Outrageous Electricity Bill for 1 bed apt

Fooster King

I have a tenant who just got an electricity bill for 2 months for @ €430. He says he has the heating on for half an hour per day @ 2 hours on Sat & Sun. It's a modern, insulated 1 bed apt with 3 electric rads. (Previous tenant had bills of €100-120 per month but used the heating for 2-3 hrs per day). Would be interested to know what other people in 1 or 2 bed apts. pay for electricity?
Also, anyone any ideas on how this could happen or is there some way to find out what could be causing it?

RATM

wow €420 for a one bed is insane.

Firstly send them to bonkers.ie and see if changing provider would save them money. It will only be 10-12% but these days you should be changing provider every 12 moths in order to get the best deal.

Even then though there is still a problem. I don't know a ton about these things but is it possible the boiler is constantly heating water ? Maybe the timer broke or something along those lines.

The other possibility (though unlikely) is someone rigged up their electricity supply to the tenants. Like I said unlikely but if someone in the block is growing marijuana then it becomes a lot more likely. A friend who is a sparks in London has come across this a couple of times in the last few years.

Either was at €420 there is defintely a problem.

blops2013

Fooster King wrote: »

I have a tenant who just got an electricity bill for 2 months for @ €430. He says he has the heating on for half an hour per day @ 2 hours on Sat & Sun. It's a modern, insulated 1 bed apt with 3 electric rads. (Previous tenant had bills of €100-120 per month but used the heating for 2-3 hrs per day). Would be interested to know what other people in 1 or 2 bed apts. pay for electricity?
Also, anyone any ideas on how this could happen or is there some way to find out what could be causing it?

Jesus id hate you to be my landlord. What business is it of yours about how much eletric they are using. Dont you know its not illegal to use alot of eletric. The tennants could have a large fish tank with 1200W water heater constantly on to keep the temp right for tropical fish and dont you know its winter time and i dont have to remind you what happens in winter do i now, yes it gets really cold and we need to heat the place. Now wind your kneck in and leave your tennants alone to live a nice life without anyone intevering into it. It might be your property but its theyre home.

meercat

blops2013 wrote: »

Jesus id hate you to be my landlord. What business is it of yours about how much eletric they are using. Dont you know its not illegal to use alot of eletric. The tennants could have a large fish tank with 1200W water heater constantly on to keep the temp right for tropical fish and dont you know its winter time and i dont have to remind you what happens in winter do i now, yes it gets really cold and we need to heat the place. Now wind your kneck in and leave your tennants alone to live a nice life without anyone intevering into it. It might be your property but its theyre home.

i think that the tenant may have complained to the landlord about the electricity bill so he is just wondering if the amount is reasonable

Doom

Immersion left on?

deelite

Is there a chance that the bill is actually in credit not debit?

meercat

1 storage heater
2.5kw
x 6 hours(night time storage)
x 10 cent (unit cost cheap rate)
x 7 days week
= €10.50 running cost per week for each storage heater

= €84 per bill per heater

if you have 2 storage heaters then thats €168 per bill for storage heaters alone

these heaters are timed by esbn so they are set and cant be changed

this price is without any panel heaters(bedroom etc)
7hrs week x 2kw x 20cent x 8 weeks =€22.40 (per heater per bill)

it also doesnt include water heating
then you have domestic use(lights power etc)
then all standing charges plus vat

this is an average cost so €420 might be right depending what the tenant used

StillWaters

Were previous bills estimated and this is a catch up bill?

How Strange

That's off the wall crazy. There's definitely something wrong somewhere. Is the tenant using the storage heaters correctly ie storing the heat at night time? Is the immersion being left on for hours? We've a 2 bed with storage heaters which are on quite a lot over the winter months. We've a tumble dryer and a dishwasher and our immersion is on for 2 hours in the morning and 2 in the evening and our worst bill (jan 2011 after the big snow when we were at home for a over a week) was €400.

Usually it's about €250-300 in the peak of winter.

keith16

Could include the deposit....

Fooster King

Tks Meercat - Yes, the tenant has complained (understandably)

Will check out all the other suggestions. They're not storage heaters - they're just "standard" electric rads (I have actually replaced the storage heaters as they're not really practical for places where people are not there during the day).

Are there companies who specialise in investigating this kind of thing or should a electrician be able to do this?

The_Conductor

You can buy plug-in devices that go between the plug and the socket which meter individual devices. 420 is a lot for a 2 bill period- but- it does include the coldest months of the winter- so while it is high, its not unbelievably high. I'm not saying the tenant is lying about how long the heaters are on for- but to be perfectly honest with you- the small amount of usage that they are claiming, does not tally with normal winter usage- I use my heating sparingly- and I have a new'ish apartment, but its still on 3-4 hours a day (first thing in the morning before we get up, and in the evening just before we get home)- and I supplement this usage with separate electric rads for the children's room overnight, to make sure they're snug and warm.

If the place has a marvellous BER rating- perhaps their claimed low usage could be justified, however, it is wintertime, so it just doesn't add up for me.

My main heating is gas, which I supplement with overnight electricity rads. My last 2 month bill was 380 for gas and 140 for electricity. During the summer this goes down to nil (other than the connection charge) for gas, and about 120-140 for electricity.

