Is 1200kwH a month abnormaly high electricity usage?

[little_sparrow]

Hi all,

I've noticed my bills are getting a bit crazy, very near £400/mo to Octopus. We are a family of 5, with one working from home in the day. We don't have electric heating and get gas from Octopus aswell.

My highest usage in the last 6 months was last month, at 1195kWH. I type in the numbers myself so they aren't estimated. We don't have a smart meter, should I get one?

We use an electric powered pump nearly daily for a few hours because we bought a house where the previous sellers told us it "flooded once 10 years ago", and now the basement floods upto the first step every time it rains (and just some other random times too). This is the only thing that I think makes us majorly different from the average family of fives usage.

My friends told me that my usage is insane, and looking online I saw similar, but I still don't really know what to make of it

Energy usage:

https://imgur.com/bT9U34r

EDIT:

Gas Usage, 1st Jan - 27Feb:

https://imgur.com/CZxcn71

Electric Usage, 1st Jan - 27Feb:

https://imgur.com/EBAAm8U

 

[dallascole36]

@little_sparrow Not when you're running an electric pump to remove gallons and gallons of water from your property every day it isn't. Is there anything you can do to improve the flood protections?

 

[houseofsaul]

@dallascole36 This is the perfect answer.

Pumps at 500w is 12kwh every 24 hours

24 hour usage for 31 days is 360kwh

 

[praveenkappala]

@houseofsaul smile deserve bear money cows chop alleged party cow skirt

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

 

[metsfan5976]

@praveenkappala Depends. They should average perhaps 300 kWh/month, so 360 kWh/month on top of that would be like 1,320 over two months. I Highly doubt they are running the pump 24-7.

I would look at the meter first - they submit readings so how old is it (Possibly faulty?) and also look at this pump to see how long it's running for and if it's faulty (seals go, they have a hard time priming, and just run, run, run, run, run).

Hopefully they have checked that it's not a burst main/supply pipe - House in the 1890's could mean Cast Iron? (I am not well versed on UK pipe history).. The only way I know to waterproof such things are expensive (Liners on the outside, not inside) and depending on how bad it is they could make their house rise (like a boat) if water keeps building up.

 

[brokenspirit88]

@praveenkappala I am less than 500 for a 5 bed house, an electric car that is only charged at home, plus 2 home workers. 1200 is a mad amount.

 

[praveenkappala]

@brokenspirit88 alive support ancient languid heavy telephone practice tart crime groovy

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

 

[little_sparrow]

@dallascole36 Other than looking into legal action, we've tried resurfacing it, tried to drill down and see how far it went and that just got messy and seemed endless. No idea what we were doing. We got a quote of £10k from a trusted builder who did some good work for us, but I can't remember exactly what he said he would do to solve it and I didn't have the money to take that chance, although he did say he solved a similar issue on a house a few streets over.

The water just comes up from the floor, like you can see theres lots of pressure behind it and it's bubbling up all day, and I pump it out in the evening.

 

[ghaynes]

@little_sparrow We've got a basement that was made liveable when the property was completely rebuilt. Basically you have to make the basement as water tight as possible and also provide a way to divert and remove the ground water from building up too much and creating the pressure that can force it into the basement space.

 

[rasico2012]

@ghaynes It's pretty normal in Canada at least to have a finished basement with sump pumps in case of groundwater flooding. I've never been in a house where they ran all day though, that's way out of the ordinary.

A £10k loan at 4.5% would be 275/mo over 5 years or thereabouts, might be worth looking into if the building work really will solve the problem. At least there'll be an end to it.

 

[ghaynes]

@rasico2012 Yeah our sump pump is triggered by a float switch so it might trigger a lot after a lot of rainy days, but it shouldn't be constantly on (unless the float switch is broken).

 

[little_sparrow]

@ghaynes How did you guys go about doing that?

 

[ghaynes]

@little_sparrow Our house was a complete rebuild - as in the old building was torn down and built with a new structure and foundation so the builders could dig down into the ground around the basement to do their work.

 

[haydnp]

@little_sparrow You can buy always on pumps with a float switch in the base, we have one at work, some days it runs for a few hours, some days not at all. It's an upright cylinder that sits on the floor at the lowest point, beneath is really a stand with the float switch.

 

[little_sparrow]

@haydnp Ours has this but there is nowhere for us to run the hose, we have to bring the hose up from the basement and run it out the backdoor into the drain, which in turn makes the house freezing because the backdoor was open for 3 hours of the evening so probably costs us more

 

[allglorytogod77]

@little_sparrow Sounds like someone dug down and hit the water table, especially if it’s worse after rain.

 

[marthabeth]

@little_sparrow KA tanking slurry is cheap and relatively effective for a DIYer, just clean any paint off the brick/concrete first, read the instructions and don't get it on your skin for any duration of time.

 

[little_sparrow]

@marthabeth We've already tried this, covered the place in it

 

[marthabeth]

@little_sparrow How many coats? Took me about 10-15 in the worst areas, although 85% of the ingress was stopped in the first 2 or 3 coats. Mine was bad as yours sounds, 12 inch deep overnight, every night.

After the slurry had got it down to the odd little weep, maybe a thimble full per night, I lined all the walls and floor with bitumen wallpaper, poured concrete on the floor, built a block wall inside and back filled the wall with grout. I now get zero ingress. I fully dried the room with the dehumidifier, and now no longer even have to use that.

 

[little_sparrow]

@marthabeth I did 3 coats, and it did work for a while, but slowly after a week or two it went back to how it was before. Will go back and try some more in the worst areas