Gas and Electric Prices

stevetiler

stevetiler

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Hi all,
I'd like to talk about peoples gas n electric bills ! I live in a 3 bed detached house with my wife and two sons (18 & 21)

We are paying £235 a month to Eon for our gas n elec - just gone up AGAIN from £195 a month !

Just wanted to compare this with other people as I'm not sure if this is normal or are we doing something drasticly wrong

It seems that £2820 a year is EXTORTION !!

Steve
 
boliston said:
Wow that is a shocker :eek:
I pay £44 per month for combined gas/elect for a 2 bed flat and I thought that was enough!
Click to expand...

That sounds an absolute bargain to me! Just imagining how much more I could have drunk at uni if my heating and electricity was that cheap when I was in flats!
 
We pay about £140 for both, 3 bed semi, 2 adults 2 kids 4+6. No one is at home most days except for school holidays.
 
I'm guessing the main culprit is the gas with a bit of kids mixed in, they probably don't get the idea of being toasty warm costing money when they don't pay the bills.

I'm also with Eon in a 3 bed semi, only two bedrooms used though. I've switched the gas off completely and use electric oil filled radiators to heat the rooms that are in use while the others stay cold. I've fitted instant water heaters to the kitchen and bathroom sinks and I prefer showering so the immersion heater is not used either. All lights are either LED or eco type bulbs and I pay between £77 and £98 a month (goes up in winter obviously).

I certainly use more electricity than I need to as the house is old and there's no double glazing mainly because I always have windows open, I just can't stay in a room with no fresh air.
 
We also pay £200 per month combined for a 3 bed detached (2 adults & 1 14yo). Although bearing in mind that includes a roomful of pc's, laptops and test servers which are on 24/365 as my OH works from home. That would make what you are paying a bit steep unless you have similar devices running all the time. We are with Scottish Gas at the moment.

I dread to think what our leccy bill would be now if I'd kept my 3 marine fish tanks - 3 years ago my 6x2x2 was costing £150 per month in leccy all by itself which left our combined bills at almost £1k per quarter :cuckoo:
 
be pleased you dont have the joy of heating oil
 
stevetiler said:
Hi all,
I'd like to talk about peoples gas n electric bills ! I live in a 3 bed detached house with my wife and two sons (18 & 21)

We are paying £235 a month to Eon for our gas n elec - just gone up AGAIN from £195 a month !
Click to expand...

3 bed detached here, 2 adults, 1 child - £95/mo combined.

Past experience: check that your gas meter and bill are both in the same units. E.On managed to charge us in cubic feet rather than cubic metres...
 
If it's any consolation, the gas supplier alone down here increased their base prices (not inclusive of taxes!) by 14% recently!

We just received our latest bill for the last two months of gas & elec for our one bedroom appartment....€192. (in the region of £180 I think!)

Two adults, heating not on much at all and showers litterally just a few minutes at a time.......

Going on the size of other peoples bills/ properties, the prices look to be something like the norm.......agreed very expensive though!

Edit: Baths and / or long showers can very rapidly increase your bills!!
 
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Yea showers on a LOT so maybe thats the problem! Interesting replies! Keep em comin!
 
For both the 'leccy and gas (with British Gas) I've never had to pay more than £120 a month in the winter and around £70 in the summer.
To be fair, I live in a fairly small 1950's terrace house but the cavity and loft insulation has been updated only a few years ago, along with double glazing, even the roof felt was completely stripped out and replaced about 15 years ago so there's no draughty bits in the attic - as a result it doesn't seem to take a lot to warm up. I don't have to set the thermo any higher than 17 C and there's only me and mother in the house.
I pay it using an online energysaver plan. I email BG my meter readings every month, then they email me the bill based on the reading I give them, I pay it there and then using my credit card and then the same thing happens again a month later - that way I pay EXACTLY what I've used up - no silly estimated meter readings and over-the top Direct Debits so it makes it easy to keep an eye on things).
 
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I pay 60 a month for gas and 30 for elec - 3 story 3 bed semi. Its 5 years old so well insulated. The DD means that in the summer I build up credit and in winter we eat into it.
 
3 bed detached, 2 adults but herself is in all days( idle bitch) we pay £109 a month(scottish gas) but are in credit quite a bit even at this time of year so the payment is too high.
 
