Electric only household - How much do you pay?

[Thatsnotmynameisit]

I was just wondering how much anyone in a similar property pays for their electric bill?

We live in a 4 bedroom end terrace house, 3 adults and 1 DC(soon to be 2) - the area has only just had gas installed and we are awaiting the landlord to upgrade the heating system with a boiler, radiators etc. We currently have storage heaters (I hate these things!) Which we use in 3 bedrooms, 1 in kitchen and 1 in the living room so 5 total and are all set at input 6 and output 3 ( any advice on these too would be great)

When we moved in to the property I signed us up to Bulb who quoted £76pm, so I was paying £85pm by DD just to be safe - or so I thought! In October I noticed every month we were using more electric than we were paying for so as per Bulbs recommendation I upped our payments to £116pm! Jump to December and Bulb are now saying we are using £178pm and they recommended we up our monthly payments to £218!!

Does this seem a lot? I feel like this is a silly amount but all comparison sites say we are on the best deal/tariff?

Also, We do all clothes washing/drying over night while on Economy 7 too and try using the tumble dryer as much as possible.

My mum's home is fully electric and can pay £250-300 a month at times, such as winter months. 3 Bed house in Scotland.

Last time I visited I adjusted the hot water thermostats (emersion heater) lowering the temperature a couple of degrees. Now the hot water is hot enough for a bath but not too hot.

Heated airer if you have the space can be better than a tumble dryer. They cost around 4-6p per hour to run and can get models that hold up to 10kg of laundry, drying it in 5-8 hours. They cost £80-150 to buy, so you need to weight up the costs.

Look at your actual unit usage on old bills and current bills. Is ECO7 worth having? It is useful for overnight heating but storage heaters can be rather inefficient at giving out the heat when you want it, better for background heat all day. ECO7 at my home has it's own circuits, so it would not reduce cost of my washing machine use as that is plugged into normal circuit. Check what sort of setup you have. Running appliances at night can also be a fire risk and water leak risk.

All electric cost will be high in winter as you are using electric heating. Experiment with heating use to see if you can find an optimum temperature for each room.

Cost wise your figures seem about right, it will vary a lot though due to location, home insulation, heating type.

Ah you rent, so not much you can change.

With storage heaters I put input as one above output, so Input 4, output 3. When I get up, I turn the output down to 1 if going out most of the day, then turn up to max when returning home. Experiment for each room, the controls don't really do a lot (output moves a flap, input controls how hot the bricks get).
Do you have some heaters which have instant heat (convector)? My storage heater does and is useful to give room a boost but it runs off normal electric as can be used anytime, not ECO7.

@nannynick

Thanks for all of that info, I'll have a look at everything you mentioned, the landlord is really good so if I need anything I can give them a call and they may be able to help too.

The water is ridiculously hot, so turning that down may help as you suggested.
I'm just worried about money a bit more as I've just started on maternity leave and so will be home a lot more now and money will be a bit tighter.

Thanks for all the help

you need to keep adjusting the output on the storage heaters, they are a brick full of heat and you need to reduce output when you aren't around. Check you know your economy 7 times, they vary a lot and using high-demand appliances at peak rate is a punishing mistake.

watch it with Bulb, variable tariff and greenwash.

laughing at the 'you rent so you can't change anything' comment when the landlord is going to install gas central heating!

Google how to use storage heaters effectively. During the night you probably want input 6 and output 0. When you get up you would increase output to whatever level makes your house warm enough

www.cse.org.uk/advice/advice-and-support/night-storage-heaters

Thanks for the link @dementedpixie that has explained things a bit better for me.

@mencken I never thought about adjusting the output when we aren't home so much etc. I will definitely be doing that going forward - until we have gas installed at least our landlord is awaiting some funding to help towards the installation into the house - it was installed to be rear of the house for 'free' in the summer, this is the first winter here after living 6 years with gas, I forgot how much storage heaters cost to run

I’d try playing with the input/output to see if you can lower it. I’m on electricity only but my property is smaller than yours so not really comparable for costs - but I find it very economical and I pay far less for energy than my friends in equivalent properties with gas.

Through trial and error I have found that I don’t actually need all the storage heaters on all the time - I certainly wouldn’t have them all turned to 6/3. I didn’t even need them all on when it was really cold last month.

Get in the habit of checking the weather the night before too, and setting the heaters according to the daytime temperature (eg if it’s going to be 3 at night but 12 in the day I’d have the heaters on medium but if it were 3 in the day I’d have them on high) If we’re going to be out all day I set them low. Keeping doors open between rooms shares the heat too.

Obviously you’ll need to have things reasonably warm for young children/baby so I’d suggest keeping their bedrooms and the main living area decently warm - kitchen will warm up when you cook so I wouldn’t bother with that heater myself.