Energy Prices (Strictly NO referrals!)

flea.rider said:
you guys blame the gas prices instead of yourselves ? you buy a house and do nothing to it ? i really can't work it out .. all you get is moaning .. i've got 2 1/2 ft of roof insulation walls were cavity filled ..installed wood burners .. new windows where needed ..new back door ??
and i'm on a 27k salary .. did you think prices would stay the same ? i bought the house nearly 3 yrs ago .. ??
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It is a new build for a number of people here. Has 2ft of insulation in roof, already has cavity insulation, double glazed windows and modern doors etc. None of the stuff you are suggesting is the answer unless you can afford to go triple glazed and if you are going to wood burner (couldn't even fit it in this home without structural work and thousands spent) then you are also paying for the logs etc on top of the gas.

So yeah I blame the cost of gas for the high costs to heat a home to a reasonable level. No point should a house in the last decade need work done to it to make it more energy efficient because it would be in the tens of thousands.
 
Curlyriff said:
A standard 24kWh combi boiler is around £2.47 an hour compared to when all this kicked off at around £0.84 an hour. So yeah that is only like 73mins of Gas being on. That gas only, add on around 70watt load from the electric when the gas boiler switches on and you have a tiny bit cost there too.

I assume your IHD is a mixed version. I only have electric smart this end. But the costs above are why heating is staying off here.

My new build from 2015 is a small 2 bed semi detached and still looses 1 degree of heat an hour approx. I wish it was only 2-3c lost because I would try and get the heating to keep house at 18c at least but instead I have to try and get from 10c to 18c and then maintain it which would mean about 9-10hrs a day heating meaning £20-22 a day for gas!!
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Yea it's mixed IHD and it even supports the split tariff. Our boiler is 35kW but max output of 24kW for heating. Not that it ever, ever needs that. It only fires for short bursts once the system is up to temperature as the boiler is too big. We used 35.5kWh of gas on Monday heating the house up to and then maintaining at 19C.

Yesterday evening for example, heating came on at 1600, upstairs clicked off at around 1715 and downstairs at around 1800. Downstairs clicked back on at about 2045 but upstairs was still around 19.5C so didn't come on.
 
flea.rider said:
you guys blame the gas prices instead of yourselves ? you buy a house and do nothing to it ? i really can't work it out .. all you get is moaning .. i've got 2 1/2 ft of roof insulation walls were cavity filled ..installed wood burners .. new windows where needed ..new back door ??
and i'm on a 27k salary .. did you think prices would stay the same ? i bought the house nearly 3 yrs ago .. ??
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Can you honestly not see how its hurting some people? I have halved my gas usage compared to two years ago but gas prices are 4x what they were two years ago so I'm still paying double compared to then.
 
Curlyriff said:
It is a new build for a number of people here. Has 2ft of insulation in roof, already has cavity insulation, double glazed windows and modern doors etc. None of the stuff you are suggesting is the answer unless you can afford to go triple glazed and if you are going to wood burner (couldn't even fit it in this home without structural work and thousands spent) then you are also paying for the logs etc on top of the gas.

So yeah I blame the cost of gas for the high costs to heat a home to a reasonable level. No point should a house in the last decade need work done to it to make it more energy efficient because it would be in the tens of thousands.
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new builds wouldn't touch em not fit for purpose in -5 and below .. as far as money well spent @Haggisman your way off backdoor was £560 fitted ..log burner £1.2k and most of the wood is free ..collected over the summer .
the regs on new build are dismal cheap thrown together houses ..
 
ci_newman said:
Can you honestly not see how its hurting some people? I have halved my gas usage compared to two years ago but gas prices are 4x what they were two years ago so I'm still paying double compared to then.
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yeah i can .. do i feel for them no ..it's your home a little forward thinking is all it needed .. a little research it's only going to get colder ...
 
Its never ever going to be cheaper to maintain a house at a temperature than let it fall and reheat it again later unless its practically lossless and you have a system thats grossly inefficient when heating hard as opposed to low

However people are more likely to send the heating higher when they put it on when really cold since it takes time to warm up the body and as such people tend to turn it up higher in these cases.

As hippo says above, there is also the whole mass equation. If you have a house where everything in it is heated to say 20 degrees and you turn the heating off it will tend to drop far less quickly since everything will be releasing heat as the temp starts to drop.
Its why things like fan heaters can seem to heat a space quickly, but it goes cold quickly afterwards. Thats because everything is absorbing the heat (as well as losses), so the air temp will drop quickly again.

