I need someone to unpick this fuel bill - something is wrong!

[Mykittensmittens]

Hot topic I know. Apologies for that.

Very conscious of rising prices to the degree that it will be unaffordable for us. Abbreviating as much as I can - when we moved into this average four bed house 12 months ago the fuel bill was just over £100 a month. Appreciating rises ahead I fixed the price for 12 months but despite that we did see an increase in the middle of the year to £160 a month. This is expensive to me and we became very conscious of our usage.

Our supplier has given us three options when our fixed deal ends in March . Option one switch to the variable rate which will increase the monthly payments to £190 and does not take into account the additional rise of 54% in April meaning after that it will be touching the £300 mark. Option two switch to a loyal customer deal which is fixed for a year at almost £350 a month.

Everyone I speak to pulls a massive face at this amount. And I’m sure everybody says this but the thing I can’t understand is that we are extremely low usage as far as I can see. I have attached two screenshots one of the latest bill which shows our annual usage predicted. And a second screenshot from our energy app which shows yesterdays usage.

We are cold. The average house temperature sits at 15c all day. It is only on for a short time in the morning a little burst at lunchtime and then for an hour or so after the kids get in from school. I run a dishwasher once a day on a 40 minute fast cycle. I use the washing machine perhaps once every other day. This is also on a short 40 minute cycle . I do not use my tumble dryer anymore and haven’t for some time. I dry my clothes on a clotheshorse and if they are still damp after about 16 hours I’ve put them in the dryer on a timer for five minutes.

I don’t overuse the oven, I use it very consciously. Lights are turned off and all bulbs are LED. Devices are not left on standby. I have one fridge and one freezer. My laptop is plugged in during my working day but I make sure I power down switch off and unplug the power connection in the evening.

So how the hell basically can we be a household that is using masses and masses above the average. I cannot work it out?

The house is extremely efficient and had a fantastic rating for efficiency when we purchased it. He has full cavity wall insulation, brand-new double glazing, extremely well insulated loft . In addition we hate using a wood burner so the evenings we have one really good warm room and the kids bedrooms above are also warm as a result.

I also believe that using Octopus Energy we are in a provider that is extremely competitive (even under the current market) and shopped around considerably to get onto the fix deal that the prices on the attached show .

What on earth can we do we cannot afford £350 a month for our fuel?

Jesus OP, I’ve just seen the estimated yearly figures on your bill! 😱
That’s 3x the amount of gas I use and we’re currently at home pretty much 24/7!

3 bedroom semi, 30kw gas boiler, I use tumble dryer a couple of hours a week, washer 3x a week, electric oven every day, gas hob. Heating on about 3-4 hours a day.

Just had a smart meter fitted as I thought the heating was costing so much, and I was adamant the hot tub was costing a fiver a day, DH swore it was about a pound a day ... well, he's been away for 5 days and he switched hot tub off to drain it and clean when he gets back, turns out that before he left we were using about £6-8 in electric a day and since he's been gone it's about £2 a day ... I hate being right all the time 😁 anyway, he will either have to put that money into the bills account or get rid, can't justify that. Heating is set at 16 degrees all day and night then I turn it up to 18 in the morning for 2 hours then evening for a few if needed, that's about £2.50 a day the smart meter has really made me more conscious of where the energy is going

The first screenshot gave OPs annual usage as electricity: 6538 kWh and gas: 20540 kWh which are both quite high

You must have a smart meter as my octopus app doesn't give the detail of hourly usage that yours does and I just have a standard meter

It seems fairly high op, are you detached? We are paying £110, increasing by £20 from March. 4 bed townhouse

I checked my annual usage and its; Electric 5990kWh and gas 15316kWh. We are high users of electricity and we use about £80/90 per month (actual cost). We don't use as much gas as our heating is off overnight and on a timer during the day.

@dementedpixie

The first screenshot gave OPs annual usage as electricity: 6538 kWh and gas: 20540 kWh which are both quite high

You must have a smart meter as my octopus app doesn't give the detail of hourly usage that yours does and I just have a standard meter

It gave an estimated usage which could be very different. It's more important than ever to work from actual usage figures over a 12 month period in order to make properly informed decisions.

