# Huge Gas Bill-How can people cope.



## IsleOfMan (23 Feb 2011)

Got my December to February gas bill this morning and it came in at €440.
Included in that a standing charge of €10, Carbon Tax €24 and VAT €52.  I wouldn't mind but during the cold spell I wore a couple of fleeces on around the house to keep warm.
I will have to balance this out by cutting my spend elsewhere. Nobody wins.


----------



## Leo (23 Feb 2011)

Is there a question? What is the consumer rights issue here?
Leo


----------



## IsleOfMan (23 Feb 2011)

My apologies. I didn't realise that you had to ask a question. I read the thread as consumer issues and rights. I didn't realise it was consumer rights issues?


----------



## Guest110 (23 Feb 2011)

Thats very expensive alright, especially since you tried to reduce the amount of time the heating was on by putting on the jumpers. Can you imagine how much extra you would have had to pay if you did not have those jumpers on. 

They should really give people the option for free to install gas prepaid meters. At least then you know exactly how much it is costing you and you can have more control over it.


----------



## MANTO (23 Feb 2011)

There is an option to have a prepaid meter installed for free - if you are having problems paying your bills you can have one installed for free under Financial Hardship.


----------



## Mel (23 Feb 2011)

alexandra12 said:


> Thats very expensive alright, especially since you tried to reduce the amount of time the heating was on by putting on the jumpers. Can you imagine how much extra you would have had to pay if you did not have those jumpers on.
> 
> They should really give people the option for free to install gas prepaid meters. At least then you know exactly how much it is costing you and you can have more control over it.


 
It's very easy to read your own meter and estimate the bill. 
Have you looked at changing providers? 
My last 5 or 6 months of gas was around €250, and I haven't been sparing the heat with the weather we had - albeit out at work all day.


----------



## theresa1 (23 Feb 2011)

MANTO said:


> There is an option to have a prepaid meter installed for free - if you are having problems paying your bills you can have one installed for free under Financial Hardship.


 

- Yes and you then end up pay a higher Cost for your Gas than anybody else.

I would recommend flogas if not with them already.


----------



## MANTO (23 Feb 2011)

theresa1 said:


> - Yes and you then end up pay a higher Cost for your Gas than anybody else.
> 
> I would recommend flogas if not with them already.


 
No you dont, the rate is the same as the Standard Rate on a regular bill unless you are paying off a debt through the meter.


----------



## mercman (23 Feb 2011)

IsleOfMan said:


> I wore a couple of fleeces on around the house to keep warm.



The heating system in a property works on the temperature in the property and not the temperature of the persons in it. Next year turn down the termostat, dress up in the fleeces and the pipes will probably burst. Then you will incur some real expense.


----------



## theresa1 (23 Feb 2011)

Why would paying off a debt effect the cost per kwh? You mention standard rate but can you have winter tariff?
Flogas currently is up to 15% cheaper. I understand the direct debit could be a problem for some but you would still save without a direct debit set up.


----------



## mercman (23 Feb 2011)

theresa1 said:


> Flogas currently is up to 15% cheaper.



I don't think Flogas is 15 % cheaper than natural Gas. Please correct me if i'm wrong.


----------



## Guest105 (23 Feb 2011)

IsleOfMan said:


> Got my December to February gas bill this morning and it came in at €440.
> Included in that a standing charge of €10, Carbon Tax €24 and VAT €52. I wouldn't mind but during the cold spell I wore a couple of fleeces on around the house to keep warm.
> I will have to balance this out by cutting my spend elsewhere. Nobody wins.


 

That's a horrendously large bill, I use oil and I wouldn't spend that much in 6 months to heat the house and its a fairly large house at that.


----------



## theresa1 (23 Feb 2011)

http://www.flogasnaturalgas.ie/comparerates.php - check it out.


----------



## mercman (23 Feb 2011)

Theresa, Sorry I was mixing the Flogas LPG with the Flogas Natural Gas.


----------



## IsleOfMan (24 Feb 2011)

cashier said:


> That's a horrendously large bill, I use oil and I wouldn't spend that much in 6 months to heat the house and its a fairly large house at that.


