Can i ask your energy costs in an old house?

[Itsallabouttea]

Just trying to gauge how common our situation is!
We moved to a 3 bed Victorian end terrace last summer, typical house of the period, solid walls and EPC rating D. Prior to this I was a lodger with bills included so had little awareness of the cost. At the moment we're spending £8-9 a day just to be remotely comfortable - heating on for a couple of hours in the morning and maybe 3 in the evening. We both work from home and the house constantly feels absolutely Baltic - even when the heating's been on for hours it never gets above 16°. Is this just normal for houses of this age and are we destined to be bankrupt by the energy bill? We're paying 27p kWh for electricity, 7 for gas with Octopus

I have a 3 bed mid terrace. Heating on for 1 hour in the morning and 4 on an evening, got it to between 17 and 17.5 this week🥶

This is pretty much the same as me, and I’ve just been billed £300 for December from Octopus

Don't forget that you will usually find you are also a shareholder via your pension investments. Even Nest is invested in the FTSE so you're likely to have some energy profit exposure. Having said that, the reason prices have gone up is mainly lack of the usual capacity planning because COVID, and lack of gas supply due to the war & sanctions. It'll come back down eventually but it's not corporate greed that's the problem. It's poor long term planning, contingency and bad luck.

Also in a Victorian end of terrace, 3 bedroom with the third one in the loft. Gas heating and electric everything else.

I think for January we are going to be up to about £300 for gas and elec, with Eon next rates same as yours, OP.

Actually we just got a smart meter installed a couple of weeks ago. I can't stop bloody looking at it.. realised the little fan heater my husband was using in his office at the top of the house wfh during the day was eating up electricity so now he's got a slightly better oil filled radiator plus a heated throw! Also today got a heated blanket for our bed...! Will be keeping a close eye in the electric usage!

We have heating on for 1-2 hours in the morning and about 4 hours (or bit.more) from 4pm as we just can't stand how cold it feels by that point...!

We also have a woodburner in the lounge which helps keep us warm in the evening once the kids are in bed!

I have separate thermostats for upstairs and downstairs, which I think helps. Bedrooms are heated morning and evening without wasting energy trying to heat the rest of the house.
Unused rooms have the heating off and door closed.

I dread to think how much it would cost to try to heat the entire house.

Detached Sandstone house in Scotland. Baltic (8° at 7am, heating on for 4 hours to reach 14°). Bills around 450pcm in winter.

I live in a townhouse (it was a new build - but it’s 9 years old now). 3 bed mid terrace, I pay £77 a month for gas & elec from Apr-Oct, in Nov-Mar it goes up to about £95-£100 a month. I have the heating on 6am-7:30, 4-8pm. Very rarely drops below 18 unless we have a real cold snap. That’s with Scottish power.

(just realised you asked for old houses - oops - sorry OP!)

Why aren't we rioting in the streets? We live in a cold wet country and fucking basic heating is a luxury spend in 2024.

@marmaladeandpeanutbutter I can assure you that regardless of double glazing and loft insulation, the difference between a house with cavity walls and an older property with solid walls (single skin in our case) is vast.

Ours is DD £190 a month all.year, keep at 18.5° 7am- 8.30pm & 15° over night. 1930s 3 bed big detached bungalow. Loft very well insulated, it not expensive to buy a few rolls & bung it up in the loft. Plus what really helps is the dehumidifier we run it max 2hrs morning & night now it's a fairly good sized one 30l per day ability. Keeps us at about 55% to 60% levels costs about 15p per hour. When we first got it. We had mould & condensation problems, it ran full tilt for days humidity level was about 88% now stays aroun the 55% mark & place just feels so much warmer & any washing drys so much quicker.

3 bed Victorian mid-terrace, about £9 a day at the moment. I have heating on from 7am - 8pm, but pretty low. The house is comfortable but I do wear thermals etc as well.

I think if I was as leaving as long gaps as the OP is it would cost more, as the house would get so cold then it costs so much to crank it up to get the house remotely warm. If I went 20 hours (evening to evening) with just having the heating on for 1 hour inbetween in the morning, it would never get warm at any point. 3 hours heating would only make a tiny dent in the cold as well.

@Copen this is what I've done for the last couple of days as you're right about the house getting super cold inbetween bursts of heating

I also have an older house, I couldn’t heat it up as soon as the heating did go off you’d feel it instantly however I went out and purchased a dehumidifier that can be placed in the centre of the house it switches off once the levels are correct to the setting took a few days/week of constant running for long term gains- it was about £170 which was a bit of a risk but within a few days we really felt the difference..
turned out the air was damp, humidity level were nearing 80% initially but as soon as the dehumidifier bought down the levels the air was able to heat up, now considering installing piv unit as a more permanent lower cost solution now we know the dehumidifier has worked

I had a different but terrible experience with Ovo. Absolutely incompetent and we actually got lied to by one advisor. Agree steer clear! Ours is horrific OP its the downside of having a lovely old house, ideal in the summer though as ours stays cool!