They estimate it from her actual usage. They cant give a non estimated figure as its in the future

That’s double the amount of gas we use Demented !
We use around £1.60 - £2 a day in electricity, apart from a weird spike in December that I can’t figure out where we used far more electric than normal, we were using £3 a day for nearly 2 weeks

@roses2 yes it is but I don’t have an indoor display for both fuels to be able to interrogate the usage better.

Here is a screenshot of the smart electric readings which I pull from the app. The usage doesn’t correlate with the app whatsoever. Eg Monday 31/1. Washer and dryer were not used at all. Oven wasn’t used as kids ate with my Mum and she gave me leftovers to microwave. I was in one room all day delivering training on teams. I didn’t boil the kettle more than twice and had a cold lunch. Didn’t hoover. Didn’t use hairdryers or plug in heaters.
3 short showers in the eve, one of which is on mains water.
All sat together watching TV in the eve.
How the hell had that day still equal to almost double the average house?

Probably only a small thing, but I believe that the faster cycles on dishwashers and washing machines - unless labelled as daily quick/economy or somesuch - are often not the most efficient both in energy and water use. Frustratingly ... So that's something you could double check, which are the most economical programmes to use.

Can you do an experiment- not use one thing each day (eg skip showers, day without tv etc) and see what each costs?

Something definitely doesn't add up. You describe your usage as low to moderate in an efficient house, but your consumption is very high. Is that your real consumption or an overestimate? Have you checked actual readings over the last year or two?

Ours is about 4000 for electricity and 13000 for gas and we have the heating on a lot more than you and we're not particularly careful with electricity, yet you're using 50% more than we do.

I'm not sure it's old appliances either. Our fridge freezer is well over 20 years old and I've just used an energy monitor and worked out it costs £10 a month to run and we could get that down to under a fiver if we swapped it for a new one. So it could be worth replacing but the saving isn't going to get the bill down massively.

@poorbuthappy

I don't think you even have to go quarterly if you cancel your DD. I think you can still submit monthly readings and just pay it? I think the time is coming where people will do this so the money is not sat in the supplier's account.

You have to give them a payment method, so a bit like a DD. I now do this with Bulb.

I submit meter readings on the last day of the month (into an app). 5 days later they debit my bank account and upload my monthly bill to the app.

I lose £5 a year for not paying by DD and my bills will be higher over winter than summer. However I was running up huge credit balances with them and they wouldn't reduce my direct debit. So I decided I'd just pay for what I use.

Your gas seems quite high - ours is about half that. How much do you use your heating?

@BarbaraofSeville we’ve only lived here a year so that’s as far as I can go. I’ve been round the whole house today and the only things I haven’t accounted for are a security camera which is plugged in and DSs Nintendo switch.

Something is definitely wrong. I think the gas it wrong too but not quite as much!

Do you have an immersion heater that's left switched on all the time?

I'm not certain why you believe something is wrong. I calculated your bill based on usage at roughly £130 a month, and that seems pretty normal to me for a four bedroom house?

My house is an old 3 bedroom terraced, not as well insulated as it could be.
I pay my electricity bill quarterly not on direct debit. I use tumble dryer and washing machine daily and have two freezers. Just had my bill £226 so less than £80 per month.
It will obviously increase in April but your estimated usage sounds wrong and you are much more careful.
My gas works out at £60 per month.

Even with the April increase I am still looking at about £200 for both.
Also working on my bad habits re usage.

But they barely heat the house, have good energy efficiency measures and have very little switched on.

Even on the day they were all out and didn't cook or use the washing machine or dishwasher, they used more electricity than an average household does in a day.

"Average household" is pretty much irrelevant, as that takes in all the one bedroom flats, bedsits etc, and you'll always have drastically different usage patterns even in similar households. A four bedroom house is not exactly a small or modest property.

