Faulty Meter?

[TudorCottage]

I appreciate there are so many variables to how much electricity a property will use, but our December usage seems extremely high to me. But before I contact our provider I thought I would get a feel for general usage in older properties on here.

According to the meter we used just over 2000kWh of electricity in December, resulting in a bill of just over £700
We have underfloor electric heating which I thought I’d mastered Its set to 17.5 deg in 3 areas and 15.5 deg in the kitchen.
Everything else is pretty standard. I appreciate underfloor heating is expensive to run, it’s been cold and we had our fair share of festive lights, but 2000kWh of usage in a month seems excessive to me.

Gas usage is more than acceptable in the same period.

Do meters ever go wrong?

 

[Feltwell]

Anything can go wrong, but I suspect it's more likely that you've just used it, prices as they are.

Feltwell Towers, 5 bed 3 storey Victorian, Gas heating, gas cooker, showers run off gas-heated water - really our only high consumer of electricity is the tumble dryer - £600 for gas & electric combined in December. Heating set to similar temperatures to you but every room is on an individual timeclock.

 

[TudorCottage]

You are probably right and without the cap my duel fuel bill this month would have been close to £1200!!

Just seems crazy that only 12 months ago our large 60’s 4 bed detached wasn’t costing much more for the whole year

 

[Lacan07]

You are probably right and without the cap my duel fuel bill this month would have been close to £1200!!

Just seems crazy that only 12 months ago our large 60’s 4 bed detached wasn’t costing much more for the whole year

https://imgur.com/BLIPdZ7

 

[RBailey]

I fitted a small clamp meter to our meter recently, if you clamp it to separate circuits (i.e. the UFH) it could help narrow down the big consumers.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09DB9G4TL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Feltwell Towers, 5 bed 3 storey Victorian, Gas heating, gas cooker, showers run off gas-heated water - really our only high consumer of electricity is the tumble dryer - £600 for gas & electric combined in December. Heating set to similar temperatures to you but every room is on an individual timeclock.

We are at about the same cost level in our six bed conjoined cottages. (Gas heating and hot water, electric cooker, smart TRV's. (The heating is set at about 19 deg for just the rooms in use for the time they are in use.)


I am also a nerd and track our consumption on a graph.

The gray is gas and the darker blue is electricity.
We were doing okay and the average gas consumption was lower every year. (This year due to guests we ran it more over Christmas and I took an extra meter reading so I hope the daily average was a is spiked.)
I like the graphing approach as I can get a "feel" for the consumption rates, trends and any problems. The wife then looks after the money / best deal.

Cheers,
Richard B.

 

[TudorCottage]

Thanks for the link.

I was aware that a 500 year old property was always going to use more energy than a ‘more modern’ 60’s house but the scale has taken me somewhat by surprise and my provisional budget plan has been blown away
Even allowing for the current crazy prices, if I was in my last place my bill would be approximately 60% cheaper like for like. Bigger house with a worn out boiler to boot!!

Had my elderly Mum stay for a few days in the cold snap and really turned the floor up, twice daily readings showed we used about 430 kWh in a 30 hour period. It was pleasantly warm

Looking at running some pipe work down from the rads upstairs to new rads downstairs in time for next winter. Can’t fault the boiler for efficiency, increase in gas usage has been negligible so far this winter.
Would I have to notify the relevant authorities about such an addition. For many years the cottage had rads downstairs before the UFH was installed.

It is what it is and thank my lucky stars I can afford to turn the heating on when required. Some less fortunate souls will be feeling the cold this winter.

 

[paulc]

I am also a nerd and track our consumption on a graph.
gray is gas and the darker blue is electricity.

Also keep track of my energy consumption here (along with temperature & humidity around the house). Power is monitored via a PZEM-16 and stored in a database ready for plotting at a later date. Just wish I could do something similar for gas consumption. Our continental friends have it easy with smart meters - A user accessible port is provided so that a home owner can plug a simple cable in and query consumption data for both gas & electricity.

 

[a twig]

In my experience any electrical based heating (particularly UFH) gets spendy very quickly. In my parents’ house if you are sat in the chair near the meter cupboard and the immersion heater is on you can hear the noise of the meter turning!

When we looked at UFH in our last place we were advised it had to be on at a low level all the time, which didn’t really fit with how we used the place so we went for rads and smart TRVs. Being able to just heat the rooms you are in and then have them automatically stop heating if doors/windows were left open, or to be able to stop the heating sooner if you were having an early night was definitely worth it

 

[Feltwell]

We are at about the same cost level in our six bed conjoined cottages. (Gas heating and hot water, electric cooker, smart TRV's. (The heating is set at about 19 deg for just the rooms in use for the time they are in use.)

That's good to know, shows we're not too outrageous.

 

[steveb]

Electricity now costs about 10x as much as gas did a year ago - so all previous economic thoughts are currently null and voice - but also worth knowing if the usage is from readings or estimates. By "from the meter" I assume actual readings, but if you are looking at a bill where a previous one was estimated and the new one is actual it could just be a catching up to reality.

If it is from the meter you can possibly take readings every hour for a bit, see if the rate of creep is in line with what you expect, then turn off something like the UFH and it should drop to a relative crawl. I won't help but it might at least allow you to pinpoint the biggest use (which is , almost certainly, electric UFH)

 

[jmo]

This link might be useful: http://thnet.co.uk/power/

I'm currently using it to track usage and project costs, taking weekly meter readings (no smart meters). Have been using it for 3 weeks (including the recent cold snap) and it's projecting £350 for the month for both gas and electricity.

