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 😭

It's not too much of an inconvenience to use the washing machine at night. We can set a timer on it so it comes on at 1am. My other half uses the electric heater during the night to heat the room for his exotic pets. It's on a timing loop of 30 mins on - 1hr off. Probably costs about 20p, if that, to run it for the whole night.

Doesn't sound right to me. I live in a 2 bed house, just me and 1 DC. I have to keep the heating on all the time due to medical issues that need to be kept warm and I spend no more than £5 a day on gas. Less on electric because I only light up the room I'm in or not at all in the day.

@berksandbeyond we have radiators.

No water tank, etc. There's a cupboard where the combi boiler is. I'm guessing there used to be a water tank in there but it's been removed as it's just a long room with a lonely looking boiler right at the end of it.

Okay in that case you definitely shouldn’t be on economy 7. If your supplier aren’t responding to you request to change tariff I would move supplier

Do you have the option to travel to an office to work? Otherwise other free warm spaces/hubs which might be suitable? A lot of that goes on where I live. Although do you have a partner who WFH too?

On the plus side, you are saving on commuting time/money/parking costs so if you look at it in that way you just have to resign those costs to fuel. Check you are claiming all WFH allowances too.

If you have gas for heating and hot water and electric for everything else
why are you on e7 tarrif
they are really expensive if you don’t need it

Have you got smart meters?
Can you see any particular spikes or patterns in your usage ?
Loop.homes app is useful for this (and fives same day info, updating every few hours) - it'll upload data from the start of your supply date too.

Here is the Energy Ombudsman, but they will probably want your energy supplier to try to resolve.

energy ombudsman

This is current usage with everything turned off (bar those standby bits).

This is also the cost for today already even though my usage hasn't really changed throughout today. I'm just sat in one room with no lights on, haven't used a kettle, haven't cooked any breakfast. Had the TV on for an hour this morning. No washing overnight and no heating at all today.

As soon as I cook dinner later and my DH has a bath when he gets in from work it'll shoot up to £11-£12.

How many 'exotic pet' heaters does he have running? Could he have added extra heaters that you don't know about?

@BarbaraofSeville he only runs that one during the night just so the room isn't freezing cold for the rest of the day. They're not the kind of exotic pets that need heat lamps or a constant heat source. Can't say what they are or it'll be outing 😅

In the ten mins since taking that other photo the meters gone up 2p. So... Not 3p per hour I'm using then or it's definitely going up quicker than it should.

For comparison, I’m in a 3 bed 1960s mid terrace. Double glazed and insulated. . Four people in the house and there’s always someone home. Central heating and gas hob costing around £5.76 per day. We have the heating set at 18 during the day and 14.5 overnight. I need the heating on due to lung problems.

Our electricity is costing £5.59 per day. We have an electric oven, but mostly use the air fryer and are using the washing machine and dishwasher daily. We use the tumble dryer about twice a week. Usual games consoles, TVs etc. We have an electric shower, but have limited the time for a shower to 4/5 minutes, as they are expensive to run.

There does seem to be something drastically wrong with your bills. Pester your supplier until they change your tarrif and insist that they check your meter.

(I have joint problems too and find using a heated pad or hot water bottle really helps with the pain.)

I have my skyboxes on eco setting and then it switches off in the night and switches itself back on at 5:45am and does the initialising then so it's ready for use, I think it is off for about 5 or 6 hours so that helps a bit.

Don't rely on your in home display. They aren't always accurate and don't always reflect the right amount/cost.

Have you looked online or in the app to see when you're using so much electricity, ie constantly or at certain times?

It's awful. My partner works from home and he now takes his computer to cafes to work in the warm. He reckons on one tea (cheaper than coffee ) per two hours.

Tell him Wetherspoons do unlimited hot drinks for about £1.30.

We have 2 Sky+HD boxes and they each use 30watts on standby which is quite a lot as they are old technology, the Sky Q ones use less than that. I put them in eco mode to save a bit but they are quite high energy users. Modern TVs use much less than that

Just wanted to say mid terrace is so much warmer compare to 1930 semi with the same insulation(I renovated my mid-terrace home completely and same to this semi 1930 house). The house is just much colder.
Op, we spend £20 on average daily too with 5 hours heating on for 2 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, kitchen and living hall. Nothing at night as we’d like its cold during our bed time. We are a family of 4, use loads of lights for 1 hour in the morning, 3 hours in the evening as we are not home during the day. Dryer is on once a week to cut down the cost unless it was the bedding washing week which is every other week.

We earn well and have never known our heating bill until this year. It hurts every single household. We are thinking of having holiday away in the winter time instead from now on as there will be savings on heating cost. The forecast is the energy price will go down this year, so fingers crossed.

Going to the office if you can, its warm all day long without additional cost to the employer, its great for mental health too. My kids are extending their time at school on activities too so we save on heating hours when no-one is home.

Don't be fobbed off with 'just the wrong tariff'. It isn't helping but you are using at least 20kwh more than would be expected.

That isn't because of economy 7.

The more figures you have at your disposal the easier it will be to put your case across.

OP used 28 kWh yesterday.

Sky box uses 30W, which is 24*0.03 kWh per day = 0.72 kWh per day.

So unless she is running (28/0.72)=39 Sky boxes simultaneously then they can't explain why she is using so much electric.

