Reply to: DOOM: energy cap again

[d000hg]

As always it will be the middle-income earners who foot the bill.

My council tax rebate went to the local food-bank, where did you send yours - assuming you got one?

What kind of contractor has a house in band D or below, are you slumming it?

[vetran]

As always it will be the middle-income earners who foot the bill.

My council tax rebate went to the local food-bank, where did you send yours - assuming you got one?

INKSPE - contractors living in a house in band D and below! Even us permies are Band E.

I have no issue with subsidising the truly poor , but I would make landlords do it as well as a cost of business.

[SueEllen]

As always it will be the middle-income earners who foot the bill.

My council tax rebate went to the local food-bank, where did you send yours - assuming you got one?

You just reminded me that some councils - depends on the individual council - are giving them out to more households than those in just A-D.

[Zigenare]

and that is what the government need to do , intervene . £1000 is peanuts compared to the damage fuel poverty will do.

As always it will be the middle-income earners who foot the bill.

My council tax rebate went to the local food-bank, where did you send yours - assuming you got one?

[vetran]

Still doesn't help those on low incomes who just had their bills go up by £2000. It's fine to say it can be done for £1000 but if you don't have £1000 lying around spare because you need all your spare cash for higher bills it doesn't help. It's Vime's Boots all over again. Unless you have money, it's really, really hard to save money. The poorer you are the greater the relative expense of things and the harder it is to make the "right" choice. Like insulate your home.

Either Government needs to act to bring down utilities costs or it needs to increase support for those who need it. Neither of which fits with their political beliefs.

and that is what the government need to do , intervene . £1000 is peanuts compared to the damage fuel poverty will do.

[mattster]

My monthly used to be £200 and is now £550. Will soon be £1,000 according to latest estimates.

Bonkers isn't it. I'm still not convinced the government has any real idea of what is coming down the track - there must be literally millions of families a couple of grand per year from going under, and this be the last straw for many. At the very least you'd think a severe downturn in any remotely discretionary spending is on the way.

Has anyone seen a decent forensic analysis of where these price rises are coming from? I'd love to see the wholesale/retail price break downs, and what exactly is driving the prices up. Can it be pure demand, or is there an element of speculation in the markets? What is the justification for solar/wind electricity price rises, or the doubling of the standing charges? And where is all the money going? Somebody somewhere is making £40bn+ a year extra out of us.

[ChimpMaster]

Is it unusual? I don't know really. We both work from home and I never switch my PCs off. Other than that, we have two young kids and it seems like 2-3x washing machine cycles a day, but rarely tumble dry (more so in winter of course). All LEDs, and some electric underfloor heating in one bathroom, electric oven, kettle, microwave, 2 TVs, very occasional use of electric radiator in garden office. I have got the sense from talking to others that we are in the normal ballpark. This total reflected at, from memory, 28p per kwh and about £250 a year standing charge so puts us about 8400kwh per year.

You seem to use an awful lot of gas? We totalled 21k kwh last year - gas combi boiler, 4 bed house.

We use around 10,000 Kwh electric each year. Same reasons as you mostly. The 'smart' meter shows what uses the most power: washing/drying/dishwasher machines, oven, TVs.

Gas is around 38,000KwH due to large areas of underfloor heating in an open plan house... and a very cold wife.

My monthly used to be £200 and is now £550. Will soon be £1,000 according to latest estimates.

BTW we've just received a letter through the door from a company called Solar Together who are trying to garner interest for a community solar power initiate i.e. buying in bulk. I'll sign up and see where that takes me.

[DaveB]

no but will meet up with him for a glass of Bolly next lockdown.

Yep it costs money £1k for a house.

https://www.mybuilder.com/pricing-gu...sulation-costs

saving £480 a year.

when I had it done at the last house it took 2 guys about 3 hours so the price would go down if it was ramped up.

Still doesn't help those on low incomes who just had their bills go up by £2000. It's fine to say it can be done for £1000 but if you don't have £1000 lying around spare because you need all your spare cash for higher bills it doesn't help. It's Vime's Boots all over again. Unless you have money, it's really, really hard to save money. The poorer you are the greater the relative expense of things and the harder it is to make the "right" choice. Like insulate your home.

Either Government needs to act to bring down utilities costs or it needs to increase support for those who need it. Neither of which fits with their political beliefs.

[mattster]

Yeah. I think the fundamental problem is that the payback time on serious insulation works is so long that most people, perfectly rationally, decide it is not worth it. For us, maybe at most £800 a year on heating saved if we undertook external wall insulation and a warm roof - which for us would entail a new roof (which we do need, tbh). So £30-40k, and a 50 year payback and - maybe - some value added on to the house. Not to mention the disruption, dealing with builders etc. Without some sort of significant government intervention I don't see it happening on a large scale.

[eek]

The other thing is that our main social area is the coldest part of the house - north side, solid concrete floor, etc. We should probably redecorate another reception room and move into that!

