Can't afford to keep the house warm - £800 p/m?!

[CinnamonSwirl82]

I'm cold, I'm miserable, I'm skint.

Tried heating the house to maintain 18 across the day and it cost £25. Even turning it on for an hour in the morning (doesn't heat anything) and an hour in the evening pre-bed costs us £15 a day. We keep all the lights off, everything is turned off at the plug and we now just use the biofuel fireplace for heat/light in the evening. All for the cheap price of £11 a day.

I'm feeling absolutely miserable that I have to sit in a cold, dark house and spend £350 p/m for the pleasure of it. Thats over £4k per year. It's only myself and my partner so we don't need to keep the house warm for kids and we can sit in the dark with a couple of candles/fireplace. We live in a 3 bed semi 1970s build.

How is this right? Where on earth did the government pull their figure of £2.5k bill for the average family from? We're less than the average family living in the average home.

I'm contemplating getting in to debt just so it doesn't feel like my nose is going to fall off my face and my joints stop hurting 😭

Oh OP I hope you find a way to get this sorted. Im in a draughty 1950s 3 bed semi detached and have the heating on at 18 degrees evenings and weekends, 15 degrees any other time.

Last month my boiler broke and took my insurers 14 days to fix it. No heating or hot water. I moved out over xmas as pregnant and cold don't mix. My gas bill was still £145!!

I'm dreading this months bill. How much longer can we go on like this?

Something is wrong with those numbers. I have a 3 bed, badly insulated, Victorian end of terrace. Combi boiler. I have the heating on for 3 hours a day. 3 loads of washing, 2 tumble dryer a week. Baths each day for 2 of us. Normal use of air fryer, toaster, kettle etc. Comes out around £150 a month...£5 a day. You've either got something eating through your power or you're being over charged somehow.

Have you turned everything off and checked to see if the meter is still going round.

If it is not turn one thing on at a time and see how much it uses.

I would see about getting changed from economy 7 as that is usually for houses with storage heaters and all electric.

Could you put the heating on at night especially anything run by electricity to get the temperature back up in the house while you are on the cheaper night rate.

You will end up with damp if you don't heat your house enough.

How many KWh of gas and electric are you using and how does this compare to previous months or years?

Start with your useage. Has it suddenly spiked which might suggest a metre fault.

Yes economy 7 is more expensive for peak rate but not by enough increase a bill three of four fol, especially if you are heating by gas

However I am always suspicious as to why a property was on it in first place. It usually suggests an immersion heater or something which uses a high volume of electric otherwise it's not worth doing.

Are you taking the monthly cost from your bill or smart meter as many don't cope well with E7 (certainly older models).

Start tracking your meters (not smart but meter itself) and recording it every hour to identify spikes

Eh I was in debt before this whole debacle, can't imagine I'm any less in debt now. I don't really understand how peoples houses are so cold though. Even the other day when it didn't get to 0°at all I only put the heating on for a bit when the kids got in from school. I think there might be something wrong with me because I hardly ever feel cold.

Agree with the others. That is an extortionate amount to be paying. I live in a 1970s 3 bed semi detached and our bill for December was £290 for gas/electric. I do washing every day, use the tumble dryer most days and we have an electric shower. Gas heating is on for 4-6 hours a day.

Anything that heats up will use more electric. Electric showers are very expensive, ovens use a lot, invest in an air fryer especially if there's just you and your husband.

@GasPanic the fireplace is run on bioethanol fuel. Doesn't cost any gas/electric to run it. It goes on in the evening for about 2 hours - enough to get the living room and hallway back up to 18. It costs £8 for 2ltr fuel which will probably last 3-4 days.

Going off the app for yesterday's figures:

Electric - 27.86kwh (@0.33p/kWh would be £9.20)
Gas - 17.86kwh (@0.11p/kWh would be £1.96)

Gas was only used to run one bath yesterday evening. It isn't showing any other useage for that day.

Electric - only cooked an evening meal (pizza in the oven for 15 mins). Other than that no lights on all day, only charged work laptop as and when needed (one charge tends to last most of the day). Standard stuff on standby - TV, sky box, oven, microwave, fridge freezer. Probably put a couple of lights on as we moved around the house in the evening, other than that just had the fire running with an hour of TV before bed.

Already have a trusty air fryer! 😁

Do you leave your tv and sky box on standby?
I turn these off at the wall when not in use, they add up

Your electric is way, way above normal useage. I'd expect about 8kwh.

