heating bills

[plasticpigeon]

My supplier tells me my meter readings are low every time I put them in. Looking at my gas usage it is about half of the average for a 3 bed terrace. How can this be when I have single glazing and gaps everywhere. The only nod to insulation was putting 30cm+ in the loft when I put in new joists and boarded it out. Perhaps all this green stuff is overrated.

 

[Owain]

Perhaps you wear jumpers instead of having the thermostat on "roast" setting and wearing T shirts in December?

 

[mattice]

Pretty sure our loft insulation was transformational... everything else was chipping away at the edges.

Sat here in shorts and T-shirt with Mrs mattice in several layers and a blanket....

 

[Feltwell]

Wish I could say the same for this place - I spend a small fortune on gas, despite the fact that it's got a damn sight more insulation now than when we bought it - when it had absolutely none.

The work done must make some difference to the heat loss, but I do feel like I'm trying to take this house from "hopelessly expensive to heat" to "very expensive to heat"! The complicated roof design with attic rooms really doesn't help though, it's very hard to insulate it properly.

 

[Zebra]

Ha! Meter readings are low. Who are they to tell you how much gas you should be using!

 

[livias]

I bet your neighbours heat their houses to tropical temperatures and you reap the benefit

 

[Lime]

My supplier tells me my meter readings are low every time I put them in. Looking at my gas usage it is about half of the average for a 3 bed terrace. How can this be when I have single glazing and gaps everywhere. The only nod to insulation was putting 30cm+ in the loft when I put in new joists and boarded it out. Perhaps all this green stuff is overrated.

Much will depend on your supplier.
Most suppliers, if not all, are chiefly concerned to have as much money coming in as possible.
It is as if the purpose they exist is to take money out of your account and put it in theirs rather than supply energy.
Most will use every excuse in the book to increase monthly payments so that they can ensure they are always in credit at your expense.

I have a love/hate relationship with my supplier (Spark Energy).
At present I pay in advance to get their best tariff and send in my meter readings directly to their Billing Manager.
Even so, in between our monthly correspondence, I will get letters demanding I give meter readings because they claim they have none.
In the past they have claimed I need to pay more just as the account is recovering from the winter low but is well on the way to have a stonking surplus come summer.
From what I gather from other people's experience this let-not-thy-left-hand-know-what-thy-right-hand-doeth problem is quite common hence my close relationship with the Billing Manager.

 

[TheRoost]

Do you have a modern condensing boiler? 300mm loft insulation is pretty impressive.

How much do you use roughly? for contrast we used about 300 units of gas last month (draughty 4 bed semi), seemed quite high but then we were at home over Christmas.

For some reason when we moved, our supplier Scottish power changed us from monthly direct debit to a 'Quarterly Cash (credit)' account, slightly more hassle as I have remember to submit readings regularly and pay by card, but at least I'm not paying them in advance any more.

 

[88v8]

If you check your summer and winter bills, you can see how much is really heating, and how much water & other stuff. Uneccessaries such as tumble drier and dishwasher can be quite heavy.

In our previous 1921 house with gfch, solid walls and 4" of loft insulation, I had a double thermostat arrangement on the hot tank so we didn't heat the whole cylinder unless we needed it, which was hardly ever as half a tank gave me a huge hot bath.
We heated the house to about 60/62F.
Extra gas cost to heat to 70F is hugely more than 60F, as the temperature difference is greater and the rate of heat loss higher.

Currently we spend about £1100 a year in our storage heater & woodburner cottage. Our previous house, gas & electric was more but then it was bigger and the ceilings were 8' instead of 6'.
Here, it's two pairs of socks, sweatshirt, shirt, wooly.
In this room as I write it's 60F, sleet is lying outside. Soon time to light the fire.

In the end, it costs what it costs.
Same as running the car. Currently we have a Silver Shadow which we'll keep a few months, fuelling it costs what it costs.
Those who obsess about the costs of fuelling, like a friend of mine who is by no means short of money, had better run a Euroboremobile and live in a nasty modern insulated box, I wouldn't want that even if the fuel companies paid me

Ivor

 

[malcolm]

Folk living in old houses will tend to have the heating lower and get used to it. I felt too hot in other peoples houses during the Christmas drinks party season. I have the temperature set to a balmy 18C during the day downstairs and 19C in the evening.

Heating costs are half that of the old house (which had no insulation at all and oil fired boiler). We've got a modern gas condensing boiler and 3 heating zones here. It's really handy to heat only downstairs during the day and only worry about pretending to heat upstairs just before bedtime. The other zone is going to be the heated garage.

