Electricity bills!

[lauram_92]

Assuming this is the best place in the forum for this question?

How much do you all pay a month for electric? My heating is all electric. I was estimated I would need to pay £66 a month but it went up to £80, and now reccommended I pay £197

I owe £532ish from January to April (thats after me paying £80 a month), and I had the living room, kitchen, dining room, bathroom and two hall heaters on, and LO's heater on at night. The house was never warm The heaters weren't turned up too high.. In the break down my electric was about £160+ I had spent, and heating was £640, then I was paying the £80 a month which obviously didn't cover it.. I don't know what to do

I am on benefits as a single mother, income support, child tax credit and child benefit. I have a 3 bedroom council house (that I am now paying £10.80 a week for having a spare room). The heaters are storage heaters and the bedroom ones are apparently priced at a different rate and have timers on them. Help.

Also I turned all the heaters off but the living room and kitchen, the bathroom one doesn't seem to be working so I'll get onto the council about that and I will have to put LO's on at night. I also only have a bath, so it'll cost a lot to heat up the water as the bath uses the whole tank. Also I am not going to downsize into a smaller house because if things go well with OH we would move into his house (he owns it) and I couldn't afford to do up another house for that short amount of time before moving again, so I am stuck paying the £10.80 a week.

 

[Pearls18]

I imagine with the really long winter it has just been more expensive for you, my gas bill doubled this year from last year. You should do a comparison site check to make sure you’re paying the cheapest, make sure you’re on economy 7 I would say if you’re using storage heaters and make sure your water is only heating during those 7 hours, make sure it’s not warming up too often either, I believe we managed on once a day? Over summer you should use much less lessening the amount owed, try and avoid using heating now, keep your doors shut, don’t heat up your spare bedroom, definitely get the council to check for any problems. Then I would try and increase the amount you can pay to the maximum you can afford to try and pay off some of the back log. I hope this has been of some help? I think they are recommending £197 to clear through some of the backlog, not because they think you use that much a month?

 

[hulahoop09]

We have storage heaters also and are on a prepayment meter as years back we got a HUGE bill even.though jist me and hubby and we worked full time. We have stopped putting.the storage heaters on.as even on economy.7 tariff they use too much electricity and dont heat our house up! We only use wm1 in the bedroom at a push. Also out hot water only goes on every 2-3 nights as tgat again ises too much electric. We worked out one night that on for a few hours on lowish setting our geaters used approx £4 then add say £2 for general use on top (cooking, hot water etc) it works out about 180 a month which is shocking! We only budget 80pm. From 23rd april to yesterday we have only used 36 electric as we had some good weather and was able to get washing on line etc. Through simmer we plan on putting our full budget on and saving it for winter. This is why I cant trust electric cimpanies anynore and refuse to go into a bill, prepayment can be a tiny bit more expensive on unit costs but I can keep track on what we are using.

Xx