What are your actual bills saying, the smart meter may be set to the wrong tarriff.

With regards changing from Economy 7, you will need to ring them. I tried emailing Ovo to change my mum's from Economy 7 to a standard rate, as she's had GCH for a long time. (My email address is the one on her account, so I pretended to be her.) However, they are insisting on speaking to her as there is information they need to provide verbally before switching.

Is your fridge/ freezer new or old? They can use a lot of electricity if not efficient with poor door seals.

Exotic pet heaters are probably using more than you think too.

Are you powering next door's hot tub - or entire home too?

You're paying for sky...and complaining you can't afford to heat your house - do you need to re-evaluate your priorities and think hard about what you are spending your money on?

You came for advice. Unequivocally - something does not stack up - something is wrong - you are overlooking something. Do you want to reduce your bills or not? You're going to have to accept that you are going to have to look harder to get to the bottom of this - and maybe explain a bit more about your house.

It seems like you don't have a clue about where to start looking - you've mentioned lights and laptops and miscellaneous things that generally use very little energy. OK - one question - is your laptop several years old? Does it basically run flat pretty quickly when you disconnect it from the mains? It could be that your laptop battery is so dead that it's continually charging - you might be better off taking the battery out and just running it off the mains...anyway.

Are you sure your underfloor heating "system" is off - just because you can't feel it producing any heat - isn't there an electric pump in the system that circulates the water - is that actually running? Do you know where it is - can you hear it running?

If you've looked at any of the other threads - it's been mentioned by me and a couple of others - an old fridge/freezer could be using a lot more electricity than you think - can you hear it rumbling into life on a regular basis? At night? The pump (compressor) circulates the coolant IF the thermocouple (which might also need to be checked) tells it to operate because the F/F is not cold enough - the compressor turns the coolant gas back into liquid and the liquid is circulated - the liquid uses heat (takes heat) from the contents of the fridge and evaporates - this is fine normally but a big problem, a common problem in many old appliances because the coolant has leaked out of the system - the F/F keep operating to circulate a small amount of coolant around the F/F to try and keep the contents cool. My 25 yo F/F was using 25-30% of all my electricity - I used a power measuring plug to check how much it was using - I replaced it and it paid for itself in 18 months.

Things like washing machines. dishwashers, tumble driers, electric showers, electric ovens - these are what you should be looking at. Check the basics:-

Washing machine - we use it on 30C programs (or 40C if we really need to) - typical wash time is 42mins. Once a week - only 2 adults - both of us recently retired so home most days.

Dishwasher - lowest temp - ours is 35C. Twice a week.

Fridge - ours on the highest temp possible 5C

Freezer - ours is on the highest temp possible -18C

I use my oven as little as possible - once a week is accurate. If I do put it on - I shove a load of potatoes in too and leave them to cook in the heat left in the oven after I've turned it off.

People overlook the fact that your gas boiler also uses electricity - when was the last time you had that serviced? The more often your boiler kicks into life, the more electricity it will use - it's not a huge amount but enough for me to notice in my daily electricity readings that it's been a cold day.

You and I can live in the same design of house with the same boiler and the thermostats set to the same temp (say 18C) yet mine might use far less gas to heat that your simply because my house is better insulated - your boiler might be turning on and burning gas to keep pushing your thermostat back up to 18C several times more often than mine so of course your will be using a lot more gas than me; insulation does matter - it's not just about the temperature you set the thermostat to. Have you thought about your insulation? I currently have foil bubble wrap (the sort you normally put behind radiators) Velcro'd to a number of windows and doors - it's ugly but I'd rather not give the money to energy companies and spent it on something else so I'm making an effort to save what I can.

I'm with Shell and their rates are:-
Unit rate per kWh: Elec - 36.448p
Unit rate per kWh: Gas - 10.344p
Standing charge: Elec - 48.59p per day
Standing charge: Gas - 28.48p per day

Dec Elec usage - £78.84 (excluding standing daily charge) / 31 days = £2.54/day
Dec Gas usage - £166.28 (excluding standing daily charge) / 31 days = £5.36/day
Total = £245.12

Dec - Elec standing charge = 31 x £0.4859 = £15.06
Dec - Gas standing charge = 31 x £0.2848 = £8.83
Total = £23.89

Total for Dec = £269.01

My situation is very similar to @7yearsbadluck who said:-

I WFH and live in a 4 bed 1960's semi and have the heating on 18 degrees for 3-4 hours a day (doesn't get below 16 degrees in the daytime)... exactly the same for me: 1960's semi - it's never higher than 18C - mine is on most of the day - but if I can stand it at 17C or 16C - because I'm wearing warm clothes (Marino wool bae layers!), busy in the house or been in the garden or walking the dog etc - then I turn it down. It's put down to 15C at night - not that it come son unless it's exceptionally cold overnight - it was -5C a couple of nights back - I heard the boiler kick in then some time in the middle of the night.

Look - it's horrible to be cold and worried about the bills but you've got to find out where all the electric and gas (and heat) is going because - your bills/usage seem higher than you can account for - unless there is a problem with your meter (unlikely IMHO - I used to work as an electronics and software engineer for companies that made electricity meters!) or with your billing information/meter readings. Is a previous debt being recovered on your bill for instance?

Can you get an electrician to come in and look at your usage and try to pinpoint where the electricty is being used?