Heating bills very expensive

Hello I am just wondering if anyone can offer advice.

I got a bord gais prepay meter in last year. The other day I topped up by 10 euro. After everything was deducted I was left with 9 euro credit. I turned the heating on through-out the day - I would say for around 4-5 hours at 22 degrees and the next morning I got up - the whole 9 euro had been used up.

If I calculate that up it would mean it would be costing nearly 10 euro a day to heat a new ground floor 2 bed apartment less than 800 sft.
10*7=70 a week
4*70=280 a month
280*6=560 bi monthly payments if I was not on prepay. This seems mad to me.

Before I got the meter in - I analyzed my usage for hot water alone.
I was using 5 kwh in 15 minutes at 4 cent was costing me 21 cent to heat my water.
The other day I tried to analyse this with the meter using the cost. It was costing me 56 cent to heat my water for 15 min. Taking into account that it is now nearly 6 cent per kwh.

The Gas man came out from bord gais networks and said he cant do anything. He just mentioned that they should be calibrated.

He says that I am using 27 kwh per hour for the boiler coming in to heat the home.
On my old calculations I was using 20kwh - which is a difference of 7 kwh per hour. The boiler was serviced in Dec so their should be no issue's with the boiler...

Am I going mad or is everyone paying 10 euro per day to heat their homes or their abouts ?

I am now thinking about getting it out as I feel it is eating into my money. I was always cautious using it before. The other day I just went and used it as needed but could not believe it was all gone by the next morning.

27 kWh at 6 cent by 5 hours is 8.10.....

...

I agree with 22degrees, perhaps wear warmer clothes etc...is the apartment leaking heat/letting cold in...have you done all measures to hold the heat like draw your curtains, letterbox flap insulated etc...the SEI give out free room temperature cards, send them an email, then normal is 18 on it..

heard someone buying down duvet in sales as better insulator than wadding

Hmm, solar-powered heating is very, very unlikely to be of any help to the OP. Aside from any other consideration a ground floor apartment is unlikely to be a suitable candidate for solar panels.

22 degrees is too high, unless you have a specific need (e.g. small baby) I would definitely lower the thermostat.

Other than that, I agree with sahd, carefully monitoring your meter readings might give you a definitive picture on how much gas you are using.

so-crates said:

Hmm, solar-powered heating is very, very unlikely to be of any help to the OP.

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Does your apartment have a good level of insulation and good double glazed windows?

20 degrees for living area and 15-16 degrees max for the bedrooms.
Get an energy monitor too and also shop around for the best electricity deal on the market.

You can get a 20% discount on the BG prepay tariff with Flogas(on bill pay).

Thanks everyone for the response.
I will turn down the heating a bit further.
I have double glazed windows with curtains.
I will look into getting a temperature reader on each of the walls.

I have since gone in and done some more checks

I topped up last night - had 6.40 left on credit. Meter reading after updating the index = 00591.467 m3
Went to bed and left it off.
Got up the next morning and checked it again before I turned it on I had 6.11 left on credit and the meter reading was 00591.499 .
This leads to a usage of .032 m3 and a cost of 29 cent.
It is meant to be 22 cent a day standing charge so the small leak is costing me 7 cent for that time period.

This means that the test that the network guy - who said their was no leaks is not correct , unless their leaks only goes to a certain minimum level to be classified as a leak.

I also rechecked the water usage - before it used to use 5kwh for 15 minutes of water. Now it is taking 7kwh.
Does anyone know what the current Bord Gais calorific value is ?

A price war is about to break out between the utility companies.

Bord Gais announced today that its cutting the cost of gas and electricity to domestic customers from March 16th.

http://www.independent.ie/business/...icity-prices-as-fuel-cost-falls-30928583.html

Conversion factor is 11.2477 * m^³=kWh

alexandra123 said:

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This leads to a usage of .032 m3 and a cost of 29 cent.
It is meant to be 22 cent a day standing charge so the small leak is costing me 7 cent for that time period.

I also rechecked the water usage - before it used to use 5kwh for 15 minutes of water. Now it is taking 7kwh.

Click to expand...

Ok, just to clear up a couple of misunderstandings here.
First off that "leak", if it is one, is costing you 29c per day, as the standing charge of 22c per day is on top of gas used (metered). Therefore if your meter is registering a "usage" of 29c then that is what you will pay + your standing charge.

Don't fully understand your take on the water usage, assuming I am not too far of the mark here, I think you may mean that you took a 15min shower (or similar) and the energy (gas) used was 5KW (notice not Kilo watt hours, (unless you are heating a tremendous amount of water)) but now for the same 15min shower it is using 7KW.

If this is a close enough analogy then it can easily be explained in that the starting temperature of the water is now probably lower than before and therefore more energy must be expended to raise it to the temperature you have selected for showering etc.

Maybe I could have explained this clearer, but you get the gist.

I am also on prepay gas and electricity.
I dont find the electricity to be too bad but the gas seems to eat my money very quickly.

I have found out that it costs €200 just to switch from prepay gas metre to bill gas metre so I am inclined to stay with prepay gas because of that €200 charge.

I also have found out that prepay electricity and bill pay are similar but bill pay is slightly cheaper and as there is no cost of changing the metre I am going to change to bill pay for elctricity.

Therefore my question is:

Is there any clear cut easy decision here with regard to gas? Is there a particular company out there that offers the cheapest gas and that would render my decision to change worthwhile in spite of the €200 charge?

Thanks,
James

Jim,

Based on all my fighting with the gas company they eventually waivered the 200 charge. So I got the meter removed for free.