Please help me/ any tips to reduce energy bills £600!? A month

[Starryeyed2021]

Hi all
could anyone give me any guidance, I am struggling with my energy bills which are for example month of January £600 for both elec and gas,
to put in context I do have 5 bedroom house, two small kids perhaps house is 200sqm so I guess on the larger side but I really don’t think price should be this high! It seems too much? Almost £20 a day!
I have this app for usuage but it doesn’t really help me in seeing how I can reduce or what to change.
we have hive on my phone and I usually just “boost “ when it’s cold sort of drops below 20degrees , possibly three times a day As it does max boost for 6 hours.

any tips? Or is this how much should cost?! I find it hard to believe people pay and can pay this much for just energy per month

I like a warm house and our house is detached with poor insulstiin so expensive to heat. We heat it to 20 in the day, 6am-10pm and then it's set to 15 overnight.
We pay £250pm year round, which does usually equate to around £550 in the coldest months but this is offset by summer months being much cheaper.
Do you pay a different amount each month?

Could you be paying for two houses by accident? Sometimes mistakes are made with meters especially in conversions or annexes being added etc. Or sometimes crooks do piggy back another house. You’ve got the lec bill of a weed farm there!

Hi all thankyou so much for the advice and tips, I really was at a wits end with this!
we pay the exact usage each month so the winter months is higher, usually in summer around £200 , winters Upto £600

our night 12-6am is the low elec tariff and we have two large electric vehicles that charge over night, we also fo a lot of charging/ usage overnight using the lower rate like dishwasher or robot eufy charging

yes our windows are not well insulated and my room sits over the garage and itgets freezing over night- I will take on board all tips thankyou so much

I will also start to use heating less, and dress better etc as this is not sustainable at all

My energy bill in winter is around £320 for a 4 bed detached house, I’m in a cold part of the country and keep the house warm in winter. It drops to about £120 in summer, and is only that high in December and January. If you’re charging lots of things overnight your electricity is going to be high, and then winter heating compounds that.

We do try to heat the person, but I work from home so need at least the room I’m working in to be warm. I turn the radiators down in rooms I’m not in, and have a small heater in my home office for particularly chilly days. Mostly I accept that if I want a comfortable home in winter I’ll be paying energy bills, and spread the cost by direct debit. Your bill is very high though, check whether there’s a better tariff or provider.

It sounds like you do what we do electricity wise. And of course no petrol bills. so it seems high, but actually it is also your car fuel.
Your main issue is the heating. (Hence the diff between summer and winter)
Turn it off overnight and time it to come on at least an hour before you get up and go off just after you go to bed. Get a thicker duvet or if your room is particularly cold and you are actually cold in bed, use an electric oil fired radiator in your room, using the cheaper overnight electrcity.
Your gas bill will be huge as heating overnight when the outside temp is lower uses so much gas.

Electric vehicles charging is presumably in lieu of fuel and happens year round, can you work that out and subtract it?

Heating being on all day at 20 is boiling, turn it to 18 and wear clothes.

You’re still using 20 kwh of electricity during the day, when a high user normally uses 10 - 12 kwh over a 24 hr period (Ofgem figures).

Appliances that use a lot of electricity are things that heat or cool - I’d check fridges and freezers to see if one is on its way out, or if there is an immersion heater coming on during the day.

We have a 150 sq m house and use 7 kwh per day (no electric showers and rarely use the tumble dryer).

We live in a 4 bed detached house, but there’s only the 2 of us, I’m at home all day because I’m too sick to work. We, also, have an EV so are on Intelligent Octopus Go. Our DD is £130 a month and we’re currently £362 in credit.

We put the washing machine and dishwasher on overnight when it’s cheapest. Never do so with the tumble dryer, though. We don’t have the heating on during the night, ever, and we only have it on for 2 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the evening. Both DH and I have electric throws that we sit under if we’re cold. We cook in the slow cooker and air fryer a lot, too.

Your house is leaking heat. We could feel a draught in our house so we bought (but you can hire) a thermal camera so we could see exactly where we had lower temperatures. We were missing chunks of insulation in the loft which we sorted and increased the insulation up there.

We also fitted new weather strips to the front and back doors as they clearly needed replacing. I am sure there are companies that will come in and inspect your house for upgrades.

You might need to invest some money on home improvements which should see your monthly costs drop. We are in a 4 bed detached with no house either side so we are fully exposed to the elements. 3 adults here all the time, youngest adult away at uni but home for holidays. We have several monitors, laptops (working from home) use a dishwasher every day, tumble dryer, electric shower and our monthly DD is £260. We are with Octopus.

