Mind boggling Gas & Electricity bill

schalken999

Hi there,

We just moved into this new house and its the first time we're using gas & electricity.

i just got a gas bill for €229.47 for 41 days.
Thers an additional electricity bill for €76.48 for 41 days as well.
Thats €300 for just over a month and we're not yet into peak winter.:eek:

Just cant afford this one.

Isnt gas heating supposed to be cheap ?

Any suggestions to get this bill down

EI: Una

Hi Schalken999

Are the bills based on estimates or meter readings?

Regards,
Una

tenchi-fan

schalken999 wrote: »

i just got a gas bill for €229.47 for 41 days.

Isnt gas heating supposed to be cheap ?

Gas is cheaper than oil. But it's not cheap.

If you previously lived in an apartment, particularly sharing with a friend, you might be surprised that putting €10 a week aside doesn't quite cover bills any more.

Heating is one of your largest household expenses and you should probably budget at least €1,000 a year for heating and €800 for electricity... assuming your house will be empty for most of the day.

You can also save a lot of money on heating by having heavy curtains and close them in the evening, use draft excluders under the door, don't expect to walk around the house in a t-shirt in winter time, don't use a dish washer, avoid using a tumble drier, wash clothes at a low temperature.. and make the most of hot water provided by gas (many washing machines and electric showers use cold water feeds only, leaving a tank full of hot water going to waste)

Another big one.. make sure you're with the cheapest supplier. With ESB there's a good chance you're on one of their less competitive tariffs unless you expressly opted in to their better value tariffs.

I typed the info you provided into bonkers.ie (scaled up the figures from your 41 day bill to a bi-monthly)

Save €175.02 with Flogas Natural Gas's Direct Debit Discount
Save €38.46 on your Electricity with Bord Gais Energy's Paperless Direct Debit Discount for a combined savings of €213.48 per year.

That would be a €24 saving on your most recent ESB Gas and Electricity bill.

schalken999

Electric Ireland: Una wrote: »

Hi Schalken999

Are the bills based on estimates or meter readings?

Regards,
Una

thers an a beside the reading so im assuming its actual.:eek:

EI: Una

Hi again Schalken999,

Can you send me the account details by private message?

The following would be required:

- Account number
- Name/address on the account
- Date of birth on the account
- Telephone number on the account
- Confirmation that you are the named account-holder

Thanks and regards,
Una

schalken999

Electric Ireland: Una wrote: »

Hi again Schalken999,

Can you send me the account details by private message?

The following would be required:

- Account number
- Name/address on the account
- Date of birth on the account
- Telephone number on the account
- Confirmation that you are the named account-holder

Thanks and regards,
Una

pm sent.

Quick question
we have an electricity and gas account with ESB
will both have differennt account numbers ?

schalken999

tenchi-fan wrote: »

Gas is cheaper than oil. But it's not cheap.

If you previously lived in an apartment, particularly sharing with a friend, you might be surprised that putting €10 a week aside doesn't quite cover bills any more.

Heating is one of your largest household expenses and you should probably budget at least €1,000 a year for heating and €800 for electricity... assuming your house will be empty for most of the day.

You can also save a lot of money on heating by having heavy curtains and close them in the evening, use draft excluders under the door, don't expect to walk around the house in a t-shirt in winter time, don't use a dish washer, avoid using a tumble drier, wash clothes at a low temperature.. and make the most of hot water provided by gas (many washing machines and electric showers use cold water feeds only, leaving a tank full of hot water going to waste)

Another big one.. make sure you're with the cheapest supplier. With ESB there's a good chance you're on one of their less competitive tariffs unless you expressly opted in to their better value tariffs.

I typed the info you provided into bonkers.ie (scaled up the figures from your 41 day bill to a bi-monthly)

Save €175.02 with Flogas Natural Gas's Direct Debit Discount
Save €38.46 on your Electricity with Bord Gais Energy's Paperless Direct Debit Discount for a combined savings of €213.48 per year.

That would be a €24 saving on your most recent ESB Gas and Electricity bill.

thanks im yet to recover after seeing this bill:eek:

ted1

don't use a dish washer

incorrect, the dish washer is the only white good that is more effienct than manually washing. it heats the excat amoutn of water needed and to the correct temperature. theres a very small motor in it.

most people turn on th eimmersion to do the washign up and end up heating to much water.

http://environment.about.com/od/greenlivingdesign/a/dishwashers.htm

EI: Una

schalken999 wrote: »

pm sent.

Quick question
we have an electricity and gas account with ESB
will both have differennt account numbers ?

Thanks for those details, Schalken999 - looking into it for you now.

One or the other account number should be sufficient to bring all the information up for us.

All the best
Una

schalken999

ted1 wrote: »

incorrect, the dish washer is the only white good that is more effienct than manually washing. it heats the excat amoutn of water needed and to the correct temperature. theres a very small motor in it.

most people turn on th eimmersion to do the washign up and end up heating to much water.

http://environment.about.com/od/greenlivingdesign/a/dishwashers.htm

we hardly use the dish washer also the washing machine dosent have a dryer.

schalken999

our bill mentions that we are on the Standard Domestic plan for Gas & on the value Reward for electricity.

