[WizzyWigg]

@SteffiT
It might be worth asking the gentleman coming tomorrow if he can tell you more about the water heater. Perhaps he could tell you it's wattage. Does the water heater supply all the hot water needs, ie: baths showers kitchen,etc.

[wizzo227]

That the hot water boiler gets to boiling is putting in far more heat than you need, so no wonder the hot water is expensive. Consider buying a budget 2nd kettle to place near to the washbasin if doing so allows you to not activate that electric boiler every day of the week. Much of the saving with using a kettleinstead of the boiler is from not having long pipe runs, so you only need to warm up the quantity of water which you want to the temperature which you want. To wash hands face and feet using 1 litre of 50C water ought to cost about 0.05kWh so 1.5 pennies. Definitely not £5 per day every day. Return on investment for one brand new kettle for £20 and one foot washing bowl for £5 is less than seven days of not using the main boiler, so it is possible for energy savings to breakeven inside a fortnight.

It is possible to use up to 24kWh in a day from four 1kW electric heaters never on at the same time (1kW continuous, on at each heater in turn), which seems to me more likely than a meter fault. It sounds as though the flat which you own is poorly insulated and in need of at least that much heat; I'd expect up to twice that much. The man who is visiting tomorrow, can you get him to look for more ways to insulate? It sounds like cavity wall insulation and exterior over-padding and re-render are out, but are there any exterior-facing walls to which a panel of two inch insulating foamboard could be stuck on the inside and wallpapered over? That overlooked procedure loses you two inches of room size but if that is what you need to avoid epileptic seizures brought on by cold then that is what you need. Time to repay cost of materials against heat costs saved is inside this winter but I've no idea of labour costs to get that made warm and also decorated.

If insulating and heating multiple rooms to medically safe temperature for you is not available, then you might have to choose a smaller number of rooms to use and heat. If presently your four 1kW heaters are spread about four rooms, what is to stop you from switching off two or three of them, closing those doors, investing in draught excluders, and possibly foam insulation boarding interior walls to better separate your heated rooms from unheated rooms? It seems wasteful as well as chilly to have unused unheated rooms in a flat. Would it be preferable to get in a lodger and share bills?

In deciding that, you should look at whether or not you can afford the expected bill for unavoidable heating. I don't know the room temperature medically necessary for you nor anything from which your bill after adaptations could be estimated. If the unavoidable minimal bill including standing charge is still going to be too much then you Must get in a lodger without delay.

[meldrewreborn]

@SteffiT

i would be looking at switching to night storage radiators which are quite modern and with thermostatic controls cheaper to run if you switch to economy7 tariff. You can check out the tariff for your area and do some calculations.

thick underlay and carpet will help to insulate the floor. You can insulate the inside of external walls, you would lose some internal space but needs might make that necessary.

[meldrewreborn]

I typically use 2800 kWh in gas in January (averaged over a lot of years). In very round terms we could think of that as 100kWh of gas per day. So your electricity consumption might not be considered that high, but gas is currently one quarter the price of Gas.

If you could have gas installed, a couple of exterior wall mounted gas convector heaters would be very much more economical to run at current prices.

[wizzo227]

100 kWh per day looks like about 200+ square meters of floorspace in January 2024 weather; much more than some home layouts should need. Your original posts said that you'd have someone visit. Did he find anything helpful? For example how to stop the boiler from burning through £5 a day ? That being more than I spend on hot water for myself in a week, there must be some opportunities to save.