My smart meter is £3.57 it's 8am!

[cantheydothisreally]

Omg first cool night last night and heating has come on

As the title says it is 8am and my meter is already over £3

Thermostat set at 18 degrees

Heating has now gone off

We're on the NW coast. No frosts, but our house dropped to below 15° yesterday.

The weather varies massively across the U.K. As does the quality of heat retention in houses.

I haven't put my heating on yet and it's really cold inside. Got some heatkeepers for behind radiators got 2 more to fit then will be ready for the heating going on.
I haven't budgeted for gas so whatever it costs now will come out of shopping money. It's going to be a awful winter

Sal

It was 13 degrees in my room this morning. I'm in Bristol. I had the heating thermostat with me so I could run the heating for long enough to get out of bed, showered and dressed without shivering. I used to have it on automatic cycles, now I put it on and off in short bursts.

It'll go on for an hour this evening to take the chill off and then it's jumpers and blankets. I'm out of work with sciatica so I cannot afford to be anything other than careful or miserly with my heat.

I'm really not looking forwards to proper winter. My total usage yesterday was £7.50, that was an hour of heating, running the usual appliances, the oven for 45 mins and a shower (gas heated). I'd never bothered to look at my smart meter until this year. But I dusted it off and it's a very effective reminder to put on sweaters, turn off lights and keep doors closed. I live in a Victorian terrace. It's got original windows and I cannot afford to change them (and if I did it would have to be with sash double glazing).

Is it about £2ph of heating

trying to work out what heating costs

@Blondeshavemorefun mine is £1.20ph in a old 3 bed house. It’s currently 16-17 without heating and heating brings it to 19.

We are using it for 2 hours a day at the moment and lots of blankets and jumpers otherwise

Thanks. I don’t have a smart meter so trying to work out what an hour of hearing costs but obv my meter is in units and that’s not khw

Im nw and had to deice my car yesterday morning.

Thanks for all the replies

I have worked out for us it is a about £2.50 per hour

We have 16 rads in house (incl 1 towel rail)

Heating on 7-8am

Off all day

On 8pm -10pm (at moment)

Not on at night

Probably going to cost about £7.50- 10 per day

Eon £233 per month plus £66 government contribution

Shocked as today was first day it had come on in the morning 😳

16 radiators? No wonder it's costing you a fortune!

16 radiators?! How many bedrooms/how big is your house. Is it large rooms with two radiators or a 5+bedroom house? That's why it's costing that much!

Try reducing slightly by 5 mins at a time and see if it’s warm still.

If your going to use for 3hrs, your probably better off dividing across 45min slots, x4 times a day. So you don’t have such a big gap between 8am-8pm with it off

Or to save try 45 mins slot, x3 times. 7-7.45am, an afternoon slot if home, then 8-8.45pm

16 radiators! I have 8 so I guess the costs work out similar per radiator then

4 bed house

Downstairs lounge has three rads (big room)

TRVs on all rads

I appreciate it has lots of rads

Just shocked as when we moved in , 3 years ago, was £80-100 per month

The house I grew up in - big 5-bed, 4-reception house had fewer radiators than that (mind you it was fucking freezing).

Turn any in rooms not in much use or hallways down to a much lower temperature. Most people don’t sit in hallways so that’s probably 2-3 you can turn down to much lower temperature

caspianberg good suggestions

Thanks

It is pretty hard to know exactly how much it will be because in the first (few?) hours the boiler will be close to full on, but as the house temperature goes closer to or above the thermostat setting it will switch on and off.

In other words the power you need and gas you use to heat up from say 14-18 degrees is less than the power you need to maintain at 18 degrees.

For a normal boiler (20-30kW) it will be from £2-£3 per hour in the first heat up mode (20kW x 1 hour x 10p), then it really depends on a number of factors like how well insulated your house is.

Sorry more than - not less than !

Working it out we have

3 bedroom
bathroom
hall
kitchen
2 living room

so 8 in all

Could the smart meter still be on BST? Then if a wash was on at 11pm, or heating, it would get counted as today.

Can someone more knowledgeable than me answer whether unused room radiators on or off is better or not?

Recent articles have pointed to leaving all radiators on but at a low heat in unused rooms due to how condensing boilers work and surface areas etc. It supposedly makes a boiler work harder when you switch radiators off?? I have always switched unused rooms off but have no idea now if that is actually making the boiler usage worse?

I read so much conflicting information that I have no idea any more.😫

2hrs 45 min of heating yesterday cost (according to our IHD) £5.15 😳

I think the IHD must only just have been updated with the new variable tariff as our electricity was £3.95 by 9pm.
So neatly a bloody tenner and it's only November.

@Lampedsomeoiks - I never switch off, but put unused rooms on frost setting. That means it will come on if room drops below about 12 degrees, which will stop any pipes in those walls freezing and prevent it getting super super cold.
Ours are guest rooms so they are off all winter, when guests here back at normal

@Lampedsomeoiks

I've had a quick read of this on the web. Basically, if you want the boiler to operate at maximum efficiency, you need the boiler to operate in condensing mode, which means using lower flow temperatures (temperature that the water is heated up to in the heating circuit).

If you switch off radiators in unused rooms, then the flow temperature will effectively be higher for a similar initial setting. So as you turn off the radiators, the flow temperature in the remaining ones will increase and this will limit the boiler efficiency.

So say for example you have 10 radiators on circuit, and your boiler is setup to a flow temperature of 70 degrees, which will give a higher level of condensing efficiency, when you turn off 2 then you will get a flow temperature of 80 degrees, which will give a lower level of condensing efficiency.

So you if you are removing radiators off circuit you really need to make sure the initial flow temperature is adjusted to something lower in order to get the best efficiency.

I might try it, because I didn't know about it. Unless you want to spend hours fiddling with your boiler, it's probably best to discuss it with your engineer when they service it.