My electricity bill has just tripled: how about yours? Alternative suppliers?

[gentlegreen]

I lived with a mate who felt similar but spent most of the time in his shorts with his top off. I on the other hand start feeling headachy and stifled at anything above 20 C

All the online advice says that people our age will die of hypothermia at anything lower than 21 ...

 

[gentlegreen]

I've set my heating of my one room to 17 and it's been ending up at around at least 18 with me and my PC and a bit of solar gain...
Yesterday it didn't fire up and hit 21.
Today it needed a couple of KWH and is currently now 18.
When I get back from my afternoon bike ride I have to sit here for a bit with no top on drying off and cooling down.

It's not that I can't afford the energy, it's simply wrong - as well as unhealthy.

 

[cupid_stunt]

I lived with a mate who felt similar but spent most of the time in his shorts with his top off. I on the other hand start feeling headachy and stifled at anything above 20 C

Ditto, it used to be hard visiting mother, she would heat to 25c.

 

[existentialist]

Ditto, it used to be hard visiting mother, she would heat to 25c.

I think the problem is that, as we get older, we tend to FEEL colder. But then it's no more than a couple of hundred years since people believed that the temperature was what they felt it to be, lacking any objective means of measurement - I think that must still linger on.

 

[gentlegreen]

Round my sister's they piss money away on heating partly due to keeping the back door ajar to give the dogs access to the garden...
As with the rest of their appalling lifestyle habits that are killing them slowly they think I'M the weirdo...

 

[CH1]

That cold snap certainly buggered me up.
Gas+Electric combined October £156.03 → November £243.24

 

[cupid_stunt]

That cold snap certainly buggered me up.
Gas+Electric combined October £156.03 → November £243.24

Wow!

This place was empty last Nov, the heating was set for an hour in both the morning and evening at 18c, to comply with the specialist insurance for an unoccupied property, and it cost £35 in gas use only.

During the cold snap it kept coming on during the whole time I was awake, but thanks to it being very mild outside of the 5-day cold snap, gas use just for heating* came in at £1 less.

* I deduct the average summer gas bills, thus excluding hot water and standing charges, to keep an eye on the heating cost.

 

[gentlegreen]

Gas+Electric combined October £156.03 → November £243.24

oct - £3.95 gas - £57.97 total
Nov - £21.92 gas - £75.94 total
The most expensive day was Thursday 28th Nov - £2.03 gas, £3.83 total *30 = £114.92

Octopus just had me drop my monthly payment to £60.92 to mop up some credit ...

 

[CH1]

oct - £3.95 gas - £57.97 total
Nov - £21.92 gas - £75.94 total
The most expensive day was Thursday 28th Nov - £2.03 gas, £3.83 total *30 = £114.92

Octopus just had me drop my monthly payment to £60.92 to mop up some credit ...

Yeah well I'm in a grossly underoccupied 4 bedroom house.
The November electricity bill is £66.57, which is only £10 more than you.
The gas situation is all debateable - the person on the top floor is going on holiday for 2 months, so maybe I shut their thermostatic radiator valves down to 3 or even 2.
These nerdy central heating type on youtube seem to say that cutting out heat on some rooms results in heat leakage from the ones in use.
I console myself with the thought that a shared ownership retirement pad in Vauxhall would have combined rent/service charges of £1,000 per month apparently.
So being ripped off by Octopus for 4 or 5 months a year is probably preferable for me at the moment.

 

[existentialist]

Yeah well I'm in a grossly underoccupied 4 bedroom house.
The November electricity bill is £66.57, which is only £10 more than you.
The gas situation is all debateable - the person on the top floor is going on holiday for 2 months, so maybe I shut their thermostatic radiator valves down to 3 or even 2.
These nerdy central heating type on youtube seem to say that cutting out heat on some rooms results in heat leakage from the ones in use.
I console myself with the thought that a shared ownership retirement pad in Vauxhall would have combined rent/service charges of £1,000 per month apparently.
So being ripped off by Octopus for 4 or 5 months a year is probably preferable for me at the moment.

You can do a bit of differential heating, and that makes all kinds of sense. But internal walls aren't great insulators, and the heat loss is proportional to the difference in temperature on either side, so there comes a point where it's worth heating the unused rooms a bit. From what I've seen, there's some very complicated maths involved in actually calculating it, but I'd guess a bit of background heating won't hurt too badly...remembering of course that the colder rooms are already being partially heated by the warmer ones.