Reply With QuoteOuch! I'm still waiting for my bill. Not looking forward to it.
I can remember when the energy cost for this house was £1200 per year.
Then
Last December 350 kw gas, 932 kw electricity = £330
This December 321 kw gas = £ 376
478 kw normal rate = £182 642 kw cheap rate = £ 45
Total £ 627
We all know it’s coming but It’s still a bit of a shock.
Ouch! I'm still waiting for my bill. Not looking forward to it.
I am expecting our December bill to be close to 1k. It’s an old house, so there is a limit t what can be done with insulating.
And that is with being careful.
It’s a horrendous situation.
So clever my foot fell off.
But...we all seem to accept it. France, Italy and Spain don't seem to have increased prices very much at all. We are told that it is Russia/Ukraine war but prices were spiralling BEFORE the conflict began.Originally Posted by TheFlyingBanana
I think this government should topple and bring in one that returns the energy sector to public ownership...
My missus tracks the proportions of renewables vs gas / nuclear on a regular basis. Today the UK ran 6% gas 94% other sources. On the cold still days in Dec the gas proportion rose to 20% BUT they kept the dirty smelly gas generators off.
So as suggested above, why are we being trousered by the generators?
I guess the answer is , “ Cos they can”
Yep. I'm reading my meters every week, and clearing the balance as I go. Nasty!
Just cut your cloth.
We don’t have an insulated house (just bare cavity walls) and kept the main body of the house including bedrooms 15-16 degC. No walking around in t-shirt and boxer shorts, but a woollen jumper over a t-shirt does does the job. Once you acclimatise anything of 18 degC feels too hot.
In the evening just kept the living room to 20 degC with a top up from the gas fire.
Switched off heating to rooms not being used and left it off in those rooms. Or, throw a blanket over the radiator if you don’t want to heat a particular room for the day if you don’t have thermostatic valves on radiators (we don’t)
This year total energy bill of gas and leccy will be circa £3k for a large-ish family house. Simple measures to maintain comfort and keep bills under control.
If we keep the whole house at 20 deg C and I’m sure we will have easily doubled that.
Heating cost of gas is 3 times less than that of leccy, so it pays to have gas ovens and gas stove top kettles.
Last edited by noTAGlove; 27th December 2022 at 19:50.
We've got used to 17 degrees C now. Any more than this & it feels tropical. Not sure what difference it'll make to our energy costs but I quite like it cooler in the house.
It’s energy companies and Governments that control the price of energy. And ours have us over a barrel. Theft, nothing more.
It’s the mega rich that control the governments.
https://youtu.be/FlMjalPFSzU
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France limited the rise to 4% this year…
What is happening in the UK right now is state condoned extortion, pure and simple.
- - - Updated - - -
And there you have it.
We shouldn’t be paying anywhere near what we are.
So clever my foot fell off.
Also known as capitalism.
Our Octopus bill was not too bad. Gone from being £450 in credit in October to £350 after this really cold period. We have followed advice from the various youtube 'experts' and tried to keep the whole house at a steady temperature 17-19deg even the unused rooms.
As an experiment we are going to turn the thermostats right down in those rooms (locked) and keep it steady in the rest of the house which so far seems warmer already.
That’s a bit of a stretch in this situation
My best mate lives in a big house with lots of floor to ceiling glass, with his partner and 4 girls.
The place is electric only, with underfloor heating and heated air.
During the cold weather the bill was £86 per day!
Andy
Wanted - Damasko DC57
Why? It is supply and demand. Just like cars <and insert thousands of other products here> are getting more expensive.
The Government is already subsidising it’s citizens to offset the true cost.
Pff that's my monthly bill (I'm not going into the background of this, it should be politics-free here).
We went from a whopping 151 euros/month to 607 euros/month.
I'm not too worried about my situation with one kid at home (from time to time) and two wood burners and a reasonably insulated 70s house. People with more family members, without the possibility to fire up a wood burner are certainly in trouble!
Gas - 50% comes from the British North Sea. Nearly all the rest from Norway. 4% came from Russia.
We are being shafted.
Norway being generous to Ukraine or other less wealthy countries being generous to Ukraine? Showing solidarity with its gas pricing?
Ooooh but it’s a globally traded commodity!
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Last edited by BillyCasper; 27th December 2022 at 21:00.
Surely capitalism means you have a choice, the situation we are currently in is more a cartel of even a monopoly
That is the downside of leccy for heating purposes and the whole reason people use Economy 7 and night storage heaters.
The price cap for gas is 10p/kWh, and with a 90% efficient condensing boiler is an effective cost of 11p/kWh.
The price cap for leccy is more than 3 times the cost at 35p/kWh.
Never heat your house by leccy if you have gas, but if you only have leccy, you are screwed!
Last edited by noTAGlove; 27th December 2022 at 21:04.
Have you guys with the big bills had the heating on every day?
Would you like a choice to circumvent the Government support and pay more for your fuel?
Not us, only when it got cold, it’s on an hour a day for water heating, with the occasional boost.
Norway is the only country that has governed and distributed its oil money for the benefit of the people. The rest have shafted their population!
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Isn’t the price of gas pegged to some fictitious European market rate which bears be resemblance to the actual cost, and one of the large contributors to the huge profits that the energy companies are making, are EDF not allowed to raise their prices in their own country but are doing it here because our government allow them to.
No, significant quantities of gas, in the form of liquefied natural gas, has been imported into the U.K. and housed in storage and re-gasification facilities at the Isle of Grain and Milford Haven.
This gas has been sourced on the globally traded market from gas rich countries with liquefaction facilities like Qatar, Angola and Trinidad.
The days of the U.K. relying on the North Sea are long gone.
It is incredibly complex economics but based on long term contracts and short term spot pricing, the latter being the marginal price.
