Expensive Airtricity Bill

roonec25

Hi All

I would really appreciate some guidance with this. I bought a 3 bed terraced house in December. My bills for gas and electricity have been quite large. My highest bill was €400, all on my own.

I got a tenant in recently. My bill today was 170 euro for 2 months which is the one of the lowest bills. My tenant was shocked. She said it was a lot more expensive than other properties that she had stayed in.

We have a dishwasher, washing machine (without tumble dryer), Satellite TV, mostly energy saving lights with spot lights in the kitchen and two power showers.

Is this normal and is there anything that I can do to keep it down? (I'm careful with lights and turning things off)

I would really appreciate help with this,

Thanks
Cat

foggy_lad

roonec25 wrote: »

Hi All

I would really appreciate some guidance with this. I bought a 3 bed terraced house in December. My bills for gas and electricity have been quite large. My highest bill was €400, all on my own.

I got a tenant in recently. My bill today was 170 euro for 2 months which is the one of the lowest bills. My tenant was shocked. She said it was a lot more expensive than other properties that she had stayed in.

We have a dishwasher, washing machine (without tumble dryer), Satellite TV, mostly energy saving lights with spot lights in the kitchen and two power showers.

Is this normal and is there anything that I can do to keep it down? (I'm careful with lights and turning things off)

I would really appreciate help with this,

Thanks
Cat

Have you beeen reading your own meters and roughly calculating what your bills should be?

Are you on some weird "level pay" scheme/tarriff where they use your usage history(which will be someone elses) to calculate your bills then tally up at the end of the year?

Did you take readings when you moved in and give those to your utility provider(s)?

roonec25

Thank you for responding.

Yes. I have submitted my own readings for the last few months so they are accurate readings.

foggy_lad

roonec25 wrote: »

Thank you for responding.

Yes. I have submitted my own readings for the last few months so they are accurate readings.

Has there been any noticeable difference between summer and winter bill amounts?

roonec25

Yes. The summer bills have been lower but still more than the rest of my friends are paying (I've asked around).

foggy_lad

roonec25 wrote: »

Yes. The summer bills have been lower but still more than the rest of my friends are paying (I've asked around).

Are there other meters near/beside yours? Check that the MPRN and meter number on your bills matches what is on the meters. Turn all your electric items off then check that the dial on your meter has stopped then turn a few things like the oven and grill on full and see if the dial is racing around. Do the same with the gas, turn everything off then see that the dial is stopped then turn on your heating and the dial should be moving again.

Are there any suspicious looking cables or such in the meter boxes or around your esb fuse board?

wotswattage

I found this site useful for ballpark figures for what different appliances cost:
https://www.electricireland.ie/ei/residential-energy-services/reduce-your-costs/web-calculator.jsp#
Electric Ireland but not miles away I'm sure...

The biggest costs in my house are:
Electric showers: €40
Tumble dryer: €18
Halogen spots: €18
Fridge: €12

The rest seem to be smaller miscellaneous costs below €5 bt all add up to the total. Our electricity was €110 in the last bill, up from €90 for the previous two months. They were much higher when we had an extra tenant who was an absolute disaster with regards to turning anything off after using it.

I was amazed at the price of having an electric shower. We have 8 halogen spotlights in the kitchen these cost a fortune to have on too.

ted1

Are you with Airtricit? They tend to **** up bills, are the 400 bills estimates.


170 would be regular for a three bed provided you have gas or oil heating.

Seai average a three bed to use 5,300 a year= 441 a month * Average unit price .21( include standing charge etc)*2months= 185 euro.

When did you last move suppliers? Move every year to get best discounts. When you say energy saving bulbs what watt are they? How old are you kitchen appliances? Do you use your immersion? If do for how long ?

roonec25

I will check it out when I get home. Thanks foggy lad!

roonec25

ted1, thanks for that. My electricity was 110. The kitchen appliances are ten years old. Bulbs are 7w apart from halogens in the kitchen. I never use the immersion. The water is heated by gas for half an hour every morning. I'll look into moving suppliers in January (I'll be in the house a year then).

djimi

I wouldnt have said that 170 for gas and electricity was high in the slightest. What is she expecting them to be, and does she realise that they will rise quite a bit during winter?

roonec25

wotwattage, that calculator was great. It turns out my biggest cost is €40 for 2 instant electric showers. Do you know if leaving the string pulled uses up much electricity?

newbie2013

if anything is on, it uses lecy. turn everything off when leaving the house

petes

Bar the €400 bills, €170 sounds about right for two months!

ted1

roonec25 wrote: »

wotwattage, that calculator was great. It turns out my biggest cost is €40 for 2 instant electric showers. Do you know if leaving the string pulled uses up much electricity?

