Electric Boiler Help!!

[mrblue]

Hi

I've just started renting a new flat with my partner and we're having some energy problems.

The boiler that we have is as I understand it, a pretty inefficient one - a Heatrae Sadia Electromax. The landlord and their engineers have been really pretty useless with helping with any of our problems, particularly this one.

We're unfortunately stuck on a really high energy tariff as our apartment works on a sub-meter as opposed to the original energy supply, so we're trying to limit our energy usage as much as possible - turning all plugs/lights off when not in use etc. but still, our energy usage is insane. We're not turning on our central heating whatsoever because of how much energy it was using, but now we're having problems with the hot water. If we leave it switched on all day, we use at least 20kWh more than the rest of our house which is about 8-10 kWh p/d, and leaving it on just for 2-3 hours (which should be enough to heat the full tank) the tank doesn't have even enough for 2 5-minute showers and 2 persons' worth of dishes.

Is this normal? On a tariff of 17.5p, to have the hot water left on would be costing us around £150 a month in electricity, and it's mad to think that we can't have hot water whenever we need it? Even with no heating and having the hot water on for 2-3 hours, we're somehow using still around 13-14 kWh a day; which is going to work out to around £70-90 in electricity bills a month. I'm thinking (or hoping...) there has to be an issue somewhere along the line.

Any help would be appreciated thanks in advance.

 

[UNG]

Sounds like you need to get somebody in to give you a second opinion, difficult to comment on your situation with the limited info you give regarding your heating / hot water system and your location

 

[StephenRowley]

On a purely legal side of things I would be questioning the 17.5pkwh of electricity as that's quite expensive. The LL is not allowed to make profit on up selling you electricity.

13ish kWh isn't entirely unreasonable. Do you access to your meter and fuse boards?

 

[mrblue]

It is expensive I agree. Unfortunately, LL is a property management company; but the company handling the energy is a completely separate company that manages the apartment block. They decided to use e-on, which I'm aware are pretty expensive as-is. They've assured me they don't charge anything above the electricity tariff but am waiting for evidence of this. LL didn't inform me of the fact that we were on sub-meters before moving in (and therefore unable to choose our own tariff), so I'm trying to get a rent reduction to cover this.

13kWh I don't think would be entirely unreasonable if we were using the central heating, or if we had access to hot water whenever we wanted it.

Even using standard UK average; 13kWh x 0.145 = £56.55, for a household of 2 people, with limited hot water, no central heating, and being extremely vigilant with turning off lights+switches+appliances - isn't that a lot?

Yes - access to both; after extensive argument with the block manager they eventually gave us the code for the door to access our sub-meter, so I've been checking it daily to monitor our usage.

 

[James]

If you turn the hot water on with a cold tank.
185L of water will take around 2hours to heat up
During this time The heater will be using 6kw of electricity for 2 hours giving you 12kwh usage.
After the tank is hot, it will require much less electric to keep it hot.
So 1st 2 hours =12kwh
Next 2 hours, assuming you are not using the hot water is more likely to be half or 1kwh.

 

[James]

Ps the average usage in the uk is
8 to 10kwh
Plus 30 to 40kwh for heating
Per day

 

[mrblue]

On a purely legal side of things I would be questioning the 17.5pkwh of electricity as that's quite expensive. The LL is not allowed to make profit on up selling you electricity.

13ish kWh isn't entirely unreasonable. Do you access to your meter and fuse boards?

on this - if there is one LL supply on one energy contract, separated off to 18 apartments, would each apartment therefore still pay a full standing charge? Because surely the LL is only paying one standing charge to the energy supplier?

 

[mrblue]

If you turn the hot water on with a cold tank.
185L of water will take around 2hours to heat up
During this time The heater will be using 6kw of electricity for 2 hours giving you 12kwh usage.
After the tank is hot, it will require much less electric to keep it hot.
So 1st 2 hours =12kwh
Next 2 hours, assuming you are not using the hot water is more likely to be half or 1kwh.

Also, I tried leaving the hot water switch on for 24h and kept everything else the same as it normally is) and our usage for that day was 31kWh. So definitely, leaving it on was not an option.

 

[telectrix]

Ps the average usage in the uk is
8 to 10kwh
Plus 30 to 40kwh for heating
Per day

we use double that, and that's with being frugal with both heating and electric.

 

[mrblue]

we use double that, and that's with being frugal with both heating and electric.

How many in your household/size of household?

 

[UNG]

So who is responsible for checking the LL metering is reading correctly and when was it last checked.
From what you are saying something does not sound right and I am wondering if the LL meters are reading a true usage or if they have been tweaked to over read therefore allowing the LL to cream off a bit extra cash

 

[mrblue]

So who is responsible for checking the LL metering is reading correctly and when was it last checked.
From what you are saying something does not sound right and I am wondering if the LL meters are reading a true usage or if they have been tweaked to over read therefore allowing the LL to cream off a bit extra cash

Property management company serves as my landlord
Block manager handle all the electricity + bills. They'd be therefore responsible for checking the meters.

Since I have access to the room containing all the flow meters, I started taking note of a vacant apartment next door and that was still going up by about 2-3kWh p/d as well. Not sure if that's about right or not - presumably nothing should be operating at all in there as all appliances should be turned off?

 

[telectrix]

How many in your household/size of household?

just the 3 inluding m-i-l. all lights are LED. everything turned off when not in use. heating put ononly when teemp.drops below 17 C.

 

[James]

20kwh per day for hot water sounds about right to me
Are you comparing your usage with what you hope to achieve or what you have used at a previous property?

 

[Wilko]

Hi, sorry to hear of your power cost concerns! My thoughts on your info, for what they’re worth...

- re the vacant apartment - they might have chosen to run heating and ventilation on timers to avoid mould build up for example.

- re the hot water - I agree with James, the energy consumed is likely to be about right. Electric hot water is almost 100% efficient energy conversion and so it’s simple to calculate (approximately) how many kWhrs are needed. For example to raise the incoming water temp from 15C to 65C using 6kW heater element will heat about 200l in 2hrs, so 12kWhrs is used. Then factoring keeping it hot and some use during the day a 3rd chunk of 6kWhrs seems a reasonable minimum. As that’s roughly the energy use you are seeing, my opinion is it’s unlikely your hot water service is faulty.