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Electricity bills (how much do you pay?)

vibe666

I'm living ina 1 bed apartment in dublin with a single storage heater and the other usual stuff, but our bill is normally over 200E, and I can't understand why. our biggest winter bill was 270E.

is this normal?

what does everyone else pay?

something else that might be worth mentioning is that the electricity in my building doesn't seem to be the best. most light bulbs don't last more than 4 or 5 months, with some of them going within a month or two, and during the night when the storage heater comes on the fuse box makes a large clunking noise and then a fairly loud hum for however long it's on for. it's been suggested before (last year, here on boards) that I get someone in to look into the humming noise, but i was wondering if this might be increasing our usage levels.

it's mad anyway, should there really be that much juice being used in such a small place.

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Gurgle

€200 for 2 months ?

That certainly is not right.

My last bill was €170 for a 3-bed house with a washing machine & dryer going nearly every day.

Check if it's an estimated reading or more likely, the previous reading was (under)estimated.

Is it consistantly around this price ?

fjon

Yep, definitely something wrong there - I pay less than €100 for a 3 bed apartment. Are you using the immersion a lot? Electric heaters?

seamus

Originally posted by Gurgle
€200 for 2 months ?

That certainly is not right.

My last bill was €170 for a 3-bed house with a washing machine & dryer going nearly every hour of every day.

Check if it's an estimated reading or more likely, the previous reading was (under)estimated.

Is it consistantly around this price ?

Same here. Last bill was €100 for a two-storey 3-bed with washer and dryer going constantly (gas heating).

Biggest bill we ever had was €180 when a housemate left the immersion on for 3 weeks solid.

As you say yourself, there could be problems with the power supply to the building. Have you asked your landlord about it?

ixoy

I'll have to check but I think mine - for the winter - was around €170 for a 2-bedroom appartment. Not great. Part of it is the fcuking immersion heater which goes on for about 5-6 hours on a timer every night. The only way to cut down on this is to, as far as I can see, manually do the heater which'd mean getting up extra early in the mornings to turn it on. I don't a PC on consumes much power so I've ruled that out.
Also the light bulbs in our place seem to go quickly too....

vibe666

OK, here's my total output with estimated usage for each.

10 lights total inc. a 4 bulb spot set in the kitchen. prob. 12 hours a day total, 3 to 6 lights at a time.

electric hob and oven, hob used on av. once or twice a day for meals for 2 people.

microwave used for same.

full height fridge freezer.

washer/dryer, used mostly at the weekends and evenings. dryer usually once a month if that.

21' tv, PS2, video and small stereo, on standby most of the time, but watched or listened to maybe 5-6 hours a day between us.

single large storage heater.

desktop PC used on av. for 3 or 6 hours a day (also use it for recording TV, so is on quite a bit), but has power saving enabled (monitor and HD's off when not in use).

laptop PC used for 2-3 hours a day between us for net access and general games/office use.

thats about it. g/f uses the hair dryer every now and again, and we use an espresso machine in the mornings for a nice latte, but that's all.

does seem very high, but checked the bill and it doesn't say it's estimated so i have no idea what the craic is. i'm going to ring them now and see what they say, but what should i do, maybe get a sparky in to check it out?

edit: just called them and they told me it was perfectly normal because of the storage heater, and possibly my emmerison (which i can't change the timer on to work for a shorter time). I said I thought that the storage heaters were supposed to save you money, and she kinda side stepped that, so I'm still a bit stuck. she says a winter bill would most likely be double the summer one because of the storage heaters, but I don't remember it ever being less than 170e and we have the storage heaters off all summer (I turn the fuse off in the box).

dudara

Our winter bill with two storage heaters on reaches about E120 for two months. This is with immersion for water heating as well. In the summer, with the heaters off, it costs about E40

Scruff

not looking forward to our next bill. girlfriend left the electric heater in my room on on thursday morning before the easter bank holiday. It wasnt turned off till one of my house mates went in to get an xbox game and discovered it on the monday after...:dunno:
before that the bill was about €170 bi monthly. that was after i discovered that the immersion had be going for 18 hours a day for god knows how long.