No it doesn't. Well a tiny amount to power the light probably about 1 cent a year.

Electric showers use lots but as the shower only gets used for 5 to 10 minutes it's not as much as you would expect

newbie2013

Ours is about 300 odds for 2 months and even know people whos bills are more than 400.

foggy_lad

ted1 wrote: »

No it doesn't. Well a tiny amount to power the light probably about 1 cent a year.

Electric showers use lots but as the shower only gets used for 5 to 10 minutes it's not as much as you would expect

I spend about 20-30 minutes in the shower.

Fingers Mcginty

wotswattage wrote: »

We have 8 halogen spotlights in the kitchen these cost a fortune to have on too.

get rid of them lads and put led's in

Calina

roonec25 wrote: »

Hi All

I would really appreciate some guidance with this. I bought a 3 bed terraced house in December. My bills for gas and electricity have been quite large. My highest bill was €400, all on my own.

I got a tenant in recently. My bill today was 170 euro for 2 months which is the one of the lowest bills. My tenant was shocked. She said it was a lot more expensive than other properties that she had stayed in.

Hi.

I live in a 3 bedroomed semi-D with two different energy suppliers. I do this for various reasons - I'm aware it would be cheaper were I, for example, to consolidate onto one bill.

My most recent electricity arrived yesterday, which was around 85E. I expect the gas to come in higher as we've moved to heating the house in the last few months. Our highest gas bill last winter was shy of around 300E but it dropped down to about 50 for the summer because we were only heating water for a few hours every day. We probably overdid it at that to be honest.

If your bill covers both electricity and gas, it would be useful to know how much of each bill covers which supply. This will give you a better picture of where the usage issues are. I doubt very much that they are half and half.

You have the option of switching to other suppliers as far as I know unless you're locked into some term contract (you will need to check that) and I personally would never deal with Airtricity as I have had issues with extremely pushy and rude sales staff coming to my door. However, I thought Airtricity supplied some sort of gizmo to give you some overview of your energy usage - at least one person I know has this.

Did you have a BER certificate for the house at any stage prior to moving in - I believe they are mandatory for both rentals and purchases? My guess is the major, major difference is in heating between a 400E and 170E bill. For both electricity and gas, 170E across two months appears reasonable to me.

ted1

Calina wrote: »

Hi.

I live in a 3 bedroomed semi-D with two different energy suppliers. I do this for various reasons - I'm aware it would be cheaper were I, for example, to consolidate onto one bill.

My most recent electricity arrived yesterday, which was around 85E. I expect the gas to come in higher as we've moved to heating the house in the last few months. Our highest gas bill last winter was shy of around 300E but it dropped down to about 50 for the summer because we were only heating water for a few hours every day. We probably overdid it at that to be honest.

If your bill covers both electricity and gas, it would be useful to know how much of each bill covers which supply. This will give you a better picture of where the usage issues are. I doubt very much that they are half and half.

You have the option of switching to other suppliers as far as I know unless you're locked into some term contract (you will need to check that) and I personally would never deal with Airtricity as I have had issues with extremely pushy and rude sales staff coming to my door. However, I thought Airtricity supplied some sort of gizmo to give you some overview of your energy usage - at least one person I know has this.

Did you have a BER certificate for the house at any stage prior to moving in - I believe they are mandatory for both rentals and purchases? My guess is the major, major difference is in heating between a 400E and 170E bill. For both electricity and gas, 170E across two months appears reasonable to me.

Calina,

you don't understand how it works. when your with the same supplier, you still get two different bills. Your logic is flawed.

your right about Airtricity, I would not recomend them to anyone.