My dual fuel DD has just been reduced from £80 per month to £73. Three bed semi, just me & the missus, her at home all day. Also with E-ON.

Do check that you are on the correct tarriff, we saved £240 per year by switching, E-ON WON'T TELL YOU IF YOU'RE PAYING OVER THE ODDS.
This is due to change under new legislation. Suppliers will have to offer you the cheapest tarriff.
 
3 bed semi with insulated loft, double glazed, solid brick walls. Gas CH, water and hob, electric oven. 2 adults, no kids, occupied all day with heating on 24x7 but not high.

Annual total ~£1,000 = £84 pm with British Gas, although we are currently very much in credit and paying just £50 per month to reduce the overpayment.
 
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We are in a large detached 4bed house and I work from home. Our electricity was close to £100/month which I thought was a bit steep.
It turned out that one of our fridges was not sealing properly. Tuned that off and now it's dropped to £60/month, so a faulty fridge was costin us £40/month.

We are on oil here and that set me back £1400 last year and that's through a mild winter.
 
cambsno said:
The DD means that in the summer I build up credit and in winter we eat into it.
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That's what I try to do with Eon but they insist on knowing better and lowering my DD in summer then raising it in winter. I would really prefer to keep it at a happy medium of my choice.
 
4 bed detached here and our DD is set at £91 a month for both gas and electricity with British Gas. Currently around 50quid in credit and expecting that to climb over the summer
 
Four bed detached, solid 9" brick (no cavity) walls and really thin double glazing, about £100 per month combined, through different suppliers.
 
Ours is £150-£200, just two of us in 3 bed semi, BUT someone often in during day.
We are with Utility Warehouse - we also have a cashback card with them, which we load with money and when we shop in M&S, Sainsburys, Boots and lots of other places we get 3-5% of that spend off the fuel bill.

That said, Sainsburys reckon they can do cheaper supply

A
 
That's a bonkers amount !!

2 years ago I was paying £110 combined for gas and electric with 4 occupants in an equivalent or slightly bigger property. That's probably about £140 now accounting for recent price rises (I have moved since).

Likely culprits:

- heating on for a high/excessive number of hours

- no thermostat for the heating or thermostat set to high

- single glazed windows if you have them

- inadequate loft insulation (should be around 270mm)

- no cavity wall insulation perhaps (assuming the walls have cavities)

- hot water cylinder not lagged / no cylinder thermostat / thermostat set too high

- fridges/freezers set too cold or with rapid freeze permanently on.

- lots of appliances set on stand-by at night / charges left plugged in

- boiler faulty or in desperate need of a service

- Dale Farm tapping your electric

The list could go on. Probably worth consulting a heating engineer. May be worth getting and electricity usage monitor too so you can experiment to see what uses the most.
 
hunnymonster said:
3 bed detached here, 2 adults, 1 child - £95/mo combined.

Past experience: check that your gas meter and bill are both in the same units. E.On managed to charge us in cubic feet rather than cubic metres...
Click to expand...

Should add that I work from home and SWMBO is also in most days...

Oh and the cubic feet versus cubic metres thing : net result if they have done that is your gas bill is about 3x what it should be... took considerable effort to get back the overpayment plus interest.
 
That is somewhat steep. Even with the two sons. Our gas bill dropped dramatically when our daughter went off to Uni.

Do you work from home? I do and not only does the gas bill reflect this but so does the leccy with computers and tvs. Yep, wifey has 2 tvs on whilst she is working on her computer.

But your energy bill is roughly in line with ours. And I sell the damm stuff ;)

Ways to reduce you bill? In addition to the obvious such as cavity wall and loft insulation which I'm sure you already have covered, drop the thermostat by one or two degrees. This can have a huge effect.

You could get your sons into an arranged marriage and get shot of them that way. I reckon they could be responsible for about 40% of your energy bills. Possibly more when you consider the washing machine and tumble dryer.

And there are more innovative ways of getting reductions and cashback. Try here for 10% of your first year's energy spend to be refunded and a brilliant cashback scheme. Only today, I've earned £8 off next month's utility bill by buying a Lumix G3 :D
 
stevetiler said:
Hi all,
I'd like to talk about peoples gas n electric bills ! I live in a 3 bed detached house with my wife and two sons (18 & 21)

We are paying £235 a month to Eon for our gas n elec - just gone up AGAIN from £195 a month !

