Average gas bill in Trim (Knightsbrook) this winter

pazza

Hi, we had a problem getting our gas bill, but having got it yesterday (bill from mid-September to mid-December), its working out at an average of about €225 a month. I was just wondering if anyone could offer any comparison for gas prices/bills average for October/November/December for similar house spec.

The house is a 5 bed-room house (Knightsbrook), with underfloor heating on ground floor. We only have the heating on in 2 rooms downstairs and 2 rooms upstairs...hence my surprise as to the size of the bill (i.e. not using gas for cooking, or fire). Water is also warmed off gas...

any help would be great, this is a new house (supposedly enery efficent).

Regards,

P

pauldaly1888

if there is a little 'e' beside the meter reading it is only an estimated reading. if you have given them the reading from your meter and still paying that amount its very expensive. ive a large 3bed in ashbourne and the bill would be just under 200 for every 2months(winter time- much cheaper in summer). the heat would be on for an average 2-3 hours per day and used for some cooking.

pazza

pauldaly1888 wrote: »

if there is a little 'e' beside the meter reading it is only an estimated reading. if you have given them the reading from your meter and still paying that amount its very expensive. ive a large 3bed in ashbourne and the bill would be just under 200 for every 2months(winter time- much cheaper in summer). the heat would be on for an average 2-3 hours per day and used for some cooking.

Hey pauldaly1888- thanks, but unfortunately this is not an estimate - an not used for cooking....and working out at €450 for mid-Oct to mid-Dec (i.e 2 months)....

jazoo

have 4 bedroom house ratoath bill for nov/dec 469 thats the most it has ever been we cook and dry our clothes with gas,our house is three years old it doesnt seem like its very economic to me.i think prices are joke

pauldaly1888

they are crazy prices. how long do you have gas on for per day?did you try turning off the radiators that you dont need on and turning down the thermostat. mine is usually at between 15 and 20 degrees

pazza

well you see there's the thing, the builders say that the underfloor heating is energy efficient because its always on, as with all the water - so its not a system that comes on for 4 hours a day or the like. The water and heating all work off thermostats. But it only calls for 'gas' when it needs...e.g. I have the kitchen thermostat at 20degrees, but the kitchen is usually at around 22 so doesn;t have to call for heat...thats my concern, that most of the stats were off, and somehow I ended up with this huge bill, and wasn;t cooking etc... I am meeting the builders tomorrow to discuss, I think there was something wrong here....

Access

pazza wrote: »

Hi, we had a problem getting our gas bill, but having got it yesterday (bill from mid-September to mid-December), its working out at an average of about €225 a month. I was just wondering if anyone could offer any comparison for gas prices/bills average for October/November/December for similar house spec.

The house is a 5 bed-room house (Knightsbrook), with underfloor heating on ground floor. We only have the heating on in 2 rooms downstairs and 2 rooms upstairs...hence my surprise as to the size of the bill (i.e. not using gas for cooking, or fire). Water is also warmed off gas...

any help would be great, this is a new house (supposedly enery efficent).

Regards,

P

A work mate of mine lives in around you there in trim and he was saying that his last bill was €490 total... (4 bed semi with 3 kids - house always roasting!)

(i know this as he thought that this was large and was asking what oil was costing me for the same period for my place.)

You'd want to be checking your usage out... Your bill seems high.

pazza

Looking at the bill, the units used was just over 7,100 for the 2 month period, this would seem to me to be high, but nothing to compare with.

gasstuff

Hi,
Just received our gas bill today its for the period 28 Oct 08 to 06 Jan 09 and its a whopping €621.09. :mad::eek: Crazy I thought gas prices were coming down. Its not estimated either. Anyone else with similar crazy bills. Kildare area.

Moanin

gasstuff wrote: »

Hi,
Just received our gas bill today its for the period 28 Oct 08 to 06 Jan 09 and its a whopping €621.09. :mad::eek: Crazy I thought gas prices were coming down. Its not estimated either. Anyone else with similar crazy bills. Kildare area.

Got a similar one €625 in Navan! nearly sh1t myself when I saw it!

Dictator

the same thing happened to us in maynooth last year our bill was 3 x our usual bill. This was down to the estimates been way off in the previous 3 bills then they read the meter for christmas and our bill was crazy

Furp

I live in Navan and just got a €280 bill which is the highest its ever been now we live in a semi that has been vacant for 6 months so there is some heat transfer going on there.

Also with the weather being much colder then normal over the past few months particularly with the sub zero night temperatures we have been running the heating constantly mos days we also use gas for cooking.

I would think that with a fully automated system that the the reason for high gas bill is just due to the weather we have at the moment. and the ridiculous price of gas.

Scottie99

We've had a bill for the last 78 days of 475 and our neighbour is 499.