 
My house is circa 2500 sq ft.  Fairly modern build. We had the heating on for about 2 hours in the morning, an hour at lunchtime and two hours in the evening. We also use gas for our cooking.
Our ESB bill is coming in at about €90 for two months.  So I suppose between gas and electricity it was about €540 for two months.

I wonder how much others spent on Oil, Gas, and Electricity over the past two months?  Would it all add up to a similar amount?


----------



## alaskaonline (24 Feb 2011)

My bill came in too, 106 for Gas (heating and water) for same period as OP.

OP - did you check if your bill is an estimate or an actual reading? That's the first thing I checked to make sure there is no shocker with the next one.

If it is an actual reading, 440 is a lot! Check how insulated your house is e.g. the attic, floor etc. I have lino in mine but with a blue insulation cover underneath. My floor is usually warm without shoes on. Also my attic is well insulated which keeps a lot of the cold air out AND I have curtains (instead of only blinds) in all rooms which in my opinion keeps the rooms warmer too.

Plus in the sitting room, I have an open fire every night while heating for the rest of the house is off (i.e. until we go to bed, we switch it on half an hour before).


----------



## MANTO (24 Feb 2011)

theresa1 said:


> Why would paying off a debt effect the cost per kwh? You mention standard rate but can you have winter tariff?
> .


 

Because you may not be able to pay your bills and have a prepaid meter installed to manage your costs. The balance due from your last bill is then retrieved through the meter at a higher rate. 

When paid off you return to the standard rate.

There is no difference in the cost of the winter saver tariff it is marely structured to balance out your costs through the year, i.e. you pay more for the summer period so your bills are cheaper through the winter period..


----------



## theresa1 (24 Feb 2011)

Manto - you are wrong - winter saver tariff works out a few euro cheaper over the year. However if you leave to move to flogas for example you can get stung by Bord Gais as you are paying a higher standing charge and they wont re-calculate it.
So best to move after the winter period and you have got your credit back from Bord Gais.


----------



## MANTO (24 Feb 2011)

You are correct - but only about €10 for the whole year - the tariff itself is designed to manage costs.

Yes you do get 'stung' if you change supplier - buts thats your own fault - you commit to being on that tariff for a Year which is clearly in the terms and conditions.

Yes you can change supplier to avail of cheaper rates, but the whole point is the OP asked how can people cope. The reality is, even with switching supplier - people still cannot cope with home energy bills and Bord Gais are the only supplier offering Prepayment Metering at the moment.


----------



## Mynydd (24 Feb 2011)

How efficient is your boiler?


----------



## PaddyW (24 Feb 2011)

We got our bill for the past two months, worked out at 210 between three of us. And a lot of days the gas was on constantly. Sounds like a problem with your boiler maybe or thermostat way too high?


----------



## TarfHead (24 Feb 2011)

IsleOfMan said:


> Got my December to February gas bill this morning and it came in at €440.


 
My last bill was €450. A week later, Airtricity came to the door offering me an incentive to switch. Deal  !

The period of the bill covers 'The Big Freeze' and all of us being at home over Chistmas.


----------



## theresa1 (24 Feb 2011)

"you commit to being on that tariff for a Year which is clearly in the terms and conditions."

I was with Bord Gais for a few years on the winter tariff and they still 'stung' me.

I would strongly advise people to keep away from the prepayment metering system and to switch from Bord Gais to Flogas or even Airtricity.

You sound like you work for Bord Gais Manto.


----------



## dewdrop (24 Feb 2011)

If one had gas heating have we forgotton all the days and nights of sub zero weather.  At the time people were saying that their bills would be hugh but it is still a shock when it comes. mine was 367 euro. At least we had no burst pipes


----------



## DerKaiser (24 Feb 2011)

IsleOfMan said:


> My house is circa 2500 sq ft.


 
That there is your issue.