Large Victorian house, heating on 23 degrees all day, underfloor heating downstairs, around £1000 per month 😣

Dry air is easier to hear than moist air. A dehumidifier is OK, but should be used in conjunction with active ventilation – fans in the kitchen and bathroom, not drying clothes in the house and opening your windows for 20 minutes morning and evening to create a cross ventilation. You could consider an PIV unit too. Insulate your loft properly and under floorboards also.

That sounds about right for the moment unfortunately, octopus is one of the more expensive companies though. Have you checked if you could save by switching?

I don't live in an old property like yours, mine was built in the 60s, a large 3 bed end of terrace. My thermostat is set to 15 (located by front door so other rooms normally between 17 and 19). We have separate thermostats and circuits for upstairs and downstairs, upstairs is on 6pm to 6am, kicks in as and when needed as I have 3 year old asleep upstairs and downstairs has been on 24/7 for the last two weeks as I am sleeping downstairs with our 2 week old. On milder days like 21st January we are using approx £6-7 for gas and electric, and the Baltic days last week it was more like £8-£11

Maybe try keeping it on low all day and let the thermostat kick in as and when needed, apparently this is more economical, but I'm not sure, if it wasn't for my newborn I wouldn't have it on 24/7 I must admit.

Energy bills are a joke nowadays

We live in a 3 bedroom new built and I pay about £11-£12 a day (gas + electricity)
OK we need to heat, we have a baby and we’re WFH but yeah the meter goes up
in this weather

I would suggest getting a room heater, for small rooms they are much more effective and you can save heating the whole house. We have a newer home (approx 20 years old) but it is big and we find it much more cost effective to just heat the rooms we are in during the day. So I work from home so have the room heater on in my study as and when I need it. The rest of the house is on timer similar to what you mentioned, few hours in the morning and evening. We pay £260 for gas and electric combined it is a 5 bed house.

Our house isn’t old but about two years ago it was struggling to heat up. Was taking literally all day to get to 20 which is where my mum likes it. Now it heats from 15 to 20 in an hour. Only difference is that we had a new boiler and had our radiators cleaned.

Although it will initially feel like an additional cost, I really would try opening the windows and using dehumidifiers upstairs and downstairs to try to get to the point where you are definitely not trying to heat damp air.

That seems quite high OP. I have a late victorian 4 bed detached house,. I've installed double glazed windows & new exterior doors. 20cm insulation & boarding in the loft, more insulation between the eaves.

I spend £135 a month on heating. I wfh.

I have a log burner to provide extra heat on very cold nights or if there is a power cut, but otherwise mostly rely on gas. I've been gradually adding insulation, in preparation for a gshp eventually.

I'm with OVO and only pay for what I use.

We’ve got a 6-bed Victorian house with single-glazed sash windows. Lots of heavy curtains here over windows and doors. There’s a few rooms we don’t heat but we have the heating on from 6am to 11pm and it’s about £700 a month Dec and Jan looks like it’ll be the same. We pay £330 DD monthly and are still using the credit built up over the summer. This is with Octopus.

Victorian semi, 4 bed. We pay £220 a month DD and always in credit at the end of winter.

We did change the boiler to a weissman last year and seem to be using about £50 less a month so will have paid for itself in a few years. Generally keep the thermostat to 17 24hrs a day, although it's in the hallway so the rest of the house is a bit warmer than that.

Just wanted to say, if you've got damp air, a leaking roof and not heating much, definitely be careful of any furniture on external walls. Last year we tried using our heating less and everything in the built in wardrobes in the alcoves went mouldy 😩. Stupid mistake on our part really. This year we fixed the roof and installed extractor fans and run a dehumidifier 24/7 and it probably is a bit better. Suspect the cavity insulation is wet though. There's definitely a lot to be said for letting walls breathe as they were intended so I'd definitely second getting an independent survey/advice before using any kind of grant scheme so you know what you want doing and don't just follow dud advice. I found an independent guy online and he was so lovely! The problem with the grant scheme previously was that loads of companies installed the wrong kind of insulation (and did it badly too) just to profit from it. We live near the coast and cavity insulation isn't actually recommended in these kind of areas as wind drives water through the walls and it will end up damp. We actually had a claim through ciga recently but they wouldn't take the insulation out as we'd been advised (historically they would've done but I imagine they're losing too much because of the sheer volume of claims going through for dodgy insulation), instead they said there were gaps in insulation and rubble in the cavity so they came to fix those. It seems to have solved most of our visual damp issues in conjunction with the fixed roof. Really though, the house needs the external walls rebuilding as I suspect there's plenty of mould in there (the place stinks) but who has the money for that?!

Anyway, we run the heating constantly with the thermostat in our bedroom (seems to be colder in there) at 18 during the day and 17 at night. It doesn't feel cold set at that though, I know other places might! It's definitely nice to have a movable thermostat (our boiler didn't have a thermostat at all so I paid to get one retrofitted, coat about 100 about 3 years ago). The boiler isn't on all that much to keep the temperature constant tbh though. I'd be wary of not heating rooms that aren't in use because of our experience with mould.