That was my plan but Mrs Eek vetoed it.

New plan is to wait to Youfibre connect up the street (won't be long as they were doing the phase 1 installation work this week) and when that's installed (to the office or garage) gut the front room (including the floor) and insulate it.

Edit my other discovers have been:-

1) intel cpu's are way more energy efficient than AMD at idle so by switching to an i9 from a ryzen 3900x I reduce the home server's power requirements by 40w or a 1kwh a day.
2) The condenser tumble dryer has been replaced by a heat pump version. That should save £100 or so a year given that electricity is now 28p per kwh rather than the 8p it was when we got the thing (estimate based on quoted energy usage rather than real life as it only arrived this morning).

[d000hg]

We initially thought replacing some windows was an obvious one but it turns out with solid brick walls, not so much - especially if you don't want PVC (fortunately we are not listed). The thermal efficiency of a solid double-brick wall is basically the same as a double glazed window pane so by replacing the windows, all we're doing is making them as thermally efficient as our walls! And there are also issues with removing all the draughts causing knock-on problems with condensation and so on.

In reality we will simply insulate each room as we re-decorate but if these energy prices are here to stay, we might want to push on with this a bit faster.
The other thing is that our main social area is the coldest part of the house - north side, solid concrete floor, etc. We should probably redecorate another reception room and move into that!

[mattster]

That's right, the previous owners were burning over 70kWh of gas every year.

Wow - OK! My Dad is in a similar position. Although not detatched, it is Victorian with single glazed (and super draughty) windows throughout. Luckily he is on a good pension.

With only two of you, and perhaps not in all day every day (at least one of us is), then the electric probably makes sense. What it does drive home is that everyone's situation is likely to be different, so well worth digging into those numbers and finding out what you really use. For you, insulation/double glazing probably makes more sense but unfortunately once the easy stuff is done it does get rather expensive.

[d000hg]

Is it unusual? I don't know really. We both work from home and I never switch my PCs off. Other than that, we have two young kids and it seems like 2-3x washing machine cycles a day, but rarely tumble dry (more so in winter of course). All LEDs, and some electric underfloor heating in one bathroom, electric oven, kettle, microwave, 2 TVs, very occasional use of electric radiator in garden office. I have got the sense from talking to others that we are in the normal ballpark. This total reflected at, from memory, 28p per kwh and about £250 a year standing charge so puts us about 8400kwh per year.

Maybe not then - it's substantially more than us but there's only 2 of us here.

You seem to use an awful lot of gas? We totalled 21k kwh last year - gas combi boiler, 4 bed house.

Gas combi boiler but it's a large detached Victorian house with solid brick walls, uninsulated floors and predominantly single glazed sash windows. I don't think it had even had central heating before the mid-90s, period house with a fireplace in every room.
And this is after we fit smart radiator valves so we can turn the heating off more easily to rooms we don't use, it was worse than that for the previous owners - when we first moved in and tried to change suppliers, they told us they couldn't put us on a normal tariff:

We’ve just discovered that your home is classified as a ‘large site’. That means it uses more than 73,200kWh of gas a year, which is the upper limit for a domestic property.

That's right, the previous owners were burning over 70kWh of gas every year.

[mattster]

Did you figure out where the demand is coming from because that does seem unusual. Do you have electric water heaters, hot tub, large aquarium, crypto mine or something unusual, even an electric fire?
I would imagine you already have LEDs since it's getting increasingly difficult to avoid them, you don't have an EV?

Our annual kWh usage for electricity and gas respectively is about 5800 and 47000 (meter reading change * 11.2) so you can imagine how screwed we are about to be

Is it unusual? I don't know really. We both work from home and I never switch my PCs off. Other than that, we have two young kids and it seems like 2-3x washing machine cycles a day, but rarely tumble dry (more so in winter of course). All LEDs, and some electric underfloor heating in one bathroom, electric oven, kettle, microwave, 2 TVs, very occasional use of electric radiator in garden office. I have got the sense from talking to others that we are in the normal ballpark. This total reflected at, from memory, 28p per kwh and about £250 a year standing charge so puts us about 8400kwh per year.

You seem to use an awful lot of gas? We totalled 21k kwh last year - gas combi boiler, 4 bed house.

[vetran]

Clearly you weren't recommending it to the right people. Don't you have Boris on speed dial?

I told you so helps no-one at this point. Action by the Govt is needed and it's going to cost money. That fundamentally is the problem, the Govt doesn't want to spend money or interfere in "the market". It goes against their fundamental dogma regardless of who suffers as a result.

no but will meet up with him for a glass of Bolly next lockdown.

Yep it costs money £1k for a house.

https://www.mybuilder.com/pricing-gu...sulation-costs

saving £480 a year.

when I had it done at the last house it took 2 guys about 3 hours so the price would go down if it was ramped up.