Just read my meters & I'm crying in the bathroom

[medianewbie]

In Nov, my combi boiler broke (& I had no heat or hot water for a week). Local plumber eventually fixed but must have left it turned up higher (test?) settings than usual settings (kicking myself I didn't check after). I just inputted my monthly meter readings. I'm with Scottish Gas & they are awful for comms but this is all the info I can get from my account. My house is F rated for energy efficiency but not Chatsworth. We hardly have the heating on, only shower twice a week, no tumbledryer etc but my combined bill this month was £598.36 !!! I can't pay it. I'm disabled so they can't cut me off but they can install a prepay meter. I don't know what to do. This isn't a begging thread, or even a sympathy thread really but I have 2 asd teenagers & I don't want to worry in front of them so I needed to 'say' it somewhere.

Average household on dual fuel uses 2,900 kwh in electric a year which is 7.9 kwh a day. 5 kwh a day is far less than average.

Something is using a heck of a lot of electricity. We have only once reached 25KWh in a day - when we did about five washes and tumble dries after a holiday. To be reaching that every day is really high. Turn literally everything off and see if your meter is going up. And if not, start turning stuff back on and see what it is. For that amount of use, it's most likely something either heating or cooling. Air conditioner, hot tub, immersion heater, that sort of thing.

Where I live we had a cold snap this month. Snow on the ground for a week as it was too cold for it to melt. My gas usage will be almost double last month's.

@grgrapehyacinthisactuallyblue
I live in Scotland. For 10+ days it was about -8 so I had to keep some heating on. Not sure what you are struggling to understand about that? Plus, I'm disabled & feel the cold more too.

Yes, I was quoting rough figures at 11pm on New Year's Eve, rather than calculating to one decimal place based on out-of-date statistics. But 7.9 kWh is considerably closer to 5 than it is to 25.

Sorry if that sounded sparky. I'm off to bed now. I am very appreciative to all those who have replied, (esp on NY Eve!) Thank you.
Tomorrow I will turn everything off & then use ds' B&Q watt meter & see what I can glean. I will also call stepchange , CAB & Council when they reopen on the 4th.

@medianewbie
TBH it doesn't matter how "modern" it is - what is the power rating?
Your gas usage doesn't seem anything out of the ordinary but while your gas usage is similar to mine your electric is 3x what I've used in December - it's definitely electrical appliances and usage that need to be looked at.

As @user143677433 said - I also found that my 20+ year old fridge/freezer was using about 25-30% of all my electricity and you also have a chest freezer.

We use the dishwasher 2x a week (only 2 adults in the house) and the washing machine 1x a week - no tumble drier - we have an overhead airer in the utility room where the gas boiler is. Can you check your dishwasher is set to 30C - we just use better/more expensive dishwasher tablets and washing at 30C is fine - it wasn't with the cheaper tablets.

Remember that Dec, Jan and Feb will be far more expensive than the other months so my December bill
Gas 2335 kW.Hrs x 10.34p/kW.hr = £241.44
Gas standing charge 28.48p/day x 31 days = £8.83
Total = £250.27

Elec 216 kW.Hrs x 35.98p/kW.hr = £77.72
Elec standing charge 48.59p/kW.Hr x 31 days = £15.06
Total = £92.78

Your unit prices (kW.Hr prices) are slightly higher. Your daily rate is higher but really the standing charges don't amount to much compared to your usage costs.

How much do you use your oven? We barely use ours now - possibly once a week, maybe less. Look at December's electricity usage and see what a difference the cooking on Christmas day made.

So my bill for Dec may be £250.27+£92.78 = £343.05 but my current monthly payment of £177 has still left me in credit by £635. Are you currently in credit or debit with your supplier - can't you look at that on-line?

I'm sorry you are so upset and worried about this - you really need someone to come in and look at what you are using and how often to see of there are any changes you can make to the way you live. It's possible you are overlooking something or some appliance is actually costing you a lot more than you think; the devil's in the detail. The other thing is that you need to look at insulation in your loft - I have actually velcro'd some foil bubble wrap on many of my windows (normally you place it behind radiators) - OK it looks strange and stops light getting in but it's not every window and at this time of year there's not much light anyway - the house is definitely slightly warmer and I only set the heating to 17C during the day turn it down to 15C at night. Do you have an upstairs? Heat naturally rises so it will escape up the stair, under doors, through any gaps - heat that you have paid for - at the very least throw a big old towel or blanket down at the bottom of a door leading upstairs. The truth is - few people can afford to do nothing about the cost of energy ATM. Jan will most likely be colder than Dec and Feb possibly just as cold so you need to take a hard look at what you can do - even if it means spending a bit of money to save some. Do you really need that chest freezer? Hard decisions need to be made.