OP has already confirmed she returns actual meter readings one per month without fail, so this is not an issue with estimated usage. Unless the meters themselves are actually faulty, I can see no reason at all to think these bills aren't realistic. Again, £130 actual usage per month in a 4 bedroom house doesn't seem in any way unusual to me, in fact, I would say that's a good bit lower than what I'd expect for most 4 bedroom properties given the size of the space being heated, the fact there are kids running around etc. It wouldn't surprise me at all if most families in that scenario are easily paying upwards of £200 a month.

@XDownwiththissortofthingX I don’t dispute the bill or what that amount of electricity costs,
I’m disputing that we cannot possibly use that much given the appliances and duration of them that we actually use. Electricity isn’t part of heating our house. I can’t begin to fathom how the average can be 8,000kw per day and ours twice that given what we practically use and the lifestyle we have.

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

"Average household" is pretty much irrelevant, as that takes in all the one bedroom flats, bedsits etc, and you'll always have drastically different usage patterns even in similar households. A four bedroom house is not exactly a small or modest property.

OP has already confirmed she returns actual meter readings one per month without fail, so this is not an issue with estimated usage. Unless the meters themselves are actually faulty, I can see no reason at all to think these bills aren't realistic. Again, £130 actual usage per month in a 4 bedroom house doesn't seem in any way unusual to me, in fact, I would say that's a good bit lower than what I'd expect for most 4 bedroom properties given the size of the space being heated, the fact there are kids running around etc. It wouldn't surprise me at all if most families in that scenario are easily paying upwards of £200 a month.

This does make sense. I’m seeing my neighbour later in the same size of house and with the same occupant level, so I’ll ask her out of interest.

@dementedpixie no immersion. Combi boiler. 5 years old, regularly serviced.

[quote Mykittensmittens]@XDownwiththissortofthingX I don’t dispute the bill or what that amount of electricity costs,
I’m disputing that we cannot possibly use that much given the appliances and duration of them that we actually use. Electricity isn’t part of heating our house. I can’t begin to fathom how the average can be 8,000kw per day and ours twice that given what we practically use and the lifestyle we have.[/quote]
I based my calculations off the daily figures in your first post, which suggests usage of an average of about 15KwH per day in your home. That seems roughly correct given the later post you made showing your use over a week, given that the daily usage varied from 13KwH to 20KwH.

I don't know what the typical UK household uses in a day, but I do know that from my own usage, which is absolutely minuscule as I live alone in a 1 bedroom flat, 15KwH per day in a four bedroom house with children does not seem in any way unlikely. I use about a third of that myself, but as I said, I live alone, am out most days, washing machine is one once a week, if even that, no tumble dryer at all, no dishwasher, kettle boiled maybe twice a day, no TV on. So if I'm a third of your usage, considering the difference in circumstances I don't think your figures are in any way outlandish.

Your Gas consumption does seem to be enormous, but then if you are heating a four bed, having showers with water that's been through the boiler etc perhaps that's not unrealistic either.

Yeah, I think it might help to find out what a friend in a similar property with similar sized family is using.

@BarbaraofSeville

But they barely heat the house, have good energy efficiency measures and have very little switched on.

Even on the day they were all out and didn't cook or use the washing machine or dishwasher, they used more electricity than an average household does in a day.

This!!! It really doesn’t make any sense to me. I’ve had a similar day today. Just me in the house in one room in layers of clothes! No washing. No dryer. Cold lunch. Two showers later on (DH away with work, DS had his after school swimming). One shower will be mains not elec. supper is soup which is stovetop and already made so minimal cooking. 3 uses of kettle today. Everything switched off at the plugs though DC may well switch the TV and console on now for a bit.

Charged my laptop once today. DD has charged hers yesterday for school work so working on the batteries now. Things like printer switched off at the mains. No immersion. No underfloor heating. Bedside clock? One in the house.

Actually probably worth saying I don’t even use a proper kettle I have an efficient ‘one cup’ thing which only boils one cup of water to your desired size at a time.

So in that respect to electricity, the size of the house isn’t as relative either (although I understand that with Gas).