Realistic household bills

[relaxbab]

I'm moving back to the uk after living abroad 15 years. It's not 100% final so we can back out. I'm starting to get cold feet about it only because of the persistent background chatter of it being 'broken' and everything expensive. We visit yearly but a nice area and only in summer. I know how much the average heating bill is from google but I don't know what the average house or usage is. We'd have a larger old 3 bedroom terrace , north west England. If you hear a similar place to around 23* , how much is it and for how long.

I wouldn’t be going for a large old terrace, I’d look for a modern very well insulated house where the heating bills in winter will be £100 a month rather than £300

I’m in a modern house and our heating bills are a lot more than £100.

Yeah I'd love to get a new build. Unfortunately the house is one I already own, rented out currently. It may be worth selling and buying a new build. I do like the area though and I don't mind paying for a warm house, plus the cost of moving is significant too. I don't think I'd manage in a cold house - I'm in Iceland atm and heat the house to whatever I want for nearly no money - yes very lucky. However we are far from family and want to change that. How much to budget for a cosy house nearly 24/7 in winter?

I think you either want to move back or not, the cost shouldn’t be the deciding factor.

3 bed semi in East Anglia-

G&E- £130pm
Water- £48pm
Council tax- £150pm

Hi! So I'm in NW England, 4 bed new build (large enough with some open plan areas downstairs) and my heating is on to around that temperature quite often. I pay £200 pm with British Gas and my estimated electricity for the year is 3,400kwh and for gas it's 9,600kwh. I don't go without for heating, it's often on for hours a day, same for electricity (lights just on and ambient lighting on always!), there's two people in the household and we do wfh multiple days a week so are always consuming electricity / gas just to give you an idea of usage.

My mum is also in NW England in an end terrace, but it's not the traditional end terrace 2 up 2 down, it's large old one. She pays I think £350-400 a month with higher usage than me, just because it leaks heat and is larger than my house. It's insulated as much as it can be, but things like sash windows don't help!

I'd definitely move back and give it a go through at least one winter, see what the house uses / what changes you can make to make it more efficient!

Thank you very much for that breakdown. I think it doesn't sound as bad as I expected financially. It's true dustylee - the cost of heating will not be the deciding factor - I'm just making a budget and have no idea how much to put in for heating. It's the combination of how comfortable I personally will be and how comfortable the society is as whole. It's the chatter also about broken Britain in combination that makes me nervous. But I feel a bit better now - a warm house will be possible 🙂 not sure about society. Everything seemed not too bad when I last visited but I haven't visited much in the last few years - Covid etc

Is the house/heating system capable of achieving 23 degrees when the outdoor temperature is close to zero? I don't think my house is - kitchen is dropping to 15 degrees overnight at the moment and taking hours to get up to 20 degrees. I don't think we could get the house to 23 without having the heating on overnight or additional electric heaters during the day.

We have our 3 bed house heated to 19 degrees and our bills were 3k last year. I don’t know anyone who has their thermostat set that high does someone have a health condition in your family ?

No, no health conditions. We have our heating at that because, well, we just do. We're used to it now. But yes we will have to accept we cannot keep this up in the uk. We have our heating on 24/7 atm which will also have to change.

By old if you mean victorian or similar, I think maintaining 23C will be very difficult.

Good question. When we move in we can upgrade heating and insulation which will help.

I'm in a well insulated 3 bed new build in north west England. It got to -5 last night and hasn't been above freezing for days here. My heating is taking a while to get up to 18 currently which is what we have it set too. Anything higher is stifling. It's dropping quickly too when it's off. Pay £170 a month for gas and electric. It would be far more if we heated to 20 never mind 23!

Same! We tend to only get it up to around 18-19, though feels much warmer in the lounge with the gas fire on. Overnight with no heating in it drops to around 15.
We have the heating on about 4 hrs a day & it's looking like our bill will be approx £400 this month!!

