Can't afford to heat our home

[yesmynameisigglepiggle]

Got gas/ electric bill through today. £350 in the red. We pay £170 a month for both gas and electric to npower. We have the heating on in the morning and evening for an hour each. We live in a cold, rented house and there are 6 of us including a baby. I guess the thing we have been doing wrong is having a bath every night (same water, just topped up!) so need to switch to showers or sponge baths.

Am really fed up. We have all had prper flu over Christmas and I am recovering from pneumonia. I could cry. And I know the cost of gas is just going to get worse

That sounds ridiculously high , any chance it is wrong (ie overestimated). Presumably you are in credit over he summer and that will offset part of this ?

Oh Golly. I wonder if you might qualify for some help from the council? It sounds a really worrying situation

By the way you might try changing suppliers. I changed over with Uswitch and am now with Atlantic electric and gas. They have been fine.

So sorry you are going through this.

did you start off in the red at all - it does sound terribly high. can you shop about for a cheaper one?

that sounds really high. Any chance of getting the landlord to look at insulation - topping up the roof insulation is fairly cheap and effective.

You can also put secondary film over windows which can help (assuming they are not double glazed.

Otherwise - think about moving ?

I saw Martin from moneysaving expert on the tv and he said to hold off on changing suppliers for aroudn 6 weeks which is when all the suppliers will be putting up their prices. NPower have already put theirs up but the rest will follow suit.

He said to wait until the all go up and then compare them as changing suppliers take a while.

Sorry you're in that situation, if you only use heating that little I'm surprised it's that high, are they estimates or actual readings?

That really is absurdly high. We live in a cold house too - Victorian terrace with sah windows and drafts everywhere - but still pay only £45 a month each for electricity and gas. I have the heating on a lot as I am at home with DS and I don't stint on the hot water either. Could it be that you are using a lot of electricity? Though I agree with Lizs, you should definitely get ot checked out. I am with NPower for either gas or electricity too, can't remember which.

gosh that bill sounds very high for the amount you're using. I guess you've checked it's right,and not a wild estimate?
We have an old and inefficient heating/hot water system and pay less than 100 a month for both. We use the heating for 1 hr in the morning and 3 hrs in the evening. We got rid of our tumble dryer, underfloor heating and spotlights cos they used too much electric - do you have anything like this?

Do you really think that is high? I must get it checked. We are ok on electricity, not too much in the red, it is the gas that is awful. We can't blame it on an estimate either because they come round reading the meter. The house is really big though, the space is fab but it is an old old house and I suspect not energy efficient. We are looking to downsize this year- we are hoping to buy a house- our budget is so tight but I have been so proud of myself getting the shopping bill down to 50-55 pounds (all thanks to mumsnet!). There is no point pestering the landlord and little point switching if we are hoping to move.

Just a moan really and it feels such a sorry situation. We are a normal hardworking family. I haven't told DH yet, wil wait til he gets home and maybe he can make more sense of it.

It does sound an awful lot - we've just had our most recent bill through at the end of December - £190 for Gas, £160 for electric - that for the last quarter........and we have had the heating on a LOT, plus I have an electric oven which often (accidently) gets left on when I take stuff out). Also our TV and computer are on all day, so it's not like we're deliberately trying to conserve energy.

I usually pay £50 a month for Gas, and £40 for electric, - victorian end of terrace, which takes ages to warm up.

the kitchen is covered in spotlights, we use the tumble dryer sometimes but like I say electricity not too high. It must be either a mistake or the house/boiler.

I must be dense. Just looking at the bill, we normally pay £106 but our new payment has been raised to £170. Am going to ring them, it seems far too much and surely it will even out over spring/summer!

get on the phone to warmfront or eaga, they help out with insulation if you are in reciept of certain ebnefits(like cavity wall/attic insulations/window insulation etc) and if you do get certain benefits(listed on their site) you get all this done free!

if you opt to change supplier now, you will have to pay in full your current bill, so maybe not such good idea yet!, def look inot readings yourself and quiry it tho!

I just rang Atlantic as I hadn't checked if my direct debit was about right for a while - seems we are £300 in credit! Blimey. Worth asking, definitely...btw I recommend atlantic. They are fantastic. Great customer service.

How much actual gas and electricity are you using per quarter? The costs are not really comparable between locations and companies so don't tell us much, but actual usage would be helpful in looking at your bills. Have you checked that the readings on your bill are the actual readings from your meters (ie: not from someone else's by mistake)? And if you turn everything off, is the meter still ticking over (ie: might there be a leak)?

How long have you lived there? We moved into our house at the end of the summer and had no chance to build up a buffer in the summer so got hammered with big payments after the first winter. Even then, in a badly insulated house, I was paying at most £130 a month for gas and electricity. We did all the normal stuff to get it down, even turned down the temperature that the boiler was heating the water to, which you don't tend to notice.

This year though, we built up the summer buffer and my payments are right down. Might even turn the water off completely in the summer and just have showers to get it lower with the price rises.

Are you with British Gas by any chance? I think they are ridiculously high. We used to pay £28 a mth flat rate and often we were in credit, then they just started putting our payment plan up and up to about £60 a mth. We couldn't pay it so ended up £400 in debt. They said it was because of the amount of gas we used but we live in a small 2 bed house and we hadn't drastically upped our usage. Now they have installed a meter and they take £11 a wk out for the debt but it costs over £10 a week to heat the house and that's only having it on in the evenings for a few hrs. We end up putting £20 in every 5 days or so! It's a total rip off and I don't know what we would do if dp earned any less. Sorry to go on but I just think it's how much they charge and it's totally unfair, completely sympathise with you.

we have oil and i had a delivery of 1000 litres at a cost of £441 on the 22nd of november and have checked today, expecting it to be at about the half way mark, but it is on the order now line thank god i checked today and not in a couple of days time or we would have run out.... my monthly budget payments will now need to be £165
and we pay £87 per month for electricity.