On a windy day 50% of the UK leccy is supplied by wind power. Watch the wholesale leccy price sky rocket when it is cold and there's no wind.
https://grid.iamkate.com/
LNG facilities take billions of dollars to build, and it used to be all the LNG was sold on long term contracts. But now a spot market has developed and Europe has had to pay on the open market. As for what each Country subsidises their citizens, that is down to the individual country. Note, France has a lot more nuclear power than the UK, so less reliance on fossil fuels when the wind does not blow.
As for oil/gas/energy companies making a load of money, I never heard a complaint when they where losing their shirt during Covid and laying of tens of thousands of employees.
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Last edited by noTAGlove; 27th December 2022 at 21:27.
It’s a free fir all in this country, all of the energy suppliers a not British owned, and are extorting every ounce of profits they can while their friends in our government let them.
Where in France they wouldn’t dare https://www.connexionfrance.com/arti...-cap-in-France
My house is heated by electricity as there is no gas in the village but thanks to the burner I've kept my monthly’s over the past few months to the mid to high 200s, if it wasn't for the log burner id be waving goodbye to 600 plus sheets a month by now.
I thought the bills were capped at £2.5k a year as an average? So you guys with £600 a month bills must have big houses?
I think you are massively over simplifying an incredibly complex area.
Ultimately you have the choice vote for a change of Government at the next election.
Last edited by noTAGlove; 27th December 2022 at 22:00.
Sadly not. That’s just some average, I believe.
It’s not capped at a total spend but at unit cost used as such folk with larger houses, poorly insulated houses etc will pay considerably more than the average household.
Well he did say 'as an average'.
Anyway, December was the coldest month for ages, monthly bills will be a fraction of current bills in the summer and TZers are likely higher earners living in larger than average houses.
My December bill was £180. I only heated two rooms, one at a time with a 2kw radiator....bedroom at night then lounge during the day. During the cold spell, the rooms couldn't really get higher than 15C and were often less. The rest of the house was at 6C. The only issue came when we had that sudden change in temperature...the walls were all cold soaked so when the 14C moist air came in on that Monday, every wall was dripping with condensation.
What a time to be alive.
Aren’t you in danger of damaging the house with those temperatures?
Not sure. I'm all over removing excess moisture and the pipework didn't freeze.
Temperature will not damage a house and its decoration as long as you keep it dry, but condensation during cold weather will cause black mould in the coldest parts of the room.
As long as the condensation was for a short period as the walls warmed up, I imagine there will be no problem.
The challenge during cold weather and a cold house with cold walls is condensation forming from cooking, washing and breathing.
This was my thinking...the sudden temperature change was a one off and ironically, I put the heating on the next day as a result. I wasn't quite as bad as I made out...I did use the central heating most days in addition to the electric heaters but only to circulate air for a bit. I was also obsessive about removing moisture. It's not an experiment I want to repeat though, it takes too much effort to remove excess moisture.
I see a lot of people investing in condensing dehumidifiers for this purpose. Sadly when the air temperature is below about 16C they don't operate well and it's a complete waste of time. You need a dessicant dehumidifier for cold temperatures.
Last edited by Christian; 27th December 2022 at 22:35.
I was wondering the other day...what are they doing in places like Norway, Sweden and Finland...the places needing a lot of energy to keep warm in winter and therefore more exposed to high energy prices?
I was with one of the 3 uncapped suppliers last year, so these bills are not a surprise. In fact with the Govt help they're a bit lower than last year, but still £350 a month smarts a bit.
But it's a small price to pay to keep Putin in his box compared to the alternative.
Don’t a lot of these places have geothermal stuff going on
As they are naturally cold climates I imagine they have been properly insulating their house for decades.
Unlike the U.K. where nothing has been insulated until post the 1970s.
I live in a uninsulated house and the U.K. I reckon there are only 15-25 days in the winter when we really miss proper insulation given our general mild maritime climate.
Hence the reason not to spend a fortune to get it done.
I’ve been skiing in Norway a few times, the houses are on a completely different level when it comes to insulation, thick walls well insulated, triple glazing, they really don’t take much to heat, for me they are stifling, far to hot, even at -30
Ah, I see. Where I live is mostly 1930s housing. I guess it’s near impossible to get that retro-insulated to Scandinavian standards.
I am open to having the house insulated.
In fact when we bought it 15 years ago there was a Government grant to get it done for free.
We applied and the company turned up to do inject cavity insulation. They looked at our lovely house where the top half is of a rendered style and said you do realise that we are going to shotgun your whole house with holes.
Unless we re-render the house we can’t insulate it.
You need to prioritise the roof and glazing first.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Yes, you are right and double glazing made a huge difference. The loft was converted many years before we bought the house and although the flat roof part is insulated, the tiled sides are not.
When we did the kitchen extension it was properly insulated and that is now the warmest room in the house.
Another option is to internally insulate the external walls, but that is best done if you buy a proper do-er-up-er.
We have taken our insulation as far as economically practical. Which unfortunately is not enough to make the house comfortable in the depths of winter.
However, I have learned what is on my insulation wish list when I retire an move out of the London borders in the next 5 years or so.
My cousin in Sweden has had an air sourced heat pump for years, he said it was a choice between that and a biomass boiler which works on pellets. My other relation in Latvia has a biomass boiler, I think we've been spoiled with cheap gas for years.
I was working at house the other day which has just had the whole external walls insulated then rendered. I had to screw something to the external wall and they gave me these big plastic plugs that have to be screwed in first before you can fix anything. Like great big plasterboard fixings.
I always thought that the external wall insulation panels they put on were like a solid insulation. I was shocked when they said it was like polystyrene. So give them a good punch and you dent the wall.
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