We have a 600pm home aswell.

Basically you need to do some experiments.

Check the flow rate temp and turn that down. There’s videos about what temps to try.

Next you need to do a few weeks of trials.

• a week where you try setting a lower temp and boosting
• a week where you set the temp at a consistent temp and allow the thermostat to keep that at a constant
• a week where you heat the house in day and turn it off at night

We have high ceilings and big rooms so our home actually is cheapest on strategy B. If it cools it takes so long to heat that that uses more energy.

Other strategies

• check humidity in rooms. High humidity lowers real feel temps and makes it near impossible to actually heat a room
• stuff chimneys
• get a lot burner for ‘boosts’ as opposed the radiators
• get the radiators serviced, bleed and potentially pump cleaned

Good luck

Ahh just seen your update. 600pm in winter is not that bad for a 5 bed detached if you have high ceilings, lots of chimneys and lots of windows.

We are 600 averaged! Our winter gas is c. 1k a month.

600!! That is insane! We are in a 5bed house and literally everything runs on electricity, I don’t scrimp with anything and our max bill is about 250! And we are in Ireland where electricity is more expensive! Now I will say our house is highly insulated! But still! 600quid!

Could you move rooms? At least get quotes for significant improvements in your insulation etc. Might be worth investing in an electric blanket rather than having the heating on all night?

If you are charging 2 cars off that it’s much more understandable that you are paying that much.

In the picture you attached you used more than 20 kwh at your peak rate, which is a really expensive rate - 30 pence a unit. What is using so much electricity during the day?

In terms of heating costs, how old is your house? What sort of insulation do you have? You may actually find it cheaper and more comfortable to run it continuously at 18C during the day and just boost to 20 when you're sitting down in the evening. Make sure you turn down (but not off) radiators in bedrooms/unused rooms during the day.

Insulate what you can and get solar panels. They don't produce a huge amount of power November to February, but loads in summer. If you do your car charging, laundry and dishwasher in the day it is practically free.

Your house is huge! I have a 3 bed semi detached and we’re only 75sqm.

Our dual fuel bill is £134 pcm. Recently reduced from £138 by the energy company as we are over £150 in credit.

Gas is for heating and water only. We keep the house at 16.5° during day and boost it to 18° for an hour once a day.

live in a cold, wet, windy area.

our shower used to be electric but DS was taking so long in shower we got a tap gadget to run it from the bath. It’s an amazing shower now!

Air fryer also saves us a lot of energy.

I think lower heating level might help.

Oh and overnight we set the thermostat so that heating comes only if it drops below 13°. It rarely does!

4 bed house.
In winter we turn the heating off at night and set the heating to 15 if we are out.
If chilly and we are in, heating is put up to 20.

If you use a dryer for your clothes, put them on an extra spin in the washing machine first, before placing in the dryer.

Dishwasher is usually set to an economical short wash, unless there are many dishes that are extremely greasy and need of a longer wash - if just a couple are like that, soak first / hand wash.

Never, ever leave anything on standby, including the TV. Only one TV switched on at any time. Switch off if not being used, the same goes for the computer.

Some things are cooked in the air fryer, rather than putting the oven on for say, one item.

Boil the amount of water you need in the kettle, rather than fill it just for a single coffee.

We do have cavity wall insulation and well insulated, quality windows and doors, which have made a big difference.

Check your energy tariff.

That seems high. We have a combi boiler, thermostat set at 20° 24/7. 3 bedrooms. Use the tumble dryer in winter. Our combined bill is around £200. I always switch tariffs when there’s an option to.

We had similar £650 a month . One year we turned heating down so much to save but everything went mouldy . Very damp house. So last year we started not using the lights . Have battery lamps and bill is now 400 a month

Similar
bit smaller … but once again - well insulated.

I'm with Octopus and they have a tariff where daytime electric is 30p pkh but between 11.30pm and 5.30am it is only 7p pkh. I load dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer during the day but don't switch them on until I go to bed at 11.30pm. I use all 3 appliances every day so I've saved loads of electricity. I switched on to it in December and I'm saving about £50 pcm. I wish I'd known about it sooner.

That is nuts! I am with OVO and they've just reduced my direct debit because we weren't using enough. Three storey house, gas central heating. Tumble dryer, washing machine and dishwasher on most days, heating on during the day around 19 degrees. Many teenagers having many showers. And I am paying £144 a month for gas and electric.

I looked at that before but I've had to much fire safety training at work so won't run the appliances when we are sleeping!