P.s Homebase is are doing 50% price reduction on loft insulation insulation. For our house 4 detached will cost about €280 - 1500sq ish

francis55

I have a four bedroomed detached house in Dublin (approx 2000 sq ft). It has underfloor heating downstairs and rads upstairs. Our heating bills seem to be very high ( current one is 660 euro for Nov-Dec). We have 4 zones downstairs and each thermostat is set to 17 degrees. We use gas for cooking too. We have the underfloor heating on for 17 hrs/day. I have found it very difficut to get information about the most efficient way to use the underfloor heating and am disappointed at the high bills and wondered how you are getting on?
We use the gas to heat the hot water but that is only on for an 1.5 hrs /day and bedrooms are heated for about 2 hours/day.

florida addict

God i feel better now!!

nearly had a hart attack when my bill for €370 arrived but reading this made it less painful.

price has gone crazy though

pazza

francis55 wrote: »

I have a four bedroomed detached house in Dublin (approx 2000 sq ft). It has underfloor heating downstairs and rads upstairs. Our heating bills seem to be very high ( current one is 660 euro for Nov-Dec). We have 4 zones downstairs and each thermostat is set to 17 degrees. We use gas for cooking too. We have the underfloor heating on for 17 hrs/day. I have found it very difficut to get information about the most efficient way to use the underfloor heating and am disappointed at the high bills and wondered how you are getting on?
We use the gas to heat the hot water but that is only on for an 1.5 hrs /day and bedrooms are heated for about 2 hours/day.

Depends who I've talked to as to what caused the bill to appear so high.
1. Bord Gas (granted it was only their call-centre that I rang to see if my bill appeared high to them) - they reckoned it was the underfloor heating that is always on that caused the bill to be so high, no account for efficiency of burn etc.
2. Builders - one of them reckoned that it was due to the cold winter
3. The plumbers who installed the heating reckoned it was due the cold winter and the air vents (they are the always-open ones, which I have since replaced with ones that can be closed, plumber reckons to block it up altogether).

So as you can see no consensus on what it is, I really don;t know where to turn to try and understand this one. If it was because of the cold winter fair enough, but something tells me that there is something not quiet right here...there is somethng wrong with the way we are burnning the gas or something else....??? The investigation continues....

cdb

Heard from friends of a friend that Bord Gais made changes to their billing system software recently. No idea how true it is but check the bill closely, especially the no. of units used (times the cost of each unit) against previous bills. If it is a billing error it should be fairly obvious. Dreading our next bill as the heating has been on 24/7 with the new arrival...

com1

Do you have a number of bills? If so have a look back over them, check for consistancy and see are there any estimated ones - this can cause a huge descrepancy (it works both ways - my last bill was a credit :-)).

Another possibility may be that you have a gas leak - if you get teh opportunity, switch off all gas appliances for a period of time (do not switch off the mains supply though) and check if the meter is still incrementing. If it is, either you missed something or there is some sort of leak in the system I would be calling in Bord Gais in this case.

Otherwise the installations are not as efficent as you were led to believe...

Traditional

All gas bills have gone up , but we got manual zone valves fitted and our bill was half for similar months and at a reasonable cost , 2 levers control it easy , you should turn off all unwanted rads as you can count them as kettles boiling all the time and we know how much electricty they use . any plumbing questions i will be happy to answer .

Traditional

get a few rads fitted and forget the underfloor heating , a complete and load of rubbish unless its fitted to a timber house , u will have endless trouble with it over the next few years .

pazza

Traditional wrote: »

get a few rads fitted and forget the underfloor heating , a complete and load of rubbish unless its fitted to a timber house , u will have endless trouble with it over the next few years .

Hey Trad - house is a timber frame...so here's hoping time will tell. Also, we have been told that the bathroom rads are always on...i.e. the options are to completly turn them off, or leave them on all the time...and when I say on, they are always piping hot...there is no option for a timer or a stat to control when to switch on/off...the more I think about it the more dubious I am...

mythnoot

We have a similar problem, our gas usage has apparently doubled in the last 2 months, without us having changed anything (ie heating on for the same number of hours each day. As a result we now have a E650 bill and no idead how to challenge this as apparently the meter reading is corect.

Any ideas?

I'm glad I'm not the only one with an insanely large gas bill!

The second last one was around twice what we normally pay, and the last one, which we only got a few days ago, is about three and a half times what we normally pay.

I live reasonably close to Trim

I appreciate that the weather hasn't been great lately, but my gas consumption DID NOT triple in the cold weather, or anything like it.

I'll definitely be looking into this.

mythnoot

But how can we prove the meter reading has to be wrong. They will just say look at the reader...

...and what's even more baffling is that without anything having changed the rate of usage since the last reading has more than halved...this is just weird, something strange is definitely goin on

pazza

Thats the problem, I rang Bord Gas and they said that the meter reading is correct, they said that my usage must be high. I contacted the builders/plumbers who said that there is a very small chance that it could be a leak on the line, althought they said that was recently (6 months) tested - the plumber also reckoned that the heating is up because of the vents we have (put in by the builder), we changed these to allow to close them...so I await the next bill with trepadation.

I suppose the big question is where can you go to challange/test/prove this. I was asking Bord Gas how to get someone in to test the efficiency etc. of my use (they don;t do this as a service and can't recommend anyone... Greens where are u now...)....Stuck!!!!