Couldnt find this on the ESB website

Any explanations Una ???

EI: Una

Hi Schalken999,

The Value Reward is mostly the same as the Value Saver, details here.
The Value Reward was brought in for existing customers with ESB Electric Ireland for a year or more, the Value Saver is for new customers.

The only difference between the two is: direct debit is not mandatory on the Value Reward, but having a direct debit entitles Reward customers to a 4% discount, and 2% if the customer opts for online billing.

Gas plan details here.

All the best,
Una

Priori

schalken999 wrote:

Isnt gas heating supposed to be cheap ?

To be fair, mind-boggling bills usually correspond with mind-boggling usage. Our last gas bill was very slight, mainly standing charge, as we used less than 100 units.

To rake up a bill of €229.47 over 41 days, you'd need to have used about 4,000 units from my reckoning... That's about as much per day as we used in two months!

schalken999 wrote:

Any suggestions to get this bill down

Turn off the heat once in a while?

homewardbound11

Hi,
Having just moved into a new home our bills are generally higher than expected . Roughly the ESB bill is 200 euro per 2 month. I have installed an owl monitor and am currently monitoring it versus the billing recieved.

It does appear to tally with KWH usage roughly 18KWH per day. and 500 per month .
I would like to know of General expected for a 4 family house. The reason being we are in an A2 house with solar panels and dont have an electric shower. Oil is only turned on every 2nd to 3rd day now and only in the last 3 weeks since the cold spell.
I know its a question of how long is a piece of string.

I have been watching the monitor and generally at bed time it consumes 180watts of power minimum (fridge, standby on some electonics). I can isolate consumption to indiviaual units but really the fridge takes 60Watts. Standby systems take up to 80 watts and after that you are scraping to turn off everything. Normal use I can post up here but I suppose the question here is what are families paying per 2 month bills for electricity nowadays.

Regasds,

EDit

You might also want to check the end reading provided by the previous tenants/owners. When we moved into our house several years ago our first bill was huge. Upon further investigation, we found that the previous owners had given ESB a false (low) reading so we were in effect paying for a chunk of their electricity. If i recall correctly, ESB eventually wrote the excess off for us.

Electric Ireland: David

Hi homewardbound11,

homewardbound11 wrote:

I know its a question of how long is a piece of string.

You're spot on there; average consumption for a 4-person family would be too varied to calculate a meaningful mean, if you get me. We also wouldn't store the kind of information you're referring to on our databases, i.e. the number of occupants per household, whether they constitute a family/individuals sharing accommodation etc.

To aid customers in calculating their own average usage, we have an Appliance Calculator available on our website (now also an iPhone/Smartphone App), and we sell an Energy Monitor in our Online Store. I can see that you're on top of the monitoring with the Owl Energy Monitor installed, which I've heard a lot of good things about, so I would advise that keep up what you're doing.

You might find the following resource helpful, but bear in mind that it calculates usage for the entire country, and would include all customers - commercial and residential:

Ireland Electricity Consumption - Index Mundi

If you have any further questions don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks,

David.

tenchi-fan

homewardbound11 wrote: »

Hi,
Having just moved into a new home our bills are generally higher than expected . Roughly the ESB bill is 200 euro per 2 month. I have installed an owl monitor and am currently monitoring it versus the billing recieved.

It does appear to tally with KWH usage roughly 18KWH per day. and 500 per month .
I would like to know of General expected for a 4 family house.

Honestly, that sounds about right.

Don't forget that some of you bill is standing charges, so you're paying less than €20 a week for Electricity usage. TVs, sky box, lighting, kettles, hoovers, microwave, oven, computers, hair drier, etc etc.

The next thing I suppose is to look at energy efficiency of your appliances.

Light bulbs is an easy one - use low energy ones. Spot lights are a nightmare for electricity but you may be able to find LED bulbs instead. The microwave is much cheaper to use than an oven... which is a problem if you're into home cooking. New fridge-freezers can be much more efficient than older ones. Flat TVs and monitors are more energy efficient than old tube/CRT ones - although the bigger the screen the more energy it will use.

Also, there's 4 in your family. It depends on how much you do as a family. If there are 3 well-lit rooms each with 3 TVs, you're using 3 times the electricity as a family who watch one tv in the living room. If you have a lot of women in your house who are fond of hair driers once again this can add a lot to your bill.

Even little things like boiling a kettle.. you wouldn't believe the amount of people who fill a kettle for one or two cups of tea.

Washing machines and tumble driers are also a nightmare for electricity. Use an energy efficient washing machine with a low-heat, quick wash setting where possible. Avoid tumble driers, use a washing line outside or a clothes horse indoors instead.

Electric Ireland: David

Thanks for posting that good advice tenchi-fan.

Just for general info, we have a reduce your costs section on our website, which includes an interactive guide to solar panels (for those interesting in following in the footsteps of homewardbound11), and a 3D tour of an energy efficient house.