AIBU to wonder why my gas is nearly four times my electric

[issey6cats]

i live in a rented house central heating and water are gas boiler controlled everything else is electric,
i got my statement for the year from edf today my overall electric bill about £500 my overall gas bill £1890

i work part time and only am allowed to earn £5 a week over JSA or my housing benefit goes down i already have to find £120 a month towards my rent from a monthly wage of £320

two days ago i put £15 in the gas meter and its just run out even with only having the heating on for long enough to warm the house up then turning it off again ,am i being unreasonable to think that having to choose between eating or heating is shit in this country in the year 2014

and this is with a company that charges the same for prepayment as it does for quarterly bills

we don't have gas here, only oil. it is a truly shocking price and has gone up 500% over the last 10 years. all we can do is keep shopping around and changing suppliers to find it as cheap as possible.

Some gas boilers are very inefficient. Any idea how old yours is? Prepay meters tend to be worse value than billing accounts. What's the insulation like in the house? How high do you have the thermostat - room or hot water tank? How many hours a day is the heating on for?

It sounds like you have heating on and windows open. Or a very badly insulated house.

According to the link below, type gas usage is 16,500 kWh, mine is about 12,000 and my gas costs about £600. Your bill should tell you what your usage is.

www.ofgem.gov.uk/ofgem-publications/64026/domestic-energy-consump-fig-fs.pdf

Has your pre-pay meter been checked recently to make sure it's working properly? That sounds awfully high. I have just moved from a rented house with a prepayment meter (Eon) and for two of us with gas central heating / combi boiler but everything else electric, our annual usage for this year just gone was £995. Admittedly we didn't have the heating on at all during last summer - was yours still coming on while you were at work all year round, perhaps?

Can you change supplier? Some tenancy agreements lock you in but others allow you to change with the LL/HA's permission.

right insulation was done in the loft last year so high, boiler not new and though it keeps breaking down until it becomes unreperable landlord wont replace it, am not entitled to one of the free boilers as i only get housing benefit and not one of the satelite ones that means am entitled to one, house next door has been empty for months so probably some of my heating is going through the wall to empty house, and have the thermostat on at 58 degrees so only just over half way, heating on for one hour in the afternoon and one hour at around 8pm on work days and probably around 4 hours total on non work days and turned off completely between times cant wait for the weather to warm up was more a rant at how much heating costs when you are on low wages

oh and brand new gas meter

same problem here put 10 on the gas friday, by monday I had 36p and id only had tge heating on half an hour twice a day, plus my cooker is electric so that doesn't use it up. they shouldn't charge so much money for a bare essential

Regardless of your wages, your heating is costing a huge amount of money for the amount you say you're using it. I have an old, 3-bed semi, the gas heating is on from 6am to 10pm every day, the thermostat is set to 18C, we cook on gas and my gas bill for the year is only £700. You're paying a lot more than I am and your usage is far lower than mine. So something's very wrong and it would still be wrong whatever you earned.

It's the empty house next door that will bring your costs up. Also what are your windows like, a heavier curtain may help if they aren't brilliant. Check position of radiators if under Windows make sure the curtain is long enough but tuck it onto the window ledge it should help to ensure the heat doesn't escape too much.

My gas bill rocketed when the house I adjoin was empty for a year. Also the old boiler will contribute to the high costs.

the radiators are not under the windows which are big bay ones so i know some is going straight through them during the day i dare not open them lol i have lined curtains and yes the house next door is where i thought it was going, problem is the lady who owns it. It was her moms house and she want to sell it or let it but has so much sentimental attachment to it she is being really fussy who she lets it to and has the sell price too high for the area

put 10 on the gas friday, by monday I had 36p and id only had the heating on half an hour twice a day

Really?? So at the most 4 hours of gas costs around a tenner, that's £2.50 per hour. Are you sure that's right, it sounds too high to be true.

Because the connecting wall isn't built to the same standards as outside walls you will lose a lot of heat through it. To give you an idea how quickly it can drop the other year we lost gas totally and had no heating at all, when it got sorted the house was at 5º inside. We were without for about a week. The cold gets into the brickwork or stone in our case and takes a lot to reheat. It took a lot of gas to get the house to be cosy again because the walls just sucked the heat out.

yeah thats how much I nean I washed dishes obviously but that couldnt come to much, im going to get eon to cone and check incase too much gas is being released