British Gas

[gman150]

I live with my wife in a 3 storey rented house and I have just had my British Gas bill through. It says I have used 509 metric units of gas since 2nd October 2008 and I was wondering if this sort of figure is realistic or am I using too much gas.

I am just trying to find ways of cutting the cost of living and would appreciate if you could compare your own bills and tell me if I should really be using a lot less gas.

The house is more or less constantly cold unless the heating is on. Maybe hot water bottles are the way forward!!

Cheers

[themas]

I'm not sure what metric units are. The bill should convert them into KwH. Can you quote that figure?

Have you just moved into the house? If so, are you sure the opening meter reading is correct?

Some meters read in cubic feet (most of them) but some read in cubic metres. I've known cases where the gas supplier has the type of meter wrongly noted in their records. If they think its reading cu. ft. but it's reading cu. m. then the bill would be far higher than it should be.

[gman150]

The converted figure on my bill is 5705 Kwh.

[themas]

As it's a 3 storey house I assume it's quite big - say 4 or 5 bedrooms. The figure doesn't look all that unreasonable to me. My house is 2 storey, 4 bed and the figure is around 4750 Kwh.

You could look into possibility of insulating (particularly the loft) and if the boiler is pretty old it's probably inefficient compared with a new one. However, as you are renting you are not going to want to pay the costs for any such improvements, & it may be that the landlord wouldn't agree to pay for it either.

[gman150]

We are unable to do any form of modification as it is a rented property. The house is 3 bedroom and based on your figure I suppose it is prety realistic. I work shifts aswell and find I am at home during the day quite a lot so the heating my be on then from time to time. Thanks for answering Themas.