Just wanted to compare this with other people as I'm not sure if this is normal or are we doing something drasticly wrong

It seems that £2820 a year is EXTORTION !!

Steve
Click to expand...
Holy Crap!
I use eon and yes they put it up (£20/ month) this year buggers :(

I still get change outta £100 combined, for a 4 bed, place.
But admittedly there are only 2 of us, and we are both out at work all day.
 
hunnymonster said:
Oh and the cubic feet versus cubic metres thing : net result if they have done that is your gas bill is about 3x what it should be...
Click to expand...

Slightly out - the bill would be 35.3146667 times more. Yes, there is 3 and a bit feet in a metre but we're talking cubic capacities here.
 
I was so unhappy with oil central heating that I sold my house 18 months ago and bought one in a different village that was on the gas main. I figured that rather than complain all the time (I think my friends were getting bored with hearing about it :lol: ), I'd get off my bum and take steps to sort the situation.

Where I am now, which is a 2/3 bed (two bedrooms have been knocked together) 1950s bungalow with uninsulated cavity walls, double glazing and a full insulated loft, as I insulated it, costs me £50/month each for electric and gas - that's based on the first year of bills. The central heating, demand hot water and hob is gas, oven and everything else is electric. I like the place warm so set the thermostat at 22C when I'm there and awake, 14C when I go to bed. Electricity wise I leave my mail server running 24/7, which is an old p3/667. When I finally get a raspberry pie to replace it my electricity consumption should go down.
 
3 year old 1 bed flat.... £56p/m for gas & leccy.

Used to pay £25p/m when I lived on my own, however SWMBO likes to spend at least 10 mins in a shower so hot I don't know how it doesn't melt her skin, followed by another 10-15 mins in the bathroom under 200W of halogen spot lights applying make up. From there she moves to the bedroom and blowdrys & straightens her hair :lol:

Apart from the Kitchen & Bathroom all lights are energy efficient ones or are on a dimmer. Another slightly annoying habit is that SWMBO will ALWAYS turn on the main light(s) in the kitchen (200W of halogen spots) as opposed to the low wattage low level lighting no matter what she goes in there for :shrug:
 
Russ77 said:
3 year old 1 bed flat.... £56p/m for gas & leccy.

Apart from the Kitchen & Bathroom all lights are energy efficient ones or are on a dimmer. Another slightly annoying habit is that SWMBO will ALWAYS turn on the main light(s) in the kitchen (200W of halogen spots) as opposed to the low wattage low level lighting no matter what she goes in there for :shrug:
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Change the halogen ones for led spots!
 
Highest we've paid per month over the last year is £120 with Scottish power. That's for a 4 bed detatched, 2 adults and 2 sprogs (2+4) so there's lots of washing and baths going on.
 
srichards said:
Change the halogen ones for led spots!
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I have considered that but only the bulbs that cost £10+ fit the fittings and the reason she uses the bathroom to do her makeup is because of the brightness in there. Having seen what some LED bulbs are like I think it might be an unpopular move :lol:
 
Russ77 said:
I have considered that but only the bulbs that cost £10+ fit the fittings and the reason she uses the bathroom to do her makeup is because of the brightness in there. Having seen what some LED bulbs are like I think it might be an unpopular move :lol:
Click to expand...

Change them one at a time. She'll never notice :D
 
daugirdas said:
That is what our household has to deal with. It is going through the ombudsman at the moment. We suspect a faulty meter. I'd recommend getting it checked out.
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Thats interesting - was your gas usage way higher than your electric? Ours is roughly the same .
How did you come to realise you had a faulty meter ?
 
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we have a 3 bed semi, paying £60.00 per month combine gas and electric. I am about during the day and we use Eon. We had the auto meters installed so the reading get send automatically. But even before they were fitted the payment was the same.

The house does have cavity insulation and I am careful about leaving things on when not needed.I do use the heating loads, I installed a eco bolier which is very good.

I did think our bill was high but reading this thread has certainly made me think We are doing ok.
 
daugirdas said:
That is what our household has to deal with. It is going through the ombudsman at the moment. We suspect a faulty meter. I'd recommend getting it checked out.
Click to expand...

Faulty meters tend to be massively out - and not just slightly above expected readings.

Why are you going to the ombudsman about a 'suspected' faulty meter? Your supplier will get it checked out for you.
 
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