Average monthly fuel bills?

Apr 03, 2007 30 Replies

Hi everyone, I was just talking to my next door neighbour about fuel bills. We both live in 3 bed semis (connected to each other). Currently I pay 50 a month for electricity, and 45 a month for gas (which are a touch on the high side, we`re building up a small credit balance). My neighbour claims to be paying



44 a month for both supplies. I`m with Ebico who since the price falls aren`t quite the cheapest, but they`re not far off.

In terms of differences, there are 2 people in my house, and 2 adult + 2 kids in their house. We`ve both got double glazing and good loft insulation, and my house has got cavity wall insulation too (not sure if they do).



Is it me, or does 44 a month sound like a strangley low figure for a family that regularly have a big plasma screen TV on? I know that my house is networked up, but that`s only 2 routers and a couple of switches.



Any suggestions?


Bitstring , from the wonderful person Simon Finnigan said

Your neighbour is either confused, or has the heating turned way down .. a big plasma screen isn't that much of an electricity hog (cooking, water heating, space heating, are the big ticket items), but £500/year does sound way way low (my single mother in a small 2 bed bungalow is using 1.5x that much).

Of course, they may be running up a huge deficit for future payment.

Have a look at the "OT - Going green and energy efficiency" in uk.rec.cycling that I started a few days ago.

Over half my annual electricity usage is for computers. They really are not cheap :-( (And I'm using fairly old, low spec machines)

I used about 250GBP gas and about 400GBP electricity in the last 12 months.

I'm in a Victorian end of terrace with solid walls; so a lot of outside wall but no cavity.

Tim.

Simon Finnigan writes

My forecast spreadsheet says my nest bills will be £111 and £130 for elec and gas respectively in a 3 bed semi, single occupant. Loft insulation, no cavity insulation, double-glazed throughout.

So that total of 241 would be 80GBP per month compared with your 95 per months for two people. I would expect to pay less for a monthly DD though.

Your neighbour's cost seems far too low, but some folk are very vague about utility bills.

I find my PC to be greedy, about 140/150 watts, so I switch off when I'm not doing anything with it.

Yep. I suspect when he said "£44 for both" he really meant that both bills are £44, meaning they are £44 each.

Ditto with Ebico, and i'm paying an artificially high price of £60 elec / £60 gas per month because I wasn't sure which direction the bills would be heading.

Just had the bills in for this quarter, and the estimated reads were almost exactly right (£4-5 out for one, £13 for the other)

Over the last 12 months i've built up about £40 credit on the elec, and £140 (!) on the gas (it surprised me, knowing how I hammered it over the last few months !)

Dunno, but I live in a small one bedroom cottage and use 5525 Kwh pa - £575 @ 10.4p , which is the lowest it's been for 7 years. This excludes cooking which uses gas at £42 pa. I have the heating turned right down and sue wood burning stoves in winter.

Daytona

No, I said what I meant. They where adament that the TOTAL for both bills was 44! Hence my question!

Having it on about 6-7 hours a day, at IIRC 300W (give or take) gives you almost 2 kWh. Their house doesn`t seem cold when I visit them, it just seems that their bills are incredibly low. I think you could well be right about them building up a scary debt for the future :-)

"Colin Wilson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@news.individual.net...

I`m keeping my payments as they are for a year, so I can figure out how much it`s costing us, then I can tweak them after a full 12 months. I think the gas is going to end up running a credit of about 150-200, electricity maybe run up a credit of 15-20.

We`ve got gas CH, which does use a fair amount of gas. It`d help if the GF wasn`t so obsessed with having a sweltering hot house - I prefer wearing something a bit warmer then turning the CH up to a stupidly high temp. Then again at the moment, it`s hardly being used because the house keeps itself warm anyway. I`ve got a big dual core PC here that is always on (and doing useful work), so there`s a few hundred watts of heat coming from that to keep upstairs warm at least :-)

Lights through the house are low energy ones, we normally only has a single

8W light on in the living room at night. I think a fairly big contributor is the house network. 2 broadband connections, each with a wireless router, plus VOIP adaptors, 2 DECT phones and a few switches scattered round the house must add up :-)

According to uswitch I could save 90GBP on my bills[1] - so my total would be 560GBP or just under 47GBP/month. I don't have a TV but do use about 250W 24/7 running computers.

[1] No way I'm ever going back to that supplier though.

Tim.

Gosh people here have high fuel bills! How come?

I have a two bed semi bungalow and I pay £41 a month for my combined gas and electric - and I thought that was high and blame a north facing main wall with no cavity insulation for my excessive bills.

That's incredibly low. Do you use something other than gas/elec for heating (oil? coal? wood?). Or is your heating turned off all day when the house is unoccupied, and also off at night whilst tucked up under duvets, so that the heating is only on in the evenings and a short morning burst, plus weekends perhaps?

Our electric is about £50 a month and gas £160 for a 4 bed detached bungalow, but the GCH is on 24 hours.

Simon Finnigan writes

Switch everything off, and see if your meter is still going round. Maybe he tapped into your supply? 8-)

When I go to my mate George's bungalow I wrap up well! He is miserly with the heating, but last year the payoff was that another friend, a surveyor, found wet rot in his timbers. ;-)

Aaarrr, Jim Lad, surely a case of "shiver me timbers".

I`ve already checked this :-)

A 2 bed bungalo is quite litterally half the half I`m talking about, which can certainly go a long way towards explaining your lower bills.

We have our GCH on for 3-4 hours in the morning, depending what time we are both getting up to go to work, and again from about 5:30-9PM, to warm it up before bed. It`s certainly not running 24/7

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