Dear God, the electricity bill!

We moved into a new house just before Christmas. The upstairs heaters were a bit useless, so we just switched them off and instead bought two small freestanding Dimplex convection heaters which we use for a couple of hours a day to heat the bedrooms. Got the Airtricity bill yesterday and nearly vomited. It was more than double what our most expensive bill ever has been (during the Big Freeze last year when temperatures were around -10). We couldn't believe it. Rang Airtricity to make sure there was no mistake (nope ). Checked the appliances individually and it's those bl**dy heaters that are eating it up. Sorry, this is a bit of a rant - but also a cautionary tale, and a request for info - has this happened to anyone else? Are we a bit thick that we didn't realise that these things seem to run on liquid gold or something??

Friends of ours had this experience too. They are renting and had a massive heating bill for last winter (the bad winter) due to poor insulation in the rental property so this winter they turned off the heating in the kids bedrooms at night and ran electric heaters at night time - Huge ESB Bill !

Most electric heaters eat electricity! Are you renting? Is there gas or oil central heating? Ask the landlord to get someone in to bleed and balance all the radiators in the house.

Thanks, girls. We're renting from a family member (at a very reasonable rent, so we look after little maintenance jobs ourselves). We've gas fires downstairs and gas boiler to heat the water (which is dirt cheap); upstairs just has fairly crappy electric wall heaters, which is why we bought the convection heaters to use instead. No radiators to bleed, I'm afraid. I wouldn't mind, but it's not like we run them all night - the one in our bedroom just comes on for an hour morning and night. I suspect OH has been letting the one in his office run all day, though... Will just have to hope the warm spell continues - I'm one of those annoying people who's always cold, I like my heaters on

We are the same we bought an old house and the electricity bills do be huge cause we need the heating on all day to get the house to heat. Thank got we are getting it totally revamped now so hopefully this will bring bills down!!

Yep, those things eat electricity! Is it during the day you need them to give you a bit of heat or at night when going to bed? Get a great quality duvet (I have one that has one summer layer and another layer to add for winter), an electric blanket, some nice warm blankets, will only need heaters in the rare very cold winter days.