Replacing mechanical thermostats with clever digital controllers saved about 30% on bills and improved comfort. The hysteresis on the mechanical thermostats was crazy - they would turn on at 15 degrees and turn off at 25.

This year once the roof is done I'm going to insulate. The loft insulation will give the most benefit by far. I don't think I've ever lived in a house with 300mm in there but will do soon. I'm planning to insulate the walls and windows too but expect less benefit from them.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Silver Shadow is a nice runabout!

I've got 30cm in the loft as I put new 9" joists above the old 3" ones and just filled the gap before boarding. All I know is we've used 820m^3 OF GAS in around 13 months, when I give readings they always say "are you sure, that is very low".

 

[Bayliss]

Where are those wood burning stoves? I used one in my old cottage and installed one now I have moved into a modern box (YUK). Great bit of kit the stoves. And I hope to be moving back into a 'proper home' in the not to distant future.

 

[philpjuk100]

My supplier of gas and electricity (EDF) told me that I had overpaid by £260 last year and refunded this last month, yesterday they told me my monthly payment is not enough and have put it up by £12 !.

 

[Flyfisher]

This has been our first winter with proper heating (i.e. not electric fan heaters!) in our draughty timber-frame house, all single-glazed except for the new kitchen extension.

We've installed multi-fuel stoves in the drawing room, one bedroom and a boiler stove in the morning/sitting room which opens into the new kitchen. The morning room stove has an 11kW back boiler and we also have a gas boiler - both are linked into a single 'heat store' from which radiators and DHW is drawn and also the wet underfloor heating in the new kitchen.

We burn wood on the boiler stove from about 4pm to 11pm and this 'charges up' the kitchen UFH. The boiler stove also drives a gravity radiator in our bedroom, so we have the CH radiator turned off. Two other bedroom CH rads are set to a low-ish temperature to keep off the chill and the bedrooms are generally around 14-15C.

We currently have no radiator in the drawing room, so if we use that room we just have the 7kW stove, which we run on an smokeless ovals/anthracite mixture because then we don't need to reload it every 45 minutes or so like the wood stoves. A bucket of fuel usually lasts all day.

I've not yet worked out the total running costs but we seem to be using only about 2 units of gas per day. We've used about £40 of bagged solid fuel (not the most economical way to buy) and that was mostly during the Christmas period. I'm not counting wood because I'm fortunate it's free (if I ignore all my lumberjacking and log splitting work!) but we're using about one large wheelbarrow load per day.

We're still wearing sweaters (though no thermal undies!) but it has been a revelation to have the living areas of the house at mostly around 18C and nearer 20C in the evening when the stoves have fully warmed things up. The kitchen UFH has also performed beyond expectations meaning that we now come downstairs to a temperature of around 13-14C, which feels pretty warm after visiting the unheated bathroom (not yet finished!) and walking through unheated areas of the house where the temperature is only a few degrees above outside.

 

[TheRoost]

Silver Shadow is a nice runabout!

I've got 30cm in the loft as I put new 9" joists above the old 3" ones and just filled the gap before boarding. All I know is we've used 820m^3 OF GAS in around 13 months, when I give readings they always say "are you sure, that is very low".

Our previous modern 2 bed box end terrace averaged about 725 units(m3) a year, so your doing pretty well, maybe a slightly faulty meter in your favour?

 

[MatthewC]

We're still wearing sweaters (though no thermal undies!)...

This is getting quite close to "too much information". Or am I just slowly transforming into Penners?

 

[Flyfisher]

:lol: :lol: :lol:

The key word is 'thermal'. Standard undies now seem to be adequate.

 

[Zebra]

Gosh Flyfisher, your heating arrangements sound marvellous. I remember when I came to visit, two years ago, it was December then and a bit chilly, and you only had the one fire in the drawing room, and no heating at all upstairs. I hope you're all lovely and snug now.
You haven't posted any pictures for a while - I bet the place is looking really good!....

 

[J-Nevil]

I live in a particularly tall house and it takes a long time to heat up the entire thing, so by the time the house is warm and snug I feel rather guilty. Around this time of year, I spend a fortune on heating.

 

[TheRoost]

Freezing here.

I thought it was odd that our house didn't have a thermostat fitted, it makes sense now because it never gets warm enough (in the main rooms anyway) to turn the heating off!

Considering bigger radiators, pipe insulation, floor and extra loft insulation projects now.