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Gas and Electricity Prices

clivem2 said:
Similar situation here. We're currently paying dual fuel £2.5k but our fix ends 1st Dec. A new fix comes in at £6k or £4k for Standard Variable. Standard Variable with price cap it is then....
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Holy smoke! It wasn’t that long ago when that would have been typical annual mortgage payments! With council tax, food and fuel increases etc, life is getting very, very expensive. Based on Sunak’s speech yesterday, the forthcoming budget could throw some nasty surprises as well.
 
Ponty said:
Holy smoke! It wasn’t that long ago when that would have been typical annual mortgage payments! With council tax, food and fuel increases etc, life is getting very, very expensive. Based on Sunak’s speech yesterday, the forthcoming budget could throw some nasty surprises as well.
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Our Retriever is going to be very useful this winter, he can keep us warm.
 
The government doesn’t need a propaganda dept the Beeb seem to be doing wonders in that department for them. Maybe it the worry of losing the tv license.
 
Ponty said:
Holy smoke! It wasn’t that long ago when that would have been typical annual mortgage payments! With council tax, food and fuel increases etc, life is getting very, very expensive. Based on Sunak’s speech yesterday, the forthcoming budget could throw some nasty surprises as well.
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Well in the '80s I was living well out of London in one of its remote suburbs SW20. I had a 3 bed terrace with a 40-50% mortgage. The interest rate around that time was about 8% and I was paying around £400 pm. It did at one time go up to 16% for a short time!!! According to an inflation checker that £400pm equates to around £25K pa today! A fuel bill of £2.5K today is very high and equates to around £40pm in 1980 a huge amount at that time. My annual bill for a 5 bed detached house over 3 floors is expected to be around £1200-1300 at the old fuel prices (I am fixed until end of July 2022) Its the lecky thats expensive at around 5 times the price of gas. However I do live in the SE and not in the Scottish highlands so have much milder Winters.

Cheers,

DV
 
clivem2 said:
Similar situation here. We're currently paying dual fuel £2.5k but our fix ends 1st Dec. A new fix comes in at £6k or £4k for Standard Variable. Standard Variable with price cap it is then....
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&
ToTo Man said:
Our 1Yr fix finishes at the end of January, but out of curiosity I went onto our provider's website last week to see how much a new 1Yr fix would be. Our annual bill would jump from £2.9k/yr to £6.8k/yr! :eek: Once February comes I think we'll take our chances with the standard Price Cap tariff...
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At those kind of costs what would be the payback time for something like a ground source heat pump? I’m curious because I am attracted to getting a period home at some point but do worry about energy costs/livability.
 
Damn. And I suppose depending on the property you might be stuck with single pane windows, or not be able to insulate.
 
mansr said:
How do you figure?
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All I see are bad experiences and people having them ripped out for a conventional boiler. They may work in some parts of the world with properties designed for them but for the UK housing stock they're crap.
 
dan m said:
Damn. And I suppose depending on the property you might be stuck with single pane windows, or not be able to insulate.
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We replaced all the windows with double-glazing before moving in so can't compare heat-loss performance to the old single-pane sash windows, but the double-glazing didn't cut down external noise pollution as much I expected it too. Our double-glazing is now almost 20yrs old though so I expect technology has since moved on...
 
dan m said:
Damn. And I suppose depending on the property you might be stuck with single pane windows, or not be able to insulate.
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Much like internal combustion engine cars, we've just about got gas boiler efficiency perfected -or as good as it is likely to be- and now we're going to scrap it all off. Seems daft.
 
Still burning stuff though. Solar panels and something like a myenergi eddi for hot water diversion of excess energy makes even more sense now.
 
My sister has a heat pump, thermal store, solar panels and rain water harvesting. There is always something not working properly and uses loads of electricity. She says if it was down to her she’d rip the whole lot out and put in a combi boiler!
 
matt j said:
All I see are bad experiences and people having them ripped out for a conventional boiler. They may work in some parts of the world with properties designed for them but for the UK housing stock they're crap.
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I don't see what the construction of the house has to do with anything. Better insulation obviously helps regardless of the heat source. A heat pump typically provides 2-4x more heat than the electricity put in. It's always going to be cheaper to run than a plain electric boiler. With historical prices, gas is probably cheaper still, though we're yet to see where things will settle after the ongoing shake-up. Whatever the prices end up being, a heat pump remains a good option where gas unavailable or undesirable (nobody likes explosions). You made it sound like heat pumps are worse than regular electric.
 
Friend of ours who has more money than sense has had air sourced heat pumps installed at her Cornwall cottage and her Italian villa.
Neither work properly, keep breaking down, and when they do don’t provide enough heat to keep warm in winter.
 
mansr said:
I don't see what the construction of the house has to do with anything. Better insulation obviously helps regardless of the heat source. A heat pump typically provides 2-4x more heat than the electricity put in. It's always going to be cheaper to run than a plain electric boiler. With historical prices, gas is probably cheaper still, though we're yet to see where things will settle after the ongoing shake-up. Whatever the prices end up being, a heat pump remains a good option where gas unavailable or undesirable (nobody likes explosions). You made it sound like heat pumps are worse than regular electric.
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Regular electric what? The majority of UK houses will have a gas boiler of some description, compared with the cost of installation and efficiency of a brand new gas boiler heat pumps are a joke.
 
gingermrkettle said:
Still burning stuff though. Solar panels and something like a myenergi eddi for hot water diversion of excess energy makes even more sense now.
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Until all this renewable stuff can compete on cost, reliability and ease of installation then it's all just cloud cuckoo land.
 
I’m not seeing why a heat pump or solar panel should be any less reliable than a combi boiler. The technology has been around for years.

We have a very efficient gas boiler, but to be efficient it is run continuously at a much lower temperature. This means you need a lot more radiators and/or in floor hydronic heat. I believe this is the case for heat pumps, so dropping one into a system made for older style boilers is never going to give you the same amount of heat.
 
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