Heating costs per year

[mrcharly-YHT]

MrsC was doing some budgeting before getting the oil tank refilled, and was surprised to see how much we are spending on heating oil.

£1200 per year

I'd assumed it to be much higher.

We do keep the house quite cool compared to many people (17.5 is the max temperature). In evenings in winter we sit in living room, which has a solid fuel stove for supplemental heating.

[toontra]

Since getting a smart meter it's been pretty sobering viewing during the current cold snap.  £5 for gas heating per day set at 16c.  The heady days of 17-18c are a thing of the past!

[De Sisti]

I currently pay £95 per month with Octopus for gas and electricity on a two-bedroom terraced
house. I generally build up a large credit surplus in the summer (I cashed in £300 of it Aug 2023)
and use the rest during the winter months. It is currently at £190, but probably will be used up by
the end of March.

[Kim]

Currently something like £1050/year for gas (It went up a lot when our fixed tariff came to an end).  I don't have a way of separating space heating from hot water, but eyeballing the graph for the last year suggests it's something like a 4:1 ratio (assuming we use the same amount of hot water all year round, which isn't going to be true as we wash more in warm weather).

Some amount of resistive electric heating (I only have rolling averages) which varies at the whims of weather and illness (we used a fan heater extensively when barkata was stuck downstairs after her hip surgery, so recent figures would be atypical).  I don't have a good figure for the boiler's electricity consumption, which seems significantly higher with this newer model, on account of it spending much more time pumping tepid water around in order to do load compensation.

Plus the room we spend most of our time in during the day is heated to the order of a few hundred watts by computers.

This is in an ISO standard Victorian terrace, with landlord-quality insulation.  We keep things somewhere in the 19-22C range, depending on what we're doing, because we're not masochists and I value my lungs.


We rarely have visitors, but have people who do found that ventilating for covid reasons has lead to a significant increase in heating use?  On the odd day we have had to have windows open for prolonged periods in winter, it's roughly doubled our gas consumption.

[HTFB]

Currently something like £1050/year for gas (It went up a lot when our fixed tariff came to an end).  I don't have a way of separating space heating from hot water, but eyeballing the graph for the last year suggests it's something like a 4:1 ratio (assuming we use the same amount of hot water all year round, which isn't going to be true as we wash more in warm weather).

Ah, but in summer the water is warmer before you heat it, so each litre uses less gas. Annoyingly my access to my former team's folders has just today been revoked -- maybe they noticed me pinching their slides for a talk -- so I can't offhand tell you which effect predominates nationally.

[rogerzilla]

MrsC was doing some budgeting before getting the oil tank refilled, and was surprised to see how much we are spending on heating oil.

£1200 per year

I'd assumed it to be much higher.

We do keep the house quite cool compared to many people (17.5 is the max temperature). In evenings in winter we sit in living room, which has a solid fuel stove for supplemental heating.

Are you including the cost of the solid fuel, if any?  I spend £1,140 on gas and electric (gas is probably £600 of that) but around £600 on wood.

[rogerzilla]

Since getting a smart meter it's been pretty sobering viewing during the current cold snap.  £5 for gas heating per day set at 16c.  The heady days of 17-18c are a thing of the past!

I keep the living room at 21^oC, which is recommended if you're over 40.  Other rooms are cooler, but rooms you sit around in need to be warm enough to reduce stroke risk.  In t'olden days the sitting room had the fire and no-one sat around anywhere else.

[mrcharly-YHT]

MrsC was doing some budgeting before getting the oil tank refilled, and was surprised to see how much we are spending on heating oil.

£1200 per year

I'd assumed it to be much higher.

We do keep the house quite cool compared to many people (17.5 is the max temperature). In evenings in winter we sit in living room, which has a solid fuel stove for supplemental heating.

Are you including the cost of the solid fuel, if any?  I spend £1,140 on gas and electric (gas is probably £600 of that) but around £600 on wood.

No cost for solid fuel, I get my own.

Our house is detached, 2 story, 5 bedrooms. Poor insulation, which I'm gradually improving.

[MikeFromLFE]

Since getting a smart meter it's been pretty sobering viewing during the current cold snap.  £5 for gas heating per day set at 16c.  The heady days of 17-18c are a thing of the past!

I keep the living room at 21^oC, which is recommended if you're over 40.  Other rooms are cooler, but rooms you sit around in need to be warm enough to reduce stroke risk.  In t'olden days the sitting room had the fire and no-one sat around anywhere else.

Thanks for the info.
We keep our living room at 21 which seems to be about right for us, or maybe a degree or so low for Mrs M who has (among other things) thyroid issues.
No appetite for hair shirts here.

[Paul H]

My fuel costs for 2023 were £760, of which I think about 70% was heating.  Just me in a small two bed flat, careful with usage but never to the point of being uncomfortable.  That's almost exactly double what it was four years ago, though cushioned by the 2022/3 refunds.

