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bobble
Aye its kinda mad out there. 1 house is on a credit meter, but its gas heated and honestly our annual bill is very low even compared to brand new equivalent sized places, so whilst its multi-plying by large amounts, its not the end of the world. The other place though, electrically heated, have spent a year insulating the absolute hell out of it so its performance is now much better, but still electric is 3-5x more per kwh than gas so its gonna be hectic. Best thing we did was load a grand onto all the spare electric keys (£250 in the meter, then 3 keys with £250 max each) back in last march/april/may at the old cap of £17.xxp/kwh, currently I think its 32p/kwh and obviously going to be more as of next month. Used £100 of £1000 since then, but thats just hot water + minimal lights (summer!) + weekly stat tarriff. THe remaining £900 even with the improvements and being careful will run heating from end of sept to mid Jan I would estimate. Leaving rest of Jan, Feb, March and however long it takes april to warm up at a rate of £350-700 per month.
We were in the position of having a spare grand to be able to load onto keys ahead of time, but most folk who rely on prepayment meters (inc our neighbours) are not in such position and are going to be absolutely buggered as their identical flats have the insulation value of a crisp packet. Last few winters (in neighbours flat) to keep temp up inside to around 18c, maybe 19c on the odd day has cost them £10-11 per day average from Sept to mid april, this winter obviously double or triple those daily costs to still only achieve being sort of warm for a few hours a day (2 hours in morning, 3-4 hours in evening max). Their income has only gone down in (less contracted hours and) real terms so have suggested to them already they can half move in with us, turn our living room (freshly rebuilt pretty much the whole flat now) into a bedroom, share kitchen and bathroom, but they can obviously still go next door to their own flat for some privacy and store all their junk, it'll be kept heating almost off.