Calina

OP is implying a single bill. I can only go on what they tell me.

roonec25

Hi Calina,

My bill was 110 for electricity and 60 for gas.

R P McMurphy

roonec25 wrote: »

Hi Calina,

My bill was 110 for electricity and 60 for gas.

For two months? My last bill was 550 for just under two months. I must be doing something drastically wrong

Calina

HAve you had a look at the breakdown over time to see how your usage is varying?

R P McMurphy

Calina wrote: »

HAve you had a look at the breakdown over time to see how your usage is varying?

Is only my second in this place. Storage heaters. Maybe not using them correctly

wotswattage

ted1 wrote: »

No it doesn't. Well a tiny amount to power the light probably about 1 cent a year.

Electric showers use lots but as the shower only gets used for 5 to 10 minutes it's not as much as you would expect

Well two tenants using the shower for 10 minutes each per day accounts for €32 of the electricity bill. Now I use it for 10 max (I'm a guy), but my housemate could easily be 25 in the shower (she's a girl) which brings it up to €55 of the bill. That's nearly half our bill! Its by a mile the biggest cost in out house...

Fingers Mcginty wrote: »

get rid of them lads and put led's in

Yeah defo, The calculator I posted earlier doesn't have a calculator for LED spots, but if I input them as 3W halogen spots it should be fairly close. Standard halogen spots are 50W.
8 spots on for 4 hours per day costs €15 per bill
8 LED's on for 4 hours per day costs €1 per bill!!!

just trying to find which LED's to get. The ones in IKEA have a good reputation, and at €5 per bulb aren't too expensive.

ted1

wotswattage wrote: »

Well two tenants using the shower for 10 minutes each per day accounts for €32 of the electricity bill. Now I use it for 10 max (I'm a guy), but my housemate could easily be 25 in the shower (she's a girl) which brings it up to €55 of the bill. That's nearly half our bill! Its by a mile the biggest cost in out house...





Yeah defo, The calculator I posted earlier doesn't have a calculator for LED spots, but if I input them as 3W halogen spots it should be fairly close. Standard halogen spots are 50W.
8 spots on for 4 hours per day costs €15 per bill
8 LED's on for 4 hours per day costs €1 per bill!!!

just trying to find which LED's to get. The ones in IKEA have a good reputation, and at €5 per bulb aren't too expensive.

Philips masters are the best LEDs out there, best prices from eurosales electrical

ted1

wotswattage wrote: »

Well two tenants using the shower for 10 minutes each per day accounts for €32 of the electricity bill. Now I use it for 10 max (I'm a guy), but my housemate could easily be 25 in the shower (she's a girl) which brings it up to €55 of the bill. That's nearly half our bill! Its by a mile the biggest cost in out house...





Yeah defo, The calculator I posted earlier doesn't have a calculator for LED spots, but if I input them as 3W halogen spots it should be fairly close. Standard halogen spots are 50W.
8 spots on for 4 hours per day costs €15 per bill
8 LED's on for 4 hours per day costs €1 per bill!!!

just trying to find which LED's to get. The ones in IKEA have a good reputation, and at €5 per bulb aren't too expensive.

Don't think your figures stack up.
A 9kw shower used 30 mins a day means 4.5kwh*18c=81c a day or 24.30 euro a month. That's providing the shower and heating element is in full, but realistically the shower will only be at 80%. So it'll cost more like 19.44euros a month. When calculating individual units you have to exclude standing charges.

ted1

Also you LED figures are wrong.
8 lamps * 3w=24w*4 = 96wh*30=2,880w=2.8kwh*.18=51.8cents a month not 1euro.

8 50w will costs 8.64

wotswattage

ted1 wrote: »

Don't think your figures stack up.
A 9kw shower used 30 mins a day means 4.5kwh*18c=81c a day or 24.30 euro a month. That's providing the shower and heating element is in full, but realistically the shower will only be at 80%. So it'll cost more like 19.44euros a month. When calculating individual units you have to exclude standing charges.

Jesus they may be out by a few cents!! You say €24.30 per month = €48.60 for 2 months.
Using your data (9000w for 30 mins) in the appliance calculator I get €48.17
As I said, its useful to get ballpark figures which is what I use it for.