I've been playing with our heating, not because we cant afford it, but more to just try to be sensible and it would be far easier to cope if we do get shortages and are more used to 18 than 20-21.
As such until mid last week it was basically on demand, a little chilly, boost it for an hour. However late last week we were both ill so I decided to just stick it on 18 all day.

Was quite interesting to see gas usage only go up about 100%. That sounds a lot but its for like probably 5-6x the time the heating was active. Instead of a couple of hours it was more like 9am-11pm.
What was also very interesting was the next morning it was noticeably warmer downstairs even with outside temp lower. I guess that thermal mass thing doing its thing and releasing all that stored energy over night.
 
flea.rider said:
as far as money well spent @Haggisman your way off backdoor was £560 fitted ..log burner £1.2k and most of the wood is free
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So only £800 less than I said, and still ~£5k (and assumes your house is suitable for a log burner which many aren't). Like I said, it's worth doing, but the payoff certainly isn't going to happen in a year or 2 of savings, even with current prices.

I'd be interested in knowing what kind of decent quality door you got for £560 fitted, since a basic UPVC door is £4-500 without fitting
 
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I enjoy people telling everyone "it was cheap to make my house warm why doesn't everyone do it".

Our house has double glazing, a good front door, I have put 280mm of insulation in the roof and our house is still thermally awful. The only thing we could do to fix this would be to pay a huge amount to add either internal or external classing to provide insulation. Both options would cost well over 10k and devalue the house because its a nice old edwardian house.

Its not usually that simple and plenty of people can't drop £5-15k on home improvements to save a few hundred quid a year.
 
flea.rider said:
you guys blame the gas prices instead of yourselves ? you buy a house and do nothing to it ? i really can't work it out .. all you get is moaning .. i've got 2 1/2 ft of roof insulation walls were cavity filled ..installed wood burners .. new windows where needed ..new back door ??
and i'm on a 27k salary .. did you think prices would stay the same ? i bought the house nearly 3 yrs ago .. ??
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You bought your hosue 3 years ago and in that time energy price have tripled or more. You understand even if people cut usage by 50% bills would still increase?
 
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not all houses are cavity wall constructions. anything that is pre-1950s are all solid walls ie gets cold if you dont have heating and loose a lot of heat.

uPVC windows wioht double galzing etc will only address the inefficiency in the building evelope that is currently there. I mean a window/door is never gonna make things better than not having a window/door there inthe first place.

fundamentally - UK energy market is messed up cos the way the market is pegged against wholesale gas price with generators (solar/wind/waste-to-heat/electricity/bio-mass/nuclear) having contracts with guaranteed profit ie subsidies as well as whatever they make off the cost vs wholesale gas price. the market is simply dysfunctional cos it is not a free market mechanism.

the way it should be run is the market is heavily tax on profits from these generators with those revenues going into subsidies when required for those generators operating at a loss and/or going to a publically owned power generator company to bring prices down.
 
Asked for b&q vouchers for Christmas from my mum to buy insulation for the loft. May have to ask her to send them for this weekend! Going to ikea this weekend to buy some curtains and poles to put over the front door and the uncovered hallway window.

House was 8c at 8 this morning. Brrr!

I live in a 1920s semi with solid walls, so no option to add cavity wall insulation. My bedroom/en-suite is freezing as it’s on the external wall and only have a small radiator.

My biggest concern is the amount of condensation on the windows and the windowsill. I’ve got a few dehumidifier things sitting on them but worried it’ll cause issue. Already getting a touch of mould on the silicone.

fez said:
I enjoy people telling everyone "it was cheap to make my house warm why doesn't everyone do it".

Our house has double glazing, a good front door, I have put 280mm of insulation in the roof and our house is still thermally awful. The only thing we could do to fix this would be to pay a huge amount to add either internal or external classing to provide insulation. Both options would cost well over 10k and devalue the house because its a nice old edwardian house.

Its not usually that simple and plenty of people can't drop £5-15k on home improvements to save a few hundred quid a year.
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Indeed, we prefer the look of older houses and the high ceilings but I do think the next house will be a new(er) one due to insulation/solar panels.
 
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We should also have kept far higher strategic reserves of gas like most other sensible countries. As usual, save the pennies now and spend the pounds later and blame someone else.
 
Ahleckz said:
Indeed, we prefer the look of older houses and the high ceilings but I do think the next house will be a new(er) one due to insulation/solar panels.
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We went from a 1900s mid-terrace to a 2017 build house. At first the ceilings did feel a bit too low, but it soon wore off and we're reaping the benefits now in having much less volume of air that we need to heat.
 
2 adults 2 children in a 3 bed new build house
Gas cost September = £31
Gas cost November = £172

We've been using the central heating a lot less than we usually would this time of year too.
 
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