Mossy Monk

with a meter is costs me between 4 and 6 euros a week

ebowdia

I'm in a three bed apartment, with nightsaver water heating and one larger storage heater. We are paying on average about E175 every two months.

Your bill seems way too high - have you checked that the night saver timer is set correctly? As in, your water/storage heating is supposed to come on at night to avail of cheap electricity, but if the clock is set wrong then it could be using normal electricity rates....?

mr_angry

Originally posted by Scruff
not looking forward to our next bill. girlfriend left the electric heater in my room on on thursday morning before the easter bank holiday. It wasnt turned off till one of my house mates went in to get an xbox game and discovered it on the monday after...:dunno:
before that the bill was about €170 bi monthly. that was after i discovered that the immersion had be going for 18 hours a day for god knows how long.

Uh-oh. Time to leave the country.

My own personal experience - 4-bedroom, 2-story semi-detached house with loft conversion. 3 22"+ TVs, PS2, and 5 PCs sharing a broadband connection. Electric shower, gas heating, and a small electric heater used for about 30 minutes every day.

December & January ESB Bill: €458.

The electric heater has now been put away. Forever.

seamus

Originally posted by mr_angry
Uh-oh. Time to leave the country.

My own personal experience - 4-bedroom, 2-story semi-detached house with loft conversion. 3 22"+ TVs, PS2, and 5 PCs sharing a broadband connection. Electric shower, gas heating, and a small electric heater used for about 30 minutes every day.

December & January ESB Bill: €458.

The electric heater has now been put away. Forever.

Eeep. At least though with 4 beds, you have at least 4 people to share the burden....

dudara

It's things like immersion and tumble dryers that tend to eat electricity. I hated living with people before, because they were straight from mummy's loving arms and had no concept of how much bloody heating can cost, especially if you leave it on when you're not in the house.

Our tumble dryer is in the basement, shared between flats, and one run on it (~60 min) costs 1E on the meter. Whereas 1E on the washing machine gives you about 4 washes.

Dman_15

There are seven of us living in a house in Belfast. (5 have pcs) Out last bill was £420 i think for the last 3 months. I got quite a shock when the first bill came through

ToxicPaddy

Jeez thats crazy money...

Im in a 3 bed 2 storey house, with Gas heating and cooker hob. Only thing that
really eats electricity is the tumble dryer which never gets used..

Average bi monthly bill is about â‚¬80 between 3 of us..

Get yourself a superser (sp?) stand alone heater, ya know the ones that ya attach
the gas bottle to and that will heat a room in a few mins and then ya can turn it on
and off when required... madness paying that money for storage heaters..

Tox

Victor

Small 2 bed flat - about €70/bill between 2 (heating separate).

Scruff

Originally posted by mr_angry
Uh-oh. Time to leave the country.

nah not quite, the immersion wasnt my fault it was one of the other lads.
even worse a few time they've turned on the gas onto always on and forgot about it.
we got a 2 month gas bill for €750...luckily it was an estimate and not an actual reading..

[Back on topic] I thought that the electricl radioator type heater were actually cheap enough to run. or am i terribly mistaken?

mr_angry

Mine was a small electric fan heater. I should point out that €113 of that bill was arrears aswell, so it was only €343 really.

I paid €193, since our bill is normally around €200. The tumble dryer, and the 5 computers on 24/7 seem to be what does the damage. I often wonder what it would be like to have a normal ESB bill... I'd be rich!

Victor

Originally posted by Scruff
I thought that the electricl radioator type heater were actually cheap enough to run. or am i terribly mistaken?

They are expensive enough on a normal meter, not quite as expensive to run on a separate night-rate meter, but only for storage heating.