Our house is 1400 sq ft, 1970s build, inefficient boiler, rubbish insulation, big windows and skylights (double glazed admittedly) and would expect a €300+ bill for the couple of months around christmas - €400+ if we weren't being as careful.

This is based on being away for a week at christmas and only using it for 1hr in the morning and maybe 3 hours in the evening.

I've done the maths and replacing the boiler before it packs in or getting some serious cavity insulation, etc is actually not cost efficient over any reasonable time frame.

For a 2500 sq feet house a €400+ bill would not seem outrageous during the height of a bad winter. 

The only good advice I can think of is to install a fuel efficient stove in the room you spend your evenings in for winter and adjust the radiators to an optimal level i.e. full on in the living area and main bedroom(s), half on in smaller rooms and completely off in rooms you don't spend more than a few minutes in.

I'm sure your full annual bill is not much more than €1500. Cutting €300 or 20% off that would hardly be worth the few grand in large scale insulation works.


----------



## MANTO (24 Feb 2011)

theresa1 said:


> "you commit to being on that tariff for a Year which is clearly in the terms and conditions."
> 
> I was with Bord Gais for a few years on the winter tariff and they still 'stung' me.
> 
> ...


 
Dont work fot Bord Gais, as i already said Yes you can change supplier to avail of cheaper rates. I am only pointing out prepayment meters are one way to manage your costs but obviously would not be preferable to everyone. 

Out of curiosity, what did they charge you extra for if you were on the tariff for the full period?


----------



## Purple (24 Feb 2011)

My house is circa 2500SqFeet and my last gas bill was €540. Add to that the fact that I forgot to pay the last one and now I owe then over €800. We use the gas for heat, water and cooking (hob). There's six in the house and there's someone there all day most days. New boiler, good insulation, 4-zone system with a timer in each zone that can be set to go on and off three times a day. 

The trouble is that Mrs. Purple is always freezing so the house is like a bleedin' sauna half the time.


----------



## fobs (24 Feb 2011)

Our gas bill was only 250 for same period. Our house is approximately 2000 sq feet. We have a solid fuel stove ob our siting room and had the heating on an hour in the morning and evening. Use gas for cooking as well. Our gas bills used to be huge before the installation of our stove.


----------



## IsleOfMan (25 Feb 2011)

DerKaiser said:


> I've done the maths and replacing the boiler before it packs in or getting some serious cavity insulation, etc is actually not cost efficient over any reasonable time frame.
> 
> 
> The only good advice I can think of is to install a fuel efficient stove in the room you spend your evenings in for winter and adjust the radiators to an optimal level i.e. full on in the living area and main bedroom(s), half on in smaller rooms and completely off in rooms you don't spend more than a few minutes in.
> ...


 
Our heating system and cooking system is run off a Stanley cooker. It's about 17 years old. It would be horrendously expensive to replace this.

Empty rooms have heat either turned off or reduced to barely on.

Main living room is beside kitchen where the Stanley is and we also have a gas fire in that room that is used only to heat up the area initially. So these rooms are warm and cosy. Generally it is brass monkeys in the rest of the house.  I agree I don't think that it would be worthwhile to spend further on insulation.  We had thought of taking out the gas fire and putting back in place a traditional fire or wood burning stove. However the gas fire is so convenient and clean.

A smaller house would be ideal but that's another thread altogether.


----------



## Shawady (25 Feb 2011)

DerKaiser said:


> I'm sure your full annual bill is not much more than €1500. Cutting €300 or 20% off that would hardly be worth the few grand in large scale insulation works.


 
I wouldn't rule out getting our insulation work. If the insulation cost €3,000 and he saved €300 a year it would have paid for itself in 10 years and his house would be warmer.
We got an extension done last year and while we were doing it we got the existing house internally drylined and we changed from oil heating to a high efficient gas boiler with thermostat controls on the new rads.
Our house is 1,550 sq feet and out heating bill for *4 *months (Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan) was €440 and my wife was at home all the time on maternity leave.

Maybe the OP can check the HALO scheme from ESB. They come out and asses your house for free and advise what work would be required, cost and potential savings on heating bill.

