How often do you use...

[midnightblue12]

Your heating and washing machine?

First time living alone with my sons. First time I have control over the bills and just me to pay them!
I literally have no idea and I'm SO worried about bills.
How often is too often?
For context we live in a spacious 2 bed flat. 2 children 1 adult.
I've been putting the heating on for 60-75 mins each evening and washing approx 3/4 times a week.
Is this a lot?
So worried about my first bills coming through!!

Not cold enough for heating here.

2 showers a day, hob/oven used for 30 mins a day, washing machine 3/4 times a week.

Electricity = £60
Gas = £90

Monthly

Heating is on for two hours but on a thermostat, after heating to temperature it may not click on again. It hadn't been coming on at all until it turned cold again today. Washing machine run twice per week for two of us.

Gas was £63 and electric £40 in January.

How big is your washing machine? That can effect how often its on.
Generally mine is on most days taking into account 3 beds, towels, and clothes fir 3/4 people (DH only here at weekends). Its an 8kg one.

Heating depends on outside temperature.

Mine's a 7kg machine

I use my washing machine and tumble drier every day at the moment (one load a day). Dishwasher also runs once a day. Hot water is on a timer - it heats 3 x 1hr per day. Heating currently on for one hour in the eve and one hour early morning. (We are in Scotland and still having to scrape the car windows on a morning).

Heating is on every day, timer comes on at 6am and goes off at 10pm but each room has a thermostat and whether the rooms get cold enough to click on and off depends day to day. Our house is quite well insulated so usually sits around 19 without heating on. If we are just sitting around I’ll put it up a few degrees. It’s on in my office all day when I’m wfh.
washing machine and dishwasher run daily as and when they’re needed. Sometimes they go on twice per day.

different for everyone my washing machine is on 2/3 times a day and heating on from 5pm to 11/12 daily

My heating is on all the time! But set to 16 at night, and 17 during the day (I work from home and any less than this is not nice).
18 in the evenings. Last month (inc Xmas) was £175 LPG (I take a reading every month). My house is badly insulated!

Electricity for a small 3 bed house, 2 teens, I don't use the oven much (have a ninja) but work from home, is around £65-£70

Your usage sounds reasonable/normal.

who are your utility bills with. Do they do monthly billing?

Getting into some debt with it is ok - as it'll balance out in the summer months. If you can pay it though, that's better then you can use the summer to build some reserves for next winter.

Do you have a smart meter?

there's another grant coming soon. It's not totally clear who will be eligible (and I won't be so haven't searched very much). It's £900, so look into that.

2 bedrooms, but really well insulated, 19 degrees with no heating on. Shower runs from the boiler, so not electric. Washer dryer, but it’s an A+ or something, same with dishwasher.

Oven used once a week, maybe twice.
I have the heating on by 1 degree when I’m at home, under 20 degrees feels cold. But I just press it occasionally, so it’s warm when I come out of the shower or go to bed.

I have 2 showers a day, a bath 2-3 times a week.

Dishwasher goes on every other day.
Washing machine and tumble dryer 2-3 times a week.

So in your case, I would probably think twice as much as me?

My bill for 24th of Jan-23rd of Feb came today: £45 for electrics, £60 for gas.
HTH

Do you have off peak hours? I run my washing machine 3-4 times a week but only in our off peak hours. I press the go button at 12.30am and then head to bed.

There are 5 of us (all adult sized though 3 x under 18s) and the washing machine is probably on 7 times per week - dryer once or twice for towels and sheets.

I think it usually works out at once a week per full time occupant of the house plus one more load of towels/ sheets a week for every 2 people (so effectively 1.5 machine loads per occupant, per week).

Obviously small children 's clothing takes up less machine space, but sometimes they create just as much washing due to being messier!

Thanks all so much for sharing!

My heating doesn't automatically come on. I just normally put it on for an hour after bath time to keep the boys warm and also put my washing on the radiators 🙈
I'm in the north so it's still quite chilly!

My boys normally share a bath, every other day, and I shower every other day also.

I hope my bills aren't too ridiculous because I don't know what I could possibly cut back on!

I wasn't able to go on a tariff because they weren't offering them.
Elec is with Eon next and W every is with British Gas.

Don't worry about the washing machine, they don't cost that much to run.

Heating is the biggest cost, especially if your home is poorly insulated and/or the heating is electric.

Also cooking, hot water and tumble dryer if you have one. Another potentially high use is gaming PCs if your boys have these and especially if they're on a lot.

1 bed, 2 People

£900 for 4 months

Washing machine is 2-3 times a day.
Heating as needed.

Can you not get gas and electricity with 1 provider as this might make it a bit cheaper?
I'm with EON next and what I did notice is that the night rate is less than half the day rate so if you can do washing, dishwasher etc after 8pm that might help a little.
Just track for the first month and then you will have a baseline for usage and it will be much easier to manage. If you put in meter readings EON will do a bill within a day or two do keeping the readings up to date will help you better understand what you are using etc.
For reference I gave a 4 bed detached, use dishwasher, washing machine and dryer most days, have the heating on most days, showers/baths every day for 4 of us and I'm averaging about £200 a month.

Normally I do 8 or 9 loads of washing a week (6people). I used to do most stuff at 40 and bedding and towels at 60 but now do most stuff at 30 and bedding at 40. Towels I find smell damp if not washed hot though.

Heating is currently set to come on for 2 hours in the evening but again we’ve turned the thermostat down from 19.5 to 18. There were a few evenings it didn’t come on as was already warm enough but it’s gone colder again the last week.

@MegaManic it would definitely be easier to have them in one place wouldn't it! I was told by both that they were offering to switch. I don't really understand that but my friend who moved in the same area said the same 🤷🏼‍♀️

I used to be able to track my electricity on eon but for the past month the app has been saying they are working on making it better and it wasn't available 😵‍💫

I just read my meters weekly and keep a record for myself, and submit readings monthly. I track my usage this way, no need for an app or website.

2 adults, 2-3 loads of laundry a week, don’t have tumble dryer. Just put the heating on manually when it’s really cold, 1-2 hour a day.

2 adults 2 kids here - heating just put on when needed, we have a hive thermostat and you can just boost on the app for 30 mins or an hour by a degree or 2.

Washing we do a load a day to keep on top of thisngs.

We are in a new build,. with all A rated appliances though so this helps keep things low

As mentioned a few posts up, you could take your meter readings and work out from there how much you're using in a week. Obviously April-Oct you'll use less gas as you probably won't have the heating on at all, and if you do it'll come up to temperature very quickly.

If there's three of us here (DD comes and goes) then washing machine is same as your 3-4 washes a week. Personally I wouldn't want to be bathing any less than you are (and that's not a criticism) and would have the heating on for a while in morning and teatime/early evening (ours is set at 18c), but appreciate you're on a budget.

We're 2 adults I'm an 80-built, 4 bed detached house.
Our thermostat is set to trigger the heating to come on at 14 degrees, so it seems to be on for an hour in the morning, the odd hour in the day, and a couple of hours in the evening.
We do 2 loads of washing a week. One is 35 mins at 40 degrees. One is 140 mins at 40 degrees. I hang everything to dry in the spare room, so don't use the 'dry' setting.
Your usage sounds absolutely fine, but I think the tariff you're on will make the most difference, won't it?