Are modern houses significantly much cheaper to heat/light....how much is your gas/electric?

[hairycaterpillar]

We are currently in lovely old property, but considering moving partly due to rising cost of maintaining lovely old property! In terms of heating/lighting is there really a big difference between modern/old.

We currently pay just over £100 a month on gas/elec combined, in our traditional old (>100yrs) 4 bed house. Would be interested to compare with similar size modern house.

Depends what you mean by modern property - those built in the past 5-10 years should be significantly cheaper to heat because of better building regs on energy efficiency (also room sizes and ceiling heights tend to be less generous). However, poor workmanship means that this can be seriously compromised - only a small sample of homes built on a large estate, for example, will be thoroughly and independently inspected.

If you live in a high stamp duty area, you would be much better off "greening" your present house as it sounds as if you really like it: new double-glazed sash windows; more efficient boiler; lots of insulation etc.

depends on how hetaed you like things really. We pay about £100 combined a month in the winter for a 4 bed victorian terrace. But we don't heat upstairs and the heatingis off during the day so we wear lots of jumpers. Coal fire in the front room to keep the disabled one warm.
If we heated like next door - hall, all bedrooms, doors open etc it would be much much higher.

hmmmm yes I suppose it is hard to compare there are too many variables.

I think the biggest difference in heating costs between old and modern is cavity wall insulation - it can't be done on an old house. Along with the bigger bills you do get a lot more fresh air though

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i can't help with figures but we live in an old house that we've significantly extended and renovated over the past few years.

The difference in heating the old and new parts becomes quite obvious when you move from room to room. In the older parts (with original sash windows, combination of old stone and brick walls)the radiators can be whacking out heat constantly but the rooms never feel overly warm.

However in the new extended parts (which meet all the building regulations criteria for insulation, glazing etc) the TRVs on the radiators mean that when the heatings on the room heats up quickly and the heat stays around so the radiators switch off.

Ours is a 3-bedroom-plus-original-attic Victorian mid-terrace and we paid £460 for gas (CH, hot water & hob) + £750 elec for the last 12 months - total £1200 so pretty much like OP.

Bits of it do feel warm, sometimes - depends on the wind direction . My brother has a 1970s 4-bed-extended-to-6 detached, insulated to the point of suffocation, I will ask him what his bills are like next time we speak (and he will know )

It's so much easier to compare now that properties for sale have energy certificates. You need to be looking at the potential rating rather than the current one.