[broken link removed]


----------



## PetrolHead (25 Feb 2011)

IsleOfMan said:


> My house is circa 2500 sq ft.  Fairly modern build. We had the heating on for about 2 hours in the morning, an hour at lunchtime and two hours in the evening. We also use gas for our cooking.




IMHO your bill sounds way too high for everything to be right. 

Get your boiler serviced and have the thermostats and zones (if you have them) checked. Also, how are you running the hot water? All day or just for short periods at the same time as the heating? 

Check the level you have the thermostats set at too. If they are at 22deg could you stand them being turned down to 19deg for example. 

Also, check your previous bills. They may have been estimated for the last two or three billing periods and then actually read for this one making up the difference where you have underpaid for your previous usage. Alternatively, this bill may have been estimated and you have been overcharged in which case call your provider with the correct reading and they will issue a new bill (or leave it be and effectively 'pre-pay' your next one).


----------



## foxylady (25 Feb 2011)

IsleOfMan said:


> My house is circa 2500 sq ft. Fairly modern build. We had the heating on for about 2 hours in the morning, an hour at lunchtime and two hours in the evening. We also use gas for our cooking.
> Our ESB bill is coming in at about €90 for two months. So I suppose between gas and electricity it was about €540 for two months.
> 
> I wonder how much others spent on Oil, Gas, and Electricity over the past two months? Would it all add up to a similar amount?


 
Last house I lived in was less than half the size of that house and our bill for sameperiod last year was 465 and electricity used to always be over 100 euro. We didnt have the gas on much either and didnt leavethings on standby


----------



## thedaras (25 Feb 2011)

Just got mine, 495e..House 3000 Sq Ft..And have a stove in two rooms.One of those rooms is quite big so the stove is very inexpensive to heat that room,obviously we turn the rads off in this room,cant turn off rads in other rooms as there tends to be kids in each one of them at any one time.
Also oven is gas.

Does anyone know if it is right to have to heating in some rooms?
Would it cause dampness?


----------



## PetrolHead (25 Feb 2011)

Isleofman - foxylady - thedaras - 

How can you have used well over 9000 kwh of gas in two months? 

I have an 1800+sqft house with underfloor heating on the ground floor (on for two six hour periods each day) along with the upstairs rads (morning and evening), hot water (morning and evening) and hob in use every evening and we only used half that.


----------



## orka (25 Feb 2011)

Is the billing period longer than normal over Christmas?  I thought we normally got a bill every 2 months but our last one was for almost 3 months (86 days from November to February) for €441 (8,895 kwh).  We thought it was a bit high but it covers the big freeze and Christmas when there were more people at home during the day so it's probably about right.


----------



## foxylady (25 Feb 2011)

PetrolHead said:


> Isleofman - foxylady - thedaras -
> 
> How can you have used well over 9000 kwh of gas in two months?
> 
> I have an 1800+sqft house with underfloor heating on the ground floor (on for two six hour periods each day) along with the upstairs rads (morning and evening), hot water (morning and evening) and hob in use every evening and we only used half that.


 
Beats me - last property was arental one so god knows how old the boiler was but we certainyl didnt have it on all the time either


----------



## thedaras (25 Feb 2011)

PetrolHead said:


> Isleofman - foxylady - thedaras -
> 
> How can you have used well over 9000 kwh of gas in two months?
> 
> I have an 1800+sqft house with underfloor heating on the ground floor (on for two six hour periods each day) along with the upstairs rads (morning and evening), hot water (morning and evening) and hob in use every evening and we only used half that.



That was the price from December 9th until Feb 11th,so I can only think that it was during the really cold spell.

It says units used are 10.123 kWh.
Standing charge is 10.50,
Carbon tax is 28.04.
Vat is 58.94 that all costs e97.56.
The bill prior to this one was 349e..


----------



## Lex Foutish (25 Feb 2011)

thedaras said:


> Just got mine, 495e..House 3000 Sq Ft..And have a stove in two rooms.One of those rooms is quite big so the stove is very inexpensive to heat that room,obviously we turn the rads off in this room,cant turn off rads in other rooms as there tends to be kids in each one of them at any one time.
> Also oven is gas.
> 
> Does anyone know if it is right to have to heating in some rooms?
> Would it cause dampness?