I hope your situation is either not as bad as you fear or that there are some easy changes you can make. You are not alone - there are plenty of people struggling - I know my neighbour is stressed about her energy usage ATM - it's a regular topic of conversation.

Op my bill was similar (250 on electric) and also can't work out what is costing so much although we do charge a car and have some medical equipment but it shouldn't be that much. Looked at a summer bill and it was £80 but on a fixed then. I don't really understand and I'm also so worried. Gas is almost £300 but I need warmth because of my disability. We keep it down as much as we can, we've stopped using the tumble dryer, I just don't get it.

From your graphs I'd estimate your usage for December is
Gas 2750 kW.hrs
Elec 750 kW.Hrs

compare those with mine
Gas 2335 kW.Hrs
Elec 216 kW.Hrs

Electricity usage is what you need to look at.

Anything like dehumidifiers or plug in heaters running?

Anything like dehumidifiers or plug in heaters running?

@medianewbie it’s not that different to your January 2022 reading which is a similarly cold month and December has had a very cold snap this year so I’m not surprised at the usage to be honest … what are your gas and electric prices per kwh?

It's definitely your electricity. That looks high over the year and fairly consistent usage.

Agree with the electric not being right
I WFH, so have lights on, fridge freezer, run a dehumidifier and electric airer, oven is electric plus microwave/air fryer etc
I'm careful with electric but not stingy and use about 5kwh a day

Stating that 5 is average may lead to confusion and concerns for other people. Happy to settle for 8 to remove the decimal point for other who may struggle with calculations due to the time and date.

If you have a boiler that has a smallish white pipe coming out of the bottom, you're meant to keep all the radiators on, because something about condensation and surface area of radiators. I don't know if you do have one of those boilers, but thought it might be helpful to know and may bring future bills down.

I don't know if this is helpful but I find the cheapest way for me personally is putting the heating on at 14/15/16 overnight helps keep the house warm and then I only need to put it on for short blasts in the day at 17. To me it makes sense because the night is when your home is going to lose the most heat so better to keep the heat on then and then it's less effort during the day to heat up. I turn it down to zero when I wake up and then I usually turn it back up one or two times in the day and as the days go on, it needs turning on less and less as the house stays warms. Rather than trying to heat the house up to 20 every day from below ten, or whatever it's just better to try and maintain a manageable temp like 14/15/16. I usually do 16 on the freezing cold nights and 14 on the milder nights.

Are you in a flat and any chance someone could have piggy backed your electric? Have you got an émersion heater on the water that has accidentally been switched on?

I was going to suggest an immersion heater switched on that you weren't aware of.

That's incredibly high for electric, we used 255,kwh in December, and we've been WFH have had two weeks annual leave so been at home a lot and I even put the bathroom underfloor heating on during the cold spell. Have you left an immersion heater on?

Mine's high up . So I hold my phone over my head and take a photo. Sometimes I need to take 2 or 3 to read it clearly, but much easier than standing on a chair.

You barely put the heating on and you admit your house is cold - have your kids got an electric heater hidden in their bedrooms because they are cold?

Your house seems to have a lot of circuits (11? ways in use on the first board and 6 on the additional one) - are you certain there is nothing like an old immersion heater somewhere or some old halogen floodlights outside?

As others have indicated, your electricity usage seems to be more the issue than your gas usage so I would forget about anything the engineer has or hasn't done to your boiler (if anything he'll have made it run more efficiently by servicing/adjusting it properly)

Sorry to read this OP, I hope you are able to sort this out. Did I read your post correctly in that you only shower twice per week? I’m not sure if you’ve started doing this recently due to the cost of power but thats really not good hygiene practice and I hope you are not encouraging your DC to do the same. Please make sure they shower once per day so they don’t get bullied at school.

It may seem a bit daft, but could you use your mobile phone on a selfie stick to take a picture of the meter, rather than stand on a chair?

Oh FFS, this thread isn't about showering frequency. Almost no-one will noticeably smell if they haven't showered in the last 24 hours.

@Ariela you could put your phone on the video setting and hold it in front of the meter for a few seconds. Then watch the video at the comfort of floor level, pausing if necessary.

OP, I agree with the others that your number 1 priority is working out why you're using 3 times as much electricity as you'd expect for someone who also has gas for heating. The usage seems quite consistent all year but does look to be slightly less in July and October.

You probably also want to switch to fixed rather than variable direct debit, which is only really suitable for people who have enough slack in their budget to cope with paying for all their winter heating at the time they use it. In the summer a lot of people were shocked by how much their DD needed to increase d ue to the scale of the price rises and were going to 'pay for what they use', they might be regretting doing this if they're not prepared for their winter bills.

Not daft at all, that's a great idea.