Energy cost!!

[Nowheretoogo]

I could cry…iv just entered 2 weeks metre reading to try an keep track,
its £100!! For gas alone,it’s only been on from 7-8am then 5-6pm!!,people are going to die this winter!

Hopefully as families all can help each other out a bit.

So if grandparents say are fairly ok with pension income they can help their children's families if need be and visa versa, if you have a less affluent parent and you are doing ok you can help the other way around.

How many units is that? And what is your cost per unit and what is the standing charge?

Do we really need another gas elec thread
My mother lived in a house with just 1 coal fire
She went to bed with a coat on sometimes
Just put more clothes on

More clothes doesn’t stop a house becoming cold and damp.it’s very hard to get and keep warm in a cold/damp house. Even in this milder November our house has been dropping down to 14 some days without heating after a cold night.

it’s very simple don’t open threads with a very obvious subject title you aren’t interested in just to be an arse.

@Nowheretoogo I agree many won’t be able to sustain heat this winter.

Is anyone else having trouble with the new British Gas accounts and tracking usage?
They've moved to a new system and I can only see my credit. They won't let me use the app as I didn't previously, can't get through on the phone or live chat so have emailed but no reply.

So worrying already but not knowing how much we're using is a nightmare.

@Nowheretoogo so £50 a week so far would be £200 a month?

Seems a bit expensive to me. Are you sure your numbers are correct ?

I have an average boiler and it costs £1.50 an hour to run.

So 2hoursx14daysx£1.50 for me would be £42 + £0.28x14days standing charge

= £46 or thereabouts for 2 weeks.

That's nearly 1000 kWh of gas for 28 hours heating.

How big is your house? What type of boiler do you have?

We used 1000 units in the whole of last December.

We used just over 100 this October, that includes our cooking too.

I am not sure any domestic boiler could use 35 kWh?

@Nolongera

You can get them 35 kW for big houses. 24 kW is about standard though.

One thing I have found is that even in the first hour, my 24 kW boiler won't use the full 24 kWh you would expect. Because if it did the radiators would just get too hot and the flow temperature is limited. So once the radiator water gets up to say 70 C it turns down the output, meaning that it does not use the full 24 kWh (in my house it uses about 15 kWh in the first hour).

I've been lowering my flow temperature recently to try to find out whether it improves the efficiency.

We have a larger gas boiler but it's controlled by a thermostat so it is rarely on for an hour straight at this point of the year.

Tbf, the op is talking about her whole gas bill which is inflated by heating costs, there may also be hot water and cooking costs wrapped up in that total consumption.

My gas usage doesn't show properly online with Octopus - I downloaded Loop app on my phone the other day and it's great - half hourly readings, updated every few hours, for both fuels, along with an estimate of cost.

loop.homes/

Four adults - quick showers. Gas heating, cooking and hot water. I am rationing the heating and trying to limit it to an hour and a half on colder evenings. Getting to the point when that's going to be every evening and maybe mornings too. On an average day without heating, gas costs us about £1. With an hour and a half of heating, it's £2.

im with eon next and refuse a smart meter i take my readings weekly and live in a 3 bed detach with me and a teen and another adult son that has his cloths washed and baths here but does not live here

with the £66 gov help and my contribution is £140 so 200 a month but when i put the figures in its ok for gas but only charges me £3 odd for electric which im guessing is electric standing charge

takes 3 weeks to get a reply to an email which is no good and gave up on the phone well over an hr,have no idea what to do

I understand why some people are wary of smart meters, but since one of my meters is hard to access, having up to date meter readings on my phone (and I second PP's recommendation of the Loop app) is a real advantage.

In the past, when I didn't have enough money, I used to take daily meter readings until I got our usage down to what I could afford. Then weekly readings until I suppose I just didn't need to monitor the cost any more. Like my weight, the number of kWh used has gone up since those days.

I think using your own meter readings is the only way to get a grip especially when it comes to central heating - not only do people have different boilers, but the number of radiators, size of rooms and buildings, construction, insulation, soft furnishings etc will mean that using the same boiler in the different houses will incur different charges.

Back in my day I piddled icicles and the flames from my coal fire froze. I looked like a liquid nitrogened T1000 - my limbs snapped off as I walked. I had a stiff upper lip and sat there just to spite the cold, wearing nothing but my socks. And they were not thermal ones.

People are understandably extremely worried about this. Don't read threads that you deem repetitive. You aren't the forum police.

This link might help you with some tips regarding boiler heating and flow temps.

www.theheatinghub.co.uk/articles/turn-down-the-boiler-flow-temperature

Many of these energy threads start of with wild claims of energy use.

I don't think I have seen one yet where someone has started with direct comparisons with last year's usage based on kWhs and costs using basic 11 plus maths.

I struggle to imagine the size of house and the amount of gas the OP says has been used on 28 hours of heating, where do they live, Downton Abbey?

Then the OP disappears from the thread. Over 24 hours now and not one reply to the advice offered.

There will be people dying this year scared to put the heating on because they have read so much from ill informed sources about energy costs.

I did a comparison yesterday. We've used 398kw gas in 15 days Heating has been on up to 75mins am, occasionally come pm if cold enough pm - reckon it's been on about 21 hours. Shower heated off boiler and gas hob. 24w boiler. Temperature set between 18-18.5c so might be cutting out sooner than yours. We have a bungalow with dormers and extension, giving us four bedrooms.

Yes, it is going to be expensive. It's not that cold yet - when it's our colder house can take 2-3 hours to come up to 18-18.5c (set temperature) in morning.

Yeah. But ... 398kWh is about 40 quids worth of gas. So the OP used 2.5x as much gas over the same time period as you and about 5x what I used.

So you can probably get the point @Nolongera is making ...

You need to look at insulation in your house. Mine's on all day and doesn't cost that much

Who gives a crap?

SPARE me from the sphincter clenchingly boring stories about how much tougher people had it 50 years ago. At the very least use your own boring anecdote, and not your dear old mater's.

Many of us don’t have open fireplaces so we can’t just turn off the gas and hope the coal fire will be enough! What ridiculous comparison.

Indeed, @ifonly4 s house, 4 bedroom bungalow probably has a big footprint by UK standards, yet only used 2/5 of the gas.

I am not going to defend the 4 Yorkshire men type posts about how we managed in the past, but the days of flouncing round the house in mid minter in a t shirt and costing very little are over.