I've not lived here long, end terrace compared to the mid terrace I lived in last winter, but I'm using much more gas having the heating set to come on when it drops below 16 degrees, rather than being very stingy like I was in the last house, turning it on for a couple hours a day.

 

[TudorCottage]

These are all meter readings and not estimates. As soon as it became apparent that we could not have a smart meter fitted, I made Monday‘s the official meter reading day of the week. It’s amazing how the hike in prices can focus the mind.

I’m ashamed to say that for pretty much all of my home ownership’s which began in the 80’s I’ve never really paid much attention to utility bills

The UFH is definitely the cause. The recent milder weather has seen the red blinks omitted by the meter to show usage return to a sedate blink. During the height of the cold snap I literally couldn’t count the blinks they were pulsing so quickly.

When the system was fitted electricity would have been cheap and can understand why it was chosen. No rads robbing space in the lounge or dining room and when turned up it warms the place up a treat.

Just a shame prices have rocketed before our first winter in the cottage

 

[Cubist]

I'm always wary of comparing apples and oranges and, in terms of relative heating costs, there are way too many variables to make any kind of truly balanced judgement. Nevertheless, since TC's first post of this topic I have found myself oscillating between moments of appalled horror and bouts of perhaps misguided relief. With the exception of broadband/phone and electricity we are ostensibly 'off grid'. Our heating system, such as it is today, relies entirely on wood-burners of which we have two and one of these drives our wet central heating system. Arguably therefore I could, metaphorically speaking, throw in the typical cost of the firewood we consume in order to make a more balanced judgement but then, given that for 9 of the past 12 years we were entirely independent for that too, the marginal cost argument makes a mockery of any fair comparison.

With that said and much in mind then my spinning around this debate is based entirely on the cost of electricity that the various contributors have reported. Assuming that the supply tariffs we all enjoy/suffer are broadly similar I am at a loss to understand why this old place seems to be vastly more economical in its use of this commodity than can be explained by the number of people domiciled here. Its true that there are just two adults living here and that for large parts of the working day we are either away from the house or outdoors so I would reasonably expect that our electricity consumption would perhaps be a fairly significant fraction, say 30-50%, of a typical families.

Somehow though, for the same December period, we consumed something less than 10% of that utilised by TC. Admitted, we were away for a week but that surely could not explain the humongous difference? In addition our rate of consumption for December is entirely in line with previous months and therefore there has been no error in recording or reporting. So I'm at a bit of a loss - but only from a comprehension perspective. Oh, and the bouts of appalled horror? These result from a concern that our meter is busted and a nasty surprise may be coming our way. Ta for that TC.

 

[TudorCottage]

I’m green with envy Cubist. As you say there are so many variables that I either spend some time to see if something is amiss or put up with it. With the milder weather consumption has lowered somewhat so I can see me putting up with it until the next cold snap

 

[malcolm]

Electricity is 3.4 times the price of gas for heating. Some radiators downstairs would make a lot of sense so you can use gas for the heating and the electric underfloor for additional comfort.

With the capped rates I paid £370 for gas heating in the sub-zero month of December. Had I used electricity instead of gas it would have been £1264! My electricity costs were £55. Still a bunch but yearly I'm still just under the national average.

It's odd how high the national average is. I think a lot of us do a lot better than that even without alternative forms of heating. I've not used wood this year. They told us we would run out of gas so I'm saving the wood for emergencies.

 

[Cubist]

I’m green with envy Cubist. As you say there are so many variables that I either spend some time to see if something is amiss or put up with it. With the milder weather consumption has lowered somewhat so I can see me putting up with it until the next cold snap

A nightmare/dream ousted me early from my bed this morning. While grumblingly musing over the cause, I realised it was in part due to my earlier contribution to this thread and a now distant memory of - discovering that the water meter of my then home had been connected to a neighbours property since the houses were built 10 years before!

This and the, perhaps apocryphal, tales of scallywags tapping into the services supplies of neighbours hasn't quite induced bouts of severe paranoia but.... I am shoulder-checking a little more frequently.

 

[TudorCottage]

Our electricity comes in via overhead cables which I assume would make ‘piggybacking’ harder?
But in this day and age and with some of the stunts people pull who knows!!

The Cottage would have been on grid long before most of the houses around here were built so there may have been opportunities

 

[Cubist]

Our electricity comes in via overhead cables which I assume would make ‘piggybacking’ harder?
But in this day and age and with some of the stunts people pull who knows!!

The Cottage would have been on grid long before most of the houses around here were built so there may have been opportunities

Snap, the local bad guys here have had ample opportunity since the Spanish Armada sailed and Henry pillaged the Monasteries. Thinking along those lines though it would seem that Fastershire is using property age as their main method to prioritise fibre installation - ho hum.

 

[88v8]

Ufh is OK for background heating that is topped up by other means when required. Too cumbersome as a sole heat source.

We are all-electric with storage heaters. Out heaviest month since I began keeping records was 1800kwh but that included heating my workshop 24/7 for a gluing job. In a year we use 10-12,000kwh. We just came off a two-year fix. This year our bill will be about £4,000.

We heat to around 62F, then top it up with woodburners. The wood is on top of that £4,000.
Mind you, our cottage is a lot newer than yours, 100 years or so.

Heated gilets are a good thing, fingerless mitts, long Johns. One acclimatises.

 

[Zebra]

I spend about £600 a year for gas and electricity combined.