How Much Is Your Gas Bill

[NTL News]

I recently had a new Worcester condensing boiler fitted to our two bedroom semi. The previous boiler was a thirty year old thing and really guzzled gas. I didn't know what sort of savings I would make with the new boiler but as it turns out I am not saving much at all! The house has full double glazing and reasonable loft insulation.

If I have the heating set so that it comes on at 8am for an hour and brings the house to 20.5 degrees and then drops down to 17.5 degrees during the day and then back up to 20.5 degrees from 5pm until 11pm, then 16 degrees through the night, it is costing me over £100 a month at this time of year. Sure it heats up the hot water as well, but it is only two of us and the hot water is only really used for a couple of baths a week as the dishwasher heats its only water and so does the washing machine.

I had no idea that heating a house would be so expensive even with one of these so called economical boilers. Is £100+ per month about normal for a house like mine?

Jay

[Tony Bryer]

How big/old is the house? Are you in during the day - if not 17.5 sounds unnecessarily high.

[Ophelia]

Blimey!!!!! We had a new condensing boiler fitted just over a year ago and found a big difference. We have a terraced, 4 bed, split level house with double glazing and we are paying £39 per month and that is for gas and electric combined!!! We get our gas and leckie from Scottish power.

[NTL News]

The house is a two bedroom semi, but only really the size of a typical northern terraced house. It's 120 years old. 17.5 may be a little high I suppose, but I am in about out all day so I need it slightly warm.

My other question is, what setting do I have the dial on the front of the boiler at? Its a Worcester 24i I think and the dial goes from 1 to 6. It doesnt seem to make any sense having a temp control on the boiler when I have a seperate one in the hallway, so what is the optimum setting to have the dial at?

[look]

4 (small) bed 3 storey 1 year old Barrett townhouse end terrace, last 3 months gas cost £120.

[Tony Bryer]

The thermostat in the hall controls how hot the house gets (assuming it's wired correctly of course ). When the set temperature is reached the boiler stops running.

The knob on the boiler controls the maximum temperature that the boiler heats water to. If you set it too high the boiler runs less efficiently and will be stop/starting unnecessarily often. If you have it too low then the house will never get warm or take a long time to do so. If the boiler is also heating a HW cylinder then setting the boiler stat low (which is a good thing from an efficiency pov) has the disadvantage of extending the time to reheat the cylinder after a bath, which may or may not be material in your case.

[owdman]

120 year old building could have 9inch solid brick walls with little insulation value, esp if there is a large area of gable end. Double glazing would only save a bit. Draught reduction could help. What about turning it off at night and all the times when nobody is home?

cheers Jacob

[Andy Cap]

It's sounds an awful lot. My 3 bed decent sized semi, with an old boiler will be about £130 for the qtr and I never alter the thermostat from around 20.

You've not got one of these new meters that reads in cubic meters but the bill is still mulitiplied by 2.83 thinking it's measuring 100ft3.

It's a fairly common occurence with changed gas meters where the company don't have the updated record.

Andy

[Jim Gregory]

No way!! We have a 4 beds extended semi and pay nPower about £47pm for gas and £48 for electricity both of which are rising in line with the rest of Europe. Do tell us who is ur fuel supplier, and are you not profiting from a duel-fuel monthly direct-debit scheme? Apart from this horrendous monthly gas account, is your electricity bill yet another sting? You failed to inform us.

Is each cavity wall insulated? Have you any expanses of single glazing? Are your drapes (lined, hopefully) drawn closed during cold spells? Try to reduce the duty cycle of ur hot water system, ifr hardly used. Regarding either of your washer goods' ability to heat up its supplied water, surely if that is imported hot enough to start with, the heater element will not come on, or maybe might just top it up, using hardly any kWhs, till the water-temp sensor is happy. Jim

[Al]

Sounds very high to me. We've got a 4-bed detached chalet bungalow (i.e. not much roof insulation!), run the CH and HW 24 hours per day and pay about 250 for the worst Winter quarter.

Al.

[NTL News]

Well this is bizarre - I am on a prepay meter and my gas supplier is British Gas. To my knowledge there has been nobody out to the meter in years, in fact I can't remember when there was someone out to see it. I checked the rate on the meter that it is supposedly charged at and it is about 3% out so that won't account for the amount that we are paying. However I phoned BG tonight to ask them about the problem and while they acknowledged that they were indeed the supplier they have no records of ANY payments I have ever made on my card :-S

Something is certainly amiss somewhere and I hope that I am due to a big refund, but if they cannot find records of payments I might be scewed.

[NTL News]

My meter is not new, its a prepay meter thats about 10 years old.

[Set Square]

I don't quite understand. My notion of a pre-payment meter is one into which you put coins and which then allows you to use some gas. Such a meter would have to be emptied regularly. But you also mention payments made on your

*card*. What card is that - a credit card? How does the system work. Haven't *you* got records of what you've paid, even if BG haven't?

FWIW, my gas bill (Scottish Power - capped) has averaged £47 per month for the last 3 months. That is for a 4-bedroom detached house with the heating on all day - plus a gas fire in the lounge for a lot of the time to keep my

96-year-old father-in-law warm.

[Owain]

Prepayment meters are almost always the most expensive tariff going.

Change to a credit meter and shop around.

Owain

[NTL News]

The pre-pay meter that we have is a Quantum meter - you get a chipped card that you take to the post office and charge it up with however much you want to put into your meter, you then slot it into the meter and it allocates the credit. At the moment I'm sticking a tenner on it every 3 days.

[Jim Gregory]

I don't know anything about pre-payment rates and top-up cards (ie, no coins accumulating in the compartment). Maybe the metering or credit mechanism is faulty so flow/availability is wrongly recorded. Go see the CAB and see if they have a known protocol for redressing your rip-off. Until you get your deserved rebate, best not to mention switching to another alternative supplier just yet to BG. They will know what the ball-park figure /consumption guideline for a dwelling your size should be. Then get a proper meter installed. They owe u that much.

[Andy Cap]

Well 3 days gas this qtr. will cost me about £4.50 so I would spend some time checking on alternatives like doing away with the pre-payment meter and comparing unit prices from other suppliers.

You can use a site like

to start your search.

Andy

[mogga]

Do you have receipts to prove your spend? Fingers crossed you do. Well worth getting the meter checked & changed for a cheaper option

Insulate and you'll save money (loft and walls if possible) Turn the thermostat down and you'll save money Shut the curtains at dusk and youll save money Do some draftproofing ...

[Set Square]

Ah, I see - things have moved on a bit since I was a kid!

Does the meter tell you how much credit you've got?

How much does 1 kw.Hr of energy cost when bought in this way?

Did you *choose* to have a pre-payment meter? Could you swap to a credit meter - it would probably be cheaper?

[The3rd Earl Of Derby]

Is your name on the top-up card? if not you might have someone else's card, going by what you have said about BG not having any records of you not making payments.

Good luck, british gas have two left hands.

-- Sir Benjamin Middlethwaite