OH DEAR GOD MY GAS BILL!!! Spreadsheet users please post your usage

[princessnumber2]

Scottish power tell me they have been having a number of software issues lately with online users submitting readings and being billed. Anyway I just called them to try and get an idea of where I am at the moment and they say that over the last 3 months, my gas bill is £464 (and actually electricity is £224 but after the gas bill that had less impact). My daily average usage is 19kw for electricity and 143kw for gas. Can this be true? We have just moved in to a 4 bed period house. Quite draughty, some double glazing but no carpets or curtains. I work from home and have 2 young children so have the heating on all day quite a bit.

Is it just thermostat down and thermals on and fingerless gloves when typing time?

I feel ill. We switched supplier to go for a dual fuel online only fixed tariff so this is supposed to be the cheaper option. And I doubt there is a mistake with the start reading as I provided it and they came out and checked it too.

Hard to get more info because of this 'software issue' they say they have...

Yes, sadly that could easily be right.
Four bed Victorian house here, with 2 young children having baths every night, me working from home, and pretty full-on heating in crap weather, and ours is not dissimilar. I suck it up during winter, although you have now reminded me to check what the bill was last autumn as it should have been lower - or we should have some credit backed up from it as we pay by monthly DD.

sounds about right to me for a winter quarter in a 4 bed house. a couple of years ago our gas bill was around the £500 mark for this quarter, we've only brought that down by installing a wood burning stove in the sitting room. you have to think about it in terms of averaging it out over the whole year, our summer bill was just £120.

Thanks both. I feel slightly better knowing I'm not alone.

We're hoping to do work on the house at some point and will look into energy saving measures then. (No money to do it yet so a bit of a vicious circle there!) In the meantime I am stuffing baby socks into any cracks and gaps I find...

It doesn't sound way off, particularly if you have the heating on all the time.

You do need to change your habits to suit the house you live in. Our previous property was very warm (much newer) and so hard floors, skimpy curtains etc were not really a problem. This house is old and big and needs to be kept warm. Loft insulation makes a big difference. Thick, heavy lined curtains, rugs, lots of soft furnishings, draft excluders attached to external and internal doors etc are essential.

I work from home and have a heated electric throw which only costs a penny to run for 3 hours. I also wear fingerless glove/arm warmers which keep my hands warm. We also use our wood burner a LOT

Gas is unfortunately very expensive. We only have oil, the price of which is currently cheap but some years has been extortionate.

Gosh I thought ours was hefty at 200 quid, I'd be horrified by double that amount.

I'd say that sounds about right. Ours is about £70 a month in winter for a two bed Victorian terrace. I don't skimp on heating though.

Definitely recommend spreading the load by Direct Debit too. We are about £200 in credit on one of our dual fuel account, and owe £13 on the other, but our bills are hefty - it just allows us to build up a reserve over warmer months.

Having been surprised in the past with large bills I now take readings once a week of my Electricity, Water and Gas Meters. I use an app called meter readings on my Android smartphone. There are dozens of apps Android and Apple.
Taking readings does not change the facts but it does make you think when you switch on or more importantly switch off the heating.
After nearly six months of readings, remember not a full year.
Electricity is averaging 76.4 kWh a week
Water is averaging 1.33 cubic meters a week
Gas usage now in the winter is roughly 80 cubic meters a week
We are three adults in a large modern semi. Gas heating, electric cooking.

We are with First Utility, no bills since last March. They told me I owed over £200 since my last payment, and when challenged, admitted that I am in credit. What a way to run a business!

I'm in a fairly new build semi detached 2 bedrooms and got my Scottishgas bill in yesterday 436 that's less the 210 I've already paid to it since October so it should be 646! It is an estimate though so I'm hoping it's wrong it's never been this much even through winter.

When you do start to draught proof etc pay attention to things like underlay, you can get 15mm thick wool underlay on eBay fairly cheaply. It will make a big difference.

Thick interlined curtains make a massive difference, even if your double glazed.

is that gas usage KWh or units? Not the same.

no gas here, but have been running comparisons for various rellies. So can tell you that MIL in her well-insulated but kept very warm bungalow uses 41 units of gas per day; heating on about 13 hours, plus gas cooking.

the electric usage is also high; she uses about 5 units, we use a bit more (home all day).

so either the meter is wrong, the readings have been wrongly recorded or you are using way too much on something.

get to your local charity shops and buy some curtains, regardless of the pattern.

those of you stuck with bills you can't pay - get on to suppliers and ask for help with a payment plan. Don't freeze.

I have just checked our last bills issued on 31st December gas was £285 and electricity £124 this is for a largish 3 bedroomed semi built in 1957 and we live in the south east. We have double glazing and the loft is quite well insulated.

DH and I are retired and he likes to be warm so the heating comes on at 6.30am and goes off at 11. 30pm and the thermostat is set at 20oC and I do quite a lot of cooking by gas.

Our supplier is British Gas not supposed to be one of the cheaper ones and at the moment on a fixed price tariff which expires at the end of next month we also pay by direct debit every month and also get paperless bills which they give you a slight reduction on.

Over the years whoever has serviced our boiler has always told us it is cheaper to have it on a lowish temperature 18oc all day then only have it on twice a day as in most homes it takes at least two hours to get to the required temperature how true that is we do not know.

That's a myth mowbray, it's on moneysavingexperts energy myth busters every year.

Our house is newbuild and takes 15 minutes to heat up from cold.

You need curtains!! Thick ones make a fab difference! As a student I loved in a Victorian flat, my flatmate and I had identical rooms except I had velvet curtains....mine was roasting in comparison! Even with double glazing!

Doubt you need to go as far as the seventies velvet though!

Hello specialsubject,
I asume the question was directed at me.
Both the Gas meter and water meter have M3 (little3) which I believe is cubic meter.
The Electricity meter has kHw which I believe is kilowatt hours.
None of the meters has "units"
While the size of the bill in money terms is mst important, as there are so many price plans and they can change all the time, I always concentrate on the actual usage.

Could you do DD? Mines £41.51 a month for gas and electric with Scottish power I'm at home all the time but even if I times it by 12 for the year it's only coming out at £498 I'm in a large 3 bed semi-detached house but just me and my DS

Fluffy - it makes a different if you have an old property with high ceilings and draughts. Ours takes hours to heat up!

And my gas bill is bigger than yours OP - 5 bed 3 storey Edwardian semi with cellars, only partly double glazed.

We moved out of our draughty 4 bed Victorian house for this exact reason.

Our heating costs were about 3.5k per year

gas meter is probably units then - so you are using 3 or 4 times what MIL does. That is a LOT of gas. And you also use a lot of electricity.

usage is indeed all that matters. You are using a huge amount IF your meters are right.

Sounds about right to me! We live in a large 4bed Victorian house with wood floors throughout. Double glazing, heavy curtains etc etc. we are on oil and we pay £150 pm for that and £110pm for elec!!

Our bills are a nightmare - 4 bed detached in quite an exposed rural position, even though we have full double glazing.
About a third higher than our 5 bed eot house with 3 reception rooms!
I recently changed tariffs with EDF and because it was a cheaper tariff the direct debit went down. I asked them to leave it at the present payment until further notice so I can pay off any outstanding and hopefully build up a little buffer for next winter!

Sounds right... We have a big Tudor house and ours is similar

Sounds ok. We pay dd of 180 a month for electric and 220 for gas. And don't get me started on the £70 a month I pay for water fixed rate.