To think £250 on gas and electric is far too much?

[Curiousmum69]

I'm currently paying £250 a month for gas and electricity on a 4 bed semi detached pretty standard house. Aibu to think this is crazy high.

What are others paying and how can I reduce this

Wait op, you just said this is a quarterly bill??

The quarterly was £600 odd for electricity and OP never gave gas figures. OP had then worked that out as around £250 per month for both

£250 a quarter isn't expensive.

Mines £130 a month.

From earlier in the chat

Your tariff is Standard
20 Nov 2018 - 31 Dec 2018
Standard energy 1605.kWh at 16.97p £272.36
Standing charge 42.days at 18.26p £7.67
01 Jan 2019 - 18 Feb 2019
Standard energy 1871.kWh at 15.76p £294.87
Standing charge 49.days at 20.02p £9.81
VAT 5.00%
(on charges of £584.71)
£29.23
Total electricity charges this period £613.94

Fix how are you not cold at 18.5? Even my sweaty DH starts feeling the chill at about 19.5! My extremities would be turning blue!
Ours is set at 20.5, having been at 21. Not a huge amount of cost difference so I might just turn it back up!

Ours is set at 17 and 12 overnight and if we're cold a blanket goes on. I've been away with friends all week who have it set to*20 and I've been schlepping around in t shirts all week.

OP you definitely have a problem somewhere. Are your teens leaving gaming stuff on? Could you be wired to 2 properties? Get an electrician in to investigate.

I have a 3 bed semi and no double glazing. Heating is set at 19 degrees from 6am til 9.30pm, so kicks in whenever the temperature drops below that. We are not particularly careful about switching lights off etc and I dry most of my washing in the tumble dryer. My gas and electric combined is £89 a month all year round by direct debit.

We were paying £180pm with co operative energy and they wanted to increase it to £250pm .Our house is large 3 bed victorian semi-detached .We have two vivarium's on 24hrs a day and do use tumble dryer .No cavity wall and single glaze huge bay windows.But even i was like no way we don't use that much .Swapped to bulb and bill has gone down by over £70pm yet we are not doing anything different .

Sorry, that is £250 per month.

£175 for electricity and £75 for gas.

Annoying as we've had a new combi boiler and loft insulation in prep for this winter and somehow our bill has doubled!!!

We same almost the same as that OP. We live in a Victorian 4 bed semi with very high ceilings and dodgy windows. We also have a lot of electricity guzzling gadgets and I work less than 10 hours a week, so there is almost always someone in the house

I live in a 1 bedroom ground floor apartment, really tiny. We don't have gas, only electric so its electricity that heats the radiators. Paying about £200 a month at least in winter when we have to have the heating on, and we use it very sparingly because of the cost. Landlord won't have gas put in so we don't have much choice :(

Yeah, gas is sensible, electric has spiked.

Tumble driers, electric showers, and electric heaters are all power hogs. If habits there have changed it could explain it.

Are your teenagers geeks? Is it possible they're doing cryptocurrency mining?

A meter fault or faulty appliance is possible of course.

You are getting ripped off. Go on Money Supermarket and get yourself a better deal. Also contact your provider, your definitely due a refund.

Wow U.K. utilities are cheap! I pay $350 a month for 4 bed detached here in US.

Just a thought, are your neighbours connected to your supply? Can you smell Cannabis?

@PigletJohn might be able to suggest possible problems with the new combi that could eat electricity.

Also a gas tumble dryer would cost about £300 but has very low running costs.

I would check that you electric meter isn't running quicker than it should.

I have been involved with properties through work that that been billed twice or three times as much as they should, because the meter was running faster than it should be

I worked in the industry for years.

Fast running meters are very rare. Not unheard of but very rare. Meters slow down or stop far more than they speed up. Youvcan request a meter accuracy test from your utility company. Usually they are free if your meter is running fast, but if the meter is accurate they will charge. Usually around £50.

I pay £30 a month electric and £50 a month for gas in winter. In a 3 bed terrace that needs it's Windows replacing. It's not terribly efficient.

I am on a smart meter and pay as you go. Pay as you go tariffs are no longer more expensive that monthly/quarterly billing. The pay as you go tariffs are now set by OFGEM not the companies themseleves.

I reduced my consumption hugely by having the smart meter. Took a few weeks of watching and when it spiked, I checked what was on. Would switch stuff off and then go back and check. I have an electric oven, that uses alot when heating up but not when it's reached its the temperature needed.

I also figured out that some lighting was using alot.

The tumble dryer will be using a big amount of electric.

Big, 4 bed detached, with lots of draughts and 2 kids. We pay £110 a month for both.

Something odd going on with your usage, OP, to go up 50% in a year.

looking at some numbers I saw above...

20 Nov 2018 - 31 Dec 2018
Standard energy 1605.kWh at 16.97p £272.36
That's a usage of about 41 kWh/day

01 Jan 2019 - 18 Feb 2019
Standard energy 1871.kWh at 15.76p £294.87

That's electricity, at a usage of about 48 kWh/day

We will assume that these are actual, not estimated figures. Have you checked them?

I think that you have some electric heaters running.
Might be in a bedroom, might be in a shed, might be in the garage of loft. That's a lot of energy so you would notice the heat.

If you want, you can go and stand by your electricity meter and observe how fast the red light flashes (or how fast the disk spins, if you have one)

Then look at your consumer unit. You will probably have some MCB for sockets. Tourn one of them off. Does the meter speed change? Then another. Until you've turned them all off. The meter should now stop.

It won't be lights (unless you have an array of halogen downlighters), nor will it be computers, TV or phone chargers. Have you got a hot-water cylinder with an electric immersion heater in it? or a swimming pool?

Definitely no electric heaters swimming pools.

We got rid of the electric immersion when we got the new boiler...So we used to have one. But not amymore

That does seem very high. It's what I pay for a large stone built cottage with 6 bedrooms and I like it warm.

It's running 2 boilers( one 50 years old and one 10 years old) and a 30 year + fridge and 2 elderly freezers. They aren't broken so I'm not replacing yet!

My usage is pretty static, single person living in mid terraced house, combi boiler, iPad, iPhone computer, satellite box, dishwasher, tumble dryer and washing machine. My bill is paid over the year and up to 31/01/19 my quarterly bill was £267 for 650 units elec and 3660 units gas.

I use around 9500 kw hours for gas and 2600 for elec. I pay £74 monthly, last year £64 monthly and 2017 £54 monthly.

Comparison sites use 12000 for gas and 3100 for electric. Get a book and take weekly meter readings. Photo the meter
Then calculate your usage from that. But it is more than 3 times mine.

My electric is about £100/month. No gas, but oil is probably £1000 pa.

We pay when averaging it out over the year about £80 per month on a three bed, three storey relative new build.
We had smart meters put in, Ive worked out that the old PS4 was eating the electricity up on weekends, evenings and holidays. We replaced it with a new one at Christmas and it's not eating as much electricity now.