I have the type of house you describe ans pay 120 a month however that's without the heating on as much as I would like

We have a 3 bed 1930's mid terrace. Some months last winter we were £425 for gas and electricity😬Our direct debit was £287 but we've built up a credit on the account and the company have change our dd down to £227. We don't have water charges as we are in Scotland but out Council Tax is £247 per month.

£350 a month for gas and electricity here-in the SE. The house is old and it’s still often not as warm as I’d like!

I pay £200 pm with British Gas and my estimated electricity for the year is 3,400kwh and for gas it's 9,600kwh

It will take a lot more than that to heat a large old 3 bed to 23 C. The gas bill will probably be at least double. That's just about what we use to run a well insulated 2 bed to 21 C a few hours a day.

We've recently been on holiday to Iceland and it made us realise how shabby and dirty a lot of the UK is. Litter, potholes, poorly maintained public buildings. Plus crime, antisocial behaviour and visible poverty and homelessness.

But your perception would depend a lot on location. A well heeled market town won't look half as bad as many city areas.

Supermarkets and restaurants are cheaper than Iceland but your lunch places were actually cheaper than coffee shops here. The quality in Iceland was much better, fresh and made on site, whereas a lot of the UK is chains selling factory food.

I'm from Scandinavia and I know how warm houses are heated in there (24/7 - even if you're not at home) and how cheap it is. In the UK the same standard of heating really won't be possible- the houses are so poorly insulated and it will cost you and arm and a leg. Keeping an old 3 bed house at 20+ degrees in Northern England (even at night) would probably be 6k + per year, and possibly more. The good thing is, you will acclimatise and get used to it!

English homes are cold. They're damn cold. It's something to do with the way the houses are built and or insulated and it's also a mentality thing. They consider it to be kind of normal to be a bit cold at home. The best thing to do is to invest in some serious layers.

@Pearlyb when we were in Iceland the information book in the apartment told us to not touch the heating and to open the windows if we got too hot because that's how it was done there.

But all their heating and hot water is geothermal so very cheaply produced.

I live in Scotland in a 1970s 3 bed end terrace. We are £161 for gas and electric monthly, and £142 for council tax. Never heated to 23' though, usually 20' and only in the morning and evenings when everyone's home. Heating goes off for the night no matter how cold at 9pm.

@BarbaraofSeville yes that sounds like what we do in my home country too - if it's too hot just open the windows. In my home country we use lots of nuclear power + renewables to keep the costs low though instead of thermal power!

I'm in the UK now (quite south), living in a victorian house. It is pretty cool - a combination of bad insulation (no cavity insulation), drafty windows and doors (even though double glazed. But scandis do triple as standard), plus there is more moisture in the air so everything feels colder. Like @Loulou599 says just need to layer up.

The one good thing is that winters in the UK are so much shorter than up north- October was still 20+ degrees, and spring starts in March! Also the temps don't dip as low as in Scandinavia.

Last winter there were a few heating thread, there are some people in modern homes that are paying far less than £100 per month but keeping the house 20 degrees through the winter - sadly although mine is well insulated and better than my previous home which was 1930s - its still around £200 + for electric and gas through the winter months

As a 'foreigner' visiting, the shabbiness has a bit of charm. It has got too much though in the last couple of years. For example, the trees were so overgrown we could not see the road signs last summer. Whereas before the slightly shabby bumpy roads and the overgrown verges were quite quaint. I don't visit a city centre so can't comment but my dh went to a northern city for work and said near the edge of the centre he saw tents which is of course shocking.i think a pp hits the nail on the head with 'acclimatise' - I didn't used to have a warm house and I'm sure I'll get used to it again but it's a daunting prospect. Also it is much less cold in the uk which strangely I'd overlooked before this reading the replies. It's also the first year here that I've not sourced Christmas presents from the uk. Normally I do because it's much cheaper but this year for the first time it's a mixed bag.