 
Is that for 2 months? We had gas in our last house but I have oil where we live now. It sounds a lot. I reckon we use about 1500 litres of oil per year. House about 1,800 sq. ft.

I don't think you'd have dampness by not turning on the heat in some rooms but you might have a bit of cold bridging, whereby the cold rooms absorb the heat from the warmer ones. Maybe you could barely turn on the rads in these rooms........


----------



## Lex Foutish (25 Feb 2011)

Purple said:


> My house is circa 2500SqFeet and my last gas bill was €540. Add to that the fact that I forgot to pay the last one and now I owe then over €800. We use the gas for heat, water and cooking (hob). There's six in the house and there's someone there all day most days. New boiler, good insulation, 4-zone system with a timer in each zone that can be set to go on and off three times a day.
> 
> *The trouble is that Mrs. Purple is always freezing so the house is like a bleedin' sauna half the time*.


 
Are we married to twin sisters?


----------



## thedaras (25 Feb 2011)

Lex Foutish said:


> Is that for 2 months? We had gas in our last house but I have oil where we live now. It sounds a lot. I reckon we use about 1500 litres of oil per year. House about 1,800 sq. ft.
> 
> I don't think you'd have dampness by not turning on the heat in some rooms but you might have a bit of cold bridging, whereby the cold rooms absorb the heat from the warmer ones. Maybe you could barely turn on the rads in these rooms........



Yep, Dec 9th to Feb 11th..
I have a VERY cold husband though,which might explain it!


----------



## Lex Foutish (26 Feb 2011)

thedaras said:


> Yep, Dec 9th to Feb 11th..
> I have a VERY cold husband though,which might explain it!


 
I know exactly what you mean! Time to get out the long johns and the winter woolies for him!!!


----------



## horusd (26 Feb 2011)

A friend of mine had a theory about heating the house, and it seems to have been borne out in his bills.  He left the heating on low all the time during the long cold snap. The idea being that all the house was kept warmish all the time and didn't need intense heating up ( using up lots of gas) when the heating was on for only short periods.  His bill for a 3 bed tce was pretty much the same, and the house was comfy all the time.


----------



## Knuttell (26 Feb 2011)

horusd said:


> A friend of mine had a theory about heating the house, and it seems to have been borne out in his bills.  He left the heating on low all the time during the long cold snap. The idea being that all the house was kept warmish all the time and didn't need intense heating up ( using up lots of gas) when the heating was on for only short periods.  His bill for a 3 bed tce was pretty much the same, and the house was comfy all the time.



Exactly the same experience,4 bed semi,bill not more than e30 more expensive than avg for Winter esp given it was during the cold spell bill came to e191.00


----------



## Delboy (27 Feb 2011)

when you say 'low', what temp do you mean?


----------



## truthseeker (28 Feb 2011)

horusd said:


> A friend of mine had a theory about heating the house, and it seems to have been borne out in his bills. He left the heating on low all the time during the long cold snap. The idea being that all the house was kept warmish all the time and didn't need intense heating up ( using up lots of gas) when the heating was on for only short periods. His bill for a 3 bed tce was pretty much the same, and the house was comfy all the time.


 
The guy who services my boiler gives exactly the same advice. It seems counter intuitive because it means you leave it on a lot longer, but it does actually work.


----------



## Diziet (28 Feb 2011)

theresa1 said:


> - Yes and you then end up pay a higher Cost for your Gas than anybody else.
> 
> I would recommend flogas if not with them already.



Can I correct this please, as it is important for people struggling. The cost of gas under a pre-payment meter is the exact same as for anybody else. This can easily be checked with Bord Gais if you don't believe a random stranger on an internet board.

Actually prepayment meters are brilliant - they offer a lot of information on gas consumption and most people who get them see a reduction on consumption just because they are more aware of what is spent, and when.


----------