The tenants usage claims for heating- does not tally with the simple fact that its the middle of winter. Everyone's bills are a multiple of times higher in the winter.

Nonoperational

blops2013 wrote: »

Jesus id hate you to be my landlord. What business is it of yours about how much eletric they are using. Dont you know its not illegal to use alot of eletric. The tennants could have a large fish tank with 1200W water heater constantly on to keep the temp right for tropical fish and dont you know its winter time and i dont have to remind you what happens in winter do i now, yes it gets really cold and we need to heat the place. Now wind your kneck in and leave your tennants alone to live a nice life without anyone intevering into it. It might be your property but its theyre home.

Words fail me.

meercat

Fooster King wrote: »

Are there companies who specialise in investigating this kind of thing or should a electrician be able to do this?

Any registered electrical contractor should be able to check this for you

If the tenant is using each heater for 7 hours per week as he says then this bill for heating is too high

Was your previous bill an estimated one

StillWaters

As a LL I would ask to see this bill and the previous one just to make sure previous ones weren't estimated, and there isn't a deposit on it as some one else suggested before I paid an electrician to check it out.

twinsen

My friend got a bill recently for a about 450e, where he usually pays no more than 200. As it turned out, cooker was somehow using all electricity.

They've unplugged everything they had at home, but that didn't stop meter. At last they disconnected cooker, and then is stopped. So there might be something in the apartment that's using all this energy somehow.

westies4ever

blops2013 wrote: »

Jesus id hate you to be my landlord. What business is it of yours about how much eletric they are using. Dont you know its not illegal to use alot of eletric. The tennants could have a large fish tank with 1200W water heater constantly on to keep the temp right for tropical fish and dont you know its winter time and i dont have to remind you what happens in winter do i now, yes it gets really cold and we need to heat the place. Now wind your kneck in and leave your tennants alone to live a nice life without anyone intevering into it. It might be your property but its theyre home.

does someone need a hug?

grinder23

If it's a new tenant who just put there name onto the ESB account it could be a 300 deposit and the rest would be the actual bill amount

sarahw520

smccarrick wrote: »

You can buy plug-in devices that go between the plug and the socket which meter individual devices. 420 is a lot for a 2 bill period- but- it does include the coldest months of the winter- so while it is high, its not unbelievably high. I'm not saying the tenant is lying about how long the heaters are on for- but to be perfectly honest with you- the small amount of usage that they are claiming, does not tally with normal winter usage- I use my heating sparingly- and I have a new'ish apartment, but its still on 3-4 hours a day (first thing in the morning before we get up, and in the evening just before we get home)- and I supplement this usage with separate electric rads for the children's room overnight, to make sure they're snug and warm.

If the place has a marvellous BER rating- perhaps their claimed low usage could be justified, however, it is wintertime, so it just doesn't add up for me.

My main heating is gas, which I supplement with overnight electricity rads. My last 2 month bill was 380 for gas and 140 for electricity. During the summer this goes down to nil (other than the connection charge) for gas, and about 120-140 for electricity.

The tenants usage claims for heating- does not tally with the simple fact that its the middle of winter. Everyone's bills are a multiple of times higher in the winter.

Hi I work in a letting agency based in carlow, we've had loads of problems with high esb reads lately, check the latest read, if its estimated or read by the network, go and take ur own read, take a picture of the meter clearly showing the read & serial number of the meter, submit this to the electricity company, Iv found that the reads taken by networks have been WAY off lately so take ur own with a picture and email it in, the other prob might be that it's estimated, these are all high at the minute

who_ru

i live in a 1 bed apt with 1 storage heater and a plug in electric heater for the bedroom.

i have the immersion on for approx 45mins a day.

electric shower maybe 10mins a day.

also have the dual tariff meter.

in winter the storage heater is always on.

my average bill for 2months in winter time is usually between 130-140 euro and approx 80 euro for 2 months in summer.

plus if your feeling the cold and want to spare the heating i can recommend a heated throw. very handy. see link.

http://tinyurl.com/bqgg52f

The_Conductor

sarahw520 wrote: »

Hi I work in a letting agency based in carlow, we've had loads of problems with high esb reads lately, check the latest read, if its estimated or read by the network, go and take ur own read, take a picture of the meter clearly showing the read & serial number of the meter, submit this to the electricity company, Iv found that the reads taken by networks have been WAY off lately so take ur own with a picture and email it in, the other prob might be that it's estimated, these are all high at the minute

Done- thankyou for the suggetion. My previous bill was an underestimated read for gas- electricity was only slightly out.
So no change in what I currently owe. The unit price for gas seems to have shot up over the past few months.
Think its time for me to change from Bord Gais again......

Fooster King

Thanks everyone - plenty of food for thought Will follow up on some of them and hopefully get to the bottom of this:)

djimi

Have you verified with the tenant what else they are running that might be using a lot of electricity. Ive heard of people using the washer and dryer 7 days a week and then wondering why their electric bill was so high...!

The first thing I would do would be to get the tenant to keep a journal of all the electricity they use for a week; every time they flick a switch, turn on a light, start an appliance etc and then go through it with them and see if you can see anything that might be causing a high bill.

MMAGirl

Just tell the tenant to complain to the ESB. They will come out and check it for them. Nothing to do with you.