same for the next few months but then probably will be around £250 when it warms up.

It does tend to vary wildly to be honest. We are in a 3 bed semi, we spend about £350 combined on gas and electric at the moment but - we don’t have our heating on much as we know it’s expensive. We have it on twice a day for 2 hours. If we left it on all day set to 19 as we used to we’d be looking at £500-600ish (we’ve tried it). Something to be aware of is it’s not just the energy prices that have gone up; everything has. Cost of living in general. I used to get away with spending £80-100 a week on food for 4 of us and now I’m easily spending £140 ish. It’s very hard to spend less, everything is expensive.

I've just checked my last oil refill which was £1k in May (prices had risen from Ukraine war etc). I will need to order some soon so that will be 10 months as per @Augend23 above do £125 per month. That includes summer months and I've been careful this winter but no where near using in 49 days!!! I do have a log burner but usually only on for weekend evenings etc

My electricity is c£35/£40 per week so £150 per month (on smart meter so before discounts) and that includes tumble drier and cooker as no gas here.

All in c£275 average, so winter probably c£400 or up to £500 in a v cold month and including logs

The energy bills have gone up but not that high! We are a four bed, three bathrooms,
open plan downstairs built in 1847. We pay around £120 a month (but use more like £70 in summer). We’ve looked after the house so it’s well insulated, but we’ve got three kids so we can’t have them shivering. I have the thermostat at 19 for the hours in morning and same in evening and 14 during the day, 12 overnight. We’ve got a healthy chunk of credit, esp with the government paying in £66 a month right now. Pre energy hikes we paid about £80 a month and had heating a bit higher.

4 bed house with three of us, but I am at home most of the week

£150ish a month on electricity, I change my DD each month
At the moment I have a DD of £75 going out a month and I am topping that up with the electricity refund so £140, and get 1500 litres a year, heating is in 2 hours in the morning and between 4 and 6 hours in the evening, south coast, once it gets very low in spring then we switch to showers to save on oil

We had 1000 litres oil delivered in sept..so far we have used 300 litres so not sure what they are doing that uses 1000 litres in a few months. We like our house around 17-19 degrees and use oil to heat water twice day. 3 bed house!

I have a large 5 bed old house with an oil central heating and an oil powered aga. Also a woodburner (we do get free wood though)

We use a maximum of 3000l of oil a year. So at 1k a litre thats £250 per month average. Our last fill a few weeks ago was 74p a litre, so thankfully the price has dropped.

However although our oil useage is high, our electricity isn’t too bad. considering the size of the house. we pay approx £100-£120 per month. Scottish power variable rate. That has gone up a lot too as it used to be more like £60-£80.

2 adults and 2 primary age kids. Central heating on an hour in the morning and a couple of hours after school. Woodburner on in evenings.

Definitely not normal for us.

We have a fairly big 4 bed detached, it was built 4 years ago, so is, admittedly, very energy efficient. We both wfh and pay about £100 a month in electricity. We have oil heating and put £125 a month into a savings account for oil top ups as and when needed. We use about 10% of our oil tank a month atm (120 litres) and I've just paid £430 for 500l of oil, which I hope should last us the rest of winter. I track prices and order when it's low, if I'd waited and ordered a week later this time I would have paid £600 for the same order, so it's definitely worth being aware. We keep the thermostat at 19 degrees during the day as we both work from home and heating was on for 4-5hrs a day when it was cold. Now it's warmer again it's about 45 mins a day.

Our wood burner saves us some money as we use that in the evenings, which often means the heating doesn't need to kick in. That costs us about £135 every 3 months or so for a load of wood.

Tldr; £800-1000 a month is obscene unless you're looking at some huge, draughty Victorian house or keeping the heating at tropical levels at all times. I'd definitely be looking to rent a modern, well-insulated house in the current climate, though. We wanted a picturesque, old, rambling cottage when we were looking to move, but I'm so relieved we bought a modern, efficient house in the end.

We heat our house on 1000 litres a year. Ok it's a small 3 bed semi ut we are never cold in winter. Granted we only use the oil to heat the water in the summer but 1k litres for 49 days is ridiculous. My muns house which us detached with 4 bedrooms and two reception would never use this amount. A 1000 litres would probably heat the house all winter. Though it's heartbreaking to look at oil prices this time last year.

There does seem to be an issue when people move house being given ridiculously high direct debits.

My small, B rated on EPC, three bed semi with two of us costs over £1000 a year at current rates, which are going up by 20% in April.

5 bed detached house we just got our quarterly bill it was £300

So we are £100 a month for electricity and I'm home all day. We aren't using tumble dryer anymore. Dishwasher going on twice a day though.

Heating is oil and log burner.

We’re paying £250 a month for a large 4 bed house and have an electric car. We’re currently in significant credit.
Our house is 150 years old but it’s well insulated and rarely drops below 16 which will be helping to keep our bills down.

We filled our oil tank (1200l) in August ..it has 12 bars and we have used 1 bar for hot water

There oil consumption see way over