Massive Bill - Less Energy Usage

JoePie

So me and a friend moved into a converted house back in late November. There's are 4 flats, two on our floor. We went with ESB when we were sorting out electricity.

Long story short, we had a whole debacle around our second bill, so accounts were credits, new bills issued, and the end result was that we had a bill from the time we moved in until very early March. We bit the bullet and paid, as we did an appliance test and we discovered that our electric heaters were eating up units, even on half power for 2 or 3 hours an evening. We knew they would be costly, but didn't realise just how costly.

So we got our bill for the period March 5th to April 21st there yesterday. We hadn't used the electric heaters since March 5th, abd both of us are working, so there's nothing but the fridge on between 8am and 6pm, 5 days a week, let's say. And we're not exactly going nuts with electricity in the evening either. Somehow, the bill for this period was greater than the previous bill for over 3 months. And they're both pretty disgusting numbers. My mam said she paid less for the house for 6 of us.

I do not know what to make of this. It just seems logically impossible. So what I'm wondering is, is there any way that we can check if maybe we're getting billed for the other converted apartment on our floor, or if we're paying for the costs for the landing lights, etc.? Is there anything that says landlords must provide energy efficient aplpiances? We did a calculation last night using one of the little booklets the ESB sends out, over-estimating our usage of everything and charging it all at day units, and it still didn't come close to what we were charged.

With our last bill we rang the ESB every other evening swapping readings, etc., but they basically gave us two fingers. Don't want to have to go through that again.

EI: Una

Hi JoePie,

If you PM me your details I'll look into that for you. Also, have you checked whether this might be an estimate rather than reading?

Regards,
Una

JoePie

Hi Una, yeah, I think it was an estimate, but we checked the meter last night and it wasn't too far ahead of the numbers on the bill. The date the billing period began would've been in sync with the meter, as we were making so many calls to customer care, and they were looking for them every time.

I'll PM you as soon as I get the account number, but I imagine you won't be able to deal with this until tomorrow at the earliest.

EI: Una

Hi again JoePie,

I have escalated your query, and for now, I would suggest the following in order to investigate this:

Turn off everything in your apartment and unplug any appliances - after about 10 minutes, check your meter. In most of our older meters there is a little disc that rotates as the current passes through, and this should be stopped. If it is not stopped though and is continuing to rotate, there may be an issue with either the appliances or potentially the wiring. It would be very unusual for other apartments to be wired into your meter - not impossible, but very unusual.

One other suggestion: take a manual note of a meter reading at night and in the morning for approximately four or five days. After that period, see whether there are any "spikes" - i.e. whether you have used x times more units on, say, a Tuesday than the Monday, and you would then need to ascertain why.

There is a number of generic "How to read an electricity meter" videos on YouTube if you wish to take a look at any of those also.

Regards
Una

JoePie

We did the appliance test when we had issues with the last bill, and that's how we discovered the electric heaters were crippling us. An Xbox 360 and 32" HDTV provided the next biggest usage, but the disc wasn't rotating even half as fast as the heaters. There's not always on though.

That's a good idea about the readings. I'll start doing that tonight.

Electric Ireland: David

Hi JoePie, PM sent.