[zigzag]

in uk, heating two bedrooms and a bathroom to a comfy temp, around £900/y (this includes some hot water)
abroad, colder (baltic!!) climate, temperature indoors 21-22c year round, heating all 141m2 for £50/y (not a typo - new house, latest greatest tech)

[felstedrider]

£1,400-£1,500 per year.   About a grand of that is gas.    7 year old build, 4 bed detached.

I'm just into the third year of a three year fix so have been isolated from the recent price changes.   I was a little concerned how much the household bills might go up when this ends but wholesale markets have been drifting down for quite a while so it might not be so bad.

[Sergeant Pluck]

Currently paying Octopus around £1800 pa, gas and electric, for a 2 bed flat 

That's roughly twice what we paid before the war in Ukraine. Gas markets have long since stabilised so somewhere along the chain, producers I suspect, are making a huge profit. In true British style, we suffer in silence.

We lose a huge amount of heat via the windows. Working on it...

[mrcharly-YHT]

in uk, heating two bedrooms and a bathroom to a comfy temp, around £900/y (this includes some hot water)
abroad, colder (baltic!!) climate, temperature indoors 21-22c year round, heating all 141m2 for £50/y (not a typo - new house, latest greatest tech)

That is really impressive. Of course, all new houses in the UK are being built to such a spec <sarcasm>

[Tim Hall]

No cost for solid fuel, I get my own.

Our house is detached, 2 story, 5 bedrooms. Poor insulation, which I'm gradually improving.

What does this entail? You have a copse which you can fell, you pick up driftwood off the beach or what?

[mrcharly-YHT]

No cost for solid fuel, I get my own.

Our house is detached, 2 story, 5 bedrooms. Poor insulation, which I'm gradually improving.

What does this entail? You have a copse which you can fell, you pick up driftwood off the beach or what?

Kindling is mostly from garden trimmings (we have a lot of small trees and shrubs).
I have a peat bank, which gets 'cut' in May.

[rafletcher]

Currently paying Octopus around £1800 pa, gas and electric, for a 2 bed flat 

That's roughly twice what we paid before the war in Ukraine. Gas markets have long since stabilised so somewhere along the chain, producers I suspect, are making a huge profit. In true British style, we suffer in silence.

We lose a huge amount of heat via the windows. Working on it...

Our bill is similar, but it's a solid brick 1840's end of terrace 2 bed farm workers house, not meant to last this long. Doors and windows replaced, but a huge north facing gable end that suffers in the wind. Indoor temp 17.5-18C for 15 hours a day. As my wife's a stick thin 79yr old that's pretty good. I'm at work still so at least can go without a jumper for the bulk of the day.

[Jasmine]

My gas (LPG) is about £800 per year. Although I have a thermostat, I tend to mostly use the heating when I feel cold, which doesn't relate to the actual temperature. Most of that will be heating, as a pair of bottles will last April to October.

House is detached 2 bed, 200 years old, stone, poor insulation. I'm hoping to replace the roof this year, which should hopefully reduce some leakage.

[De Sisti]

I keep the living room at 21^oC, which is recommended if you're over 40.  Other rooms are cooler, but rooms you sit around in need to be warm enough to reduce stroke risk.  In t'olden days the sitting room had the fire and no-one sat around anywhere else.

Every day is a school day.

[Mrs Pingu]

Pingu would be sitting in his pants if we had the temperature at 21C.

I was going to ask why but looked it up. This made for interesting reading https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/research/effect-cold-weather-heart

[Mrs Pingu]

When I look at Octopus on my most recent bill they are estimating £990/yr for gas but we came off our pre-Ukraine fixed in Sept so not sure if they are calculating on some or all of that.
To confuse matters we also swapped from an electric shower to boiler supplied shower this Sept so our gas use for part of the year has increased.

[Pickled Onion]

For my house the heating costs have increased dramatically. Four bedroom old house, occupancy in 2023 three-and-a-bit adults up to five so that has skewed the recent figures. 2017-2023:

Gas (house)   £240.00   £220.00   £480.00   £641.88   £407.08   £717.99   £930.17

I spend most of the time on the boat now, which is cheaper to heat as it's a smaller space. 2023 is negative £400 on account of the government kick-back. I'm perhaps like Pingu as I'm in my shorts right now but it's 11.8 degrees and the CH has been on for an hour. It's generally 29+ with the stove lit and the windows open!

Fuel (boat)   £0.00   £0.00   £0.00   £0.00   £0.00   £272.14   -£406.00

That includes Coal (heating) gas (cooking) and diesel (heating, hw, electricity and locomotion). Most electricity is from solar.

[IanDG]

Air Source Heat Pump used 4358 kwh last year, about £1200

2024-01-12 (1) by ian, on Flickr

[TimC]

About £3500 a year (11,180KWh) for my electrically-heated 300-yo thatched 2-bed cottage. 16°C during the day, 18°C in the evening, 12°C minimum any time.

[Andy W]

Heating costs least of my concerns when it comes to household energy consumption. My 18 year old daughter apparently needs 210 litres of hot water to wash x 2 and condition her hair daily.  Like most youngsters she states shes worried about climate change, exceptions can be made for showering it seems.