For context I used 17kwh per day in December but that's an all electric system and 10kwh are storage heaters.

Where is the other 20kwh going? You'd need to run a 2kwh heater for 10 hours to get through that.

Tonight can you turn off the supply for an hour and see if the physical meter still goes round?

If it doesn't then you have an immersion or something you are not aware of

Another vote for something drastically wrong - we don't use anywhere near that and our house is a 4 bed detached.

Just to emphasize this is not 'do you leave your telly on standby useage ' it is something with a big draw on for a long time

Your microwave, oven, TV and sky box can be switched off at the wall when not in use. The only thing I leave plugged in is the fridge/freezer. My electric yesterday was £2.77 that included one shower (my son) me and husband had baths, one load of washing and tumble drying.

You need to find out what is using so much electric or if your meter is faulty.

Gas looks ok. Electric is v high. Ours is about 14kwh per day and we are high users. Can you see an hourly break down on the app and what your background energy use is? I would suggest turning off circuits at the meter board and looking at how this impacts the smart meter reading?

I'd be looking at that electricity, especially given what you think was on. It's way above average, with minimal stuff switched on. I'd say your looking at something drawing nearly 1kW every hour. That's heating - underfloor or water tank - sort of amounts.

@Calmdown14 really hard to compare. We moved in then got new smart meters fitted a couple of weeks later (previous property couldn't support one) so no idea what bills were like pre-smart meter and we've still not had our latest quarterly bill.

At the old house - 2 bed semi - the electric bill from 1st October to 17th November was £125. I know this is a bigger house but I'd argue we're using less now than at the old house as we used to keep absolutely everything on standby and never scraped on useage. Everything there was 'smart' too so bulbs we're always switched on as we used them with our Alexa. Used the washer/dryer every other day, sometimes several times a day too.

We're now apparently using the same amount in 10 days... We do washing during the night when energy is cheaper and run it maybe once a week maximum.

As an example we used 13kwh this day but peak at 5pm to 6pm of 3kwh due to oven use. Background energy use of about 0.4kwh per hour overnight.

OK good.

So the fireplace doesn't add in any metered consumption.

I think both of your figures, gas and electric are pretty high. Which kind of suggests the problem might not be with the usage but the metering.

I presume you have access to the actual meter itself as well rather than the smart meter.

What I would do is read the meters before and after a days use. If you give us the meter readings before and after we can calculate the gas/electric used per day on the actual meters as well as the smart meters.

So try to read your actual meters now, and post the values. Then do them at the same time tomorrow. Also read off your smart meter at the same time to see how much has been used.

Then when you give us the numbers we can calculate the kWh and see whether they are the same.

Also for gas you need to give us your meter units. The meter units will be written on your meter, either xft3 or m3. You can also check whether the gas meter units on your last bill are the same as on the meter, which is a common error.

If you have any older bills (since before the smart meter) you can tell us how many units you used per bill and time period, and we can compare those with your current usage.

@Mamamia7962 the oven and microwave are built in. I'm actually not even sure where they switch off but surely they're not using £10 a day of energy on standby?! 😂 I thought it only made like £30 a year difference to keep things off at the plug?

I don't even want to think how much it would cost to run the washer and dryer during the day 😭 probably more than your £2.77 for the whole day.

@Wheretheskyisblue is £2 for hot water for only one bath normal? It sounds expensive to me but we only had a mains fed shower at the old house so I've no idea what it costs to fill a bath.

We absolutely, without a doubt, do not have an immersion heater. We've searched and we definitely do not have one. Hubby has even been in the loft to see if anything is hiding up there.

This is in no way in line with normal useage but economy 7 is an unusual choice without electric heating or immersion which is why I am suspicious about something eating it.

Otherwise you are looking at a faulty meter.

It is easier to change this with figures so start writing down what you use and when based on the physical meter readings only

That doesn't sound right x

Do you have an electric shower?

OP Unless you are old and vulnerable or disabled why are you heating the house all day?
I don't put my heating on until after dark. I don't feel the pinch until the sun has gone down and I am old

Have you called Octopus to query this / ask to change tariff? (Sorry if I've missed this).

Are you sure the smart meter is right? What are your actual bills showing? You can force a bill by submitting a meter reading manually on the Octopus website.

You should be able to switch tariffs online without speaking to anyone.