Utilities

What is the annual cost of running a 2bed villa, water electRicity etc.

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How long's a piece of string? It's an individual thing.

Depends entirely on so many things:

How often do you shower /use the washing machine

Do you have a pool

Do you do much cooking

How is your villa/water heated

Somany things to take into consideration!

 

 

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62 euros

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We rent a 2 bedroom attached fortuna house in Quesada. So no pool etc. We have just had our first month electric bill and including IVA it was 122 Euros.

There are 2 of us - and we are all electric. We cook and shower and use the washing machine. We work from home so have 2 pc's running but dont have much heating on. 

We are with iberdrola and we have been told that we can go onto a cheaper tariff and we are now in the processing of changing over.  

What we noticed is the amount of tax is a lot highter then you pay in the UK. Utilitied are charged at 21% whereas in the UK Vat on utilities is 5%.

Hope this helps

Angie

   

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I have a 3-bedroomed village house, live alone but have visitors approx one week per month. No pool. Electricity under €30 per month even in winter, gas about one bombona every two months (that's €16) for cooking and hot water. Water and rubbish are via our ayuntamiento and come to €30 per quarter.

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Your electricity is very cheap! the averaage aroung here for two months is over a 100 euros, many have bills over 200.

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we pay about 120 a month for electric even though we are careful and thats a 2 bedroom apartment.

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Ours is 3 bed apartment and averages around 400 per month, I reckon it's high but obviously the electric Co etc refuse to listen. In the summer it's the A/C that runs up the bills, in the winter its the heaters as the spanish houses get cold on winter nights.

 

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 rockinrodders - that is wayyyyy too high!  Unless you are running your heating/air conditioning 24/7!!  We pay about €450 for TWO months in a (big - over 250 sq.mts) four bedroom plus basement house!  If you are not running every appliance, plus heating, plus a tumble dryer, daily for hours per day, then you really have to get the electricity company in to check your meter.  Are you certain that's not every two months?

 

 

This message was last edited by Pitby on 27/02/2013.

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400 a month is mental

when i was wealthy before the recession and my stupidy caught up with me i was only paying max 220 in a very big three bedroomed apartment.

i had the heating on for the entire winter and the aircon on in the entire summer without once touching the dial.

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The Central A/C heating runs pretty much all day as wife and kids are at home. At night we have portable radiators on as it gets so cold in the kid's rooms. There is also a water heater in the kitchen that runs 24/7.

I've contacted Endesa but struggle to get anybody to speak English so they just fob me off and refuse to check the meters. I checked the meter box and it doesn't look like any neighbours are hacking into it which was my first thought.

Definitely not a 2 monthly bill, as we get an estimate in month 1 for about 200 then the actual bill per the meter in the second month is around 600. This was for the last 2 months, so averages around 400 for each month. We've only been there since the summer and bills are always big.

We've now tried putting heaters etc on timers and thermostats. We've set the water heater on a  timer although opinions seem to be mixed whether this makes a difference or not.

Fingers crossed we get a lower bill next time.

 

 

 

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are these 40 euro oil filled electric heaters in the kids bedrooms?

they cost an arm and a leg to run

buying a 200 euro electirc heater as opposed to just a 50 one pays for its self in a big way through more efficent use of electric.

have you gone round and filled every draught with sealant and draught excluders under every door?

this helps keep the cold out and the heat out in the summer

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Are you sure you're on the right tariff. We have an open plan villa with high ceilings, and my wife won't get out bed unless its 22c.

We have 2 A/C units from 7am until 7pm ( we have ages fire in the evening because its cosier). We used to use these in he bedroom, but as Mungry says we swapped to electic radiators that monitor and maintain the temperature on a thermostat. We use these in two bedrooms ( one as a study) from 6am until 11pm. Once they have warmed up the room the temperature is maintained, and yet, if you touch them, they're barely. These are the best things we bought. We also have radiators in the bathroom, but these are just on a couple of hours. We have loads of other electrical stuff, including a pump for the pool.

We are on the TUR tariff, which splits the rate at different times. We are with Iberdrola but endesa have the same tariff. We've had this tariff for 4 years, and we average about 35% at the high rate and the rest at low rate.

The bill for last month was €230 and I expect this month to be the same. On average I allocate €150 every month, and this covers our electricity for a year.

Post a copy of your bill, might be able to suggest something.

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Hi Mungry, they were indeed cheap radiators, but not oil filled, just electric convector heaters from Carraefour, around 40 euros each. They are juicy as I put a cost controller (which is a plug through adaptor that measures the draw and calculates the cost based on your input rates) on one of them and ran it overnight and it had cost over 2 euros.

 

 

Kathyslad, the only other tariff I am aware of is one that offers lower rates at night, which sounds great now, but I'm guessing that by the time Endesa had got round to changing it for me, it would be summer when my main power draw would be during the day on cooling the place! How does it work out for you?

 

This message was last edited by rockinrodders on 27/02/2013.

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It is the day night tariff. The day rate runs between 12pm and 10pm (1pm and 11pm from Daylight saving time March to October). After 4 years of use, i can tell you that my split is fairly all year 35/65. The break even point is around 65/35 comparing to the TUR standard rate. It needs little management, but we do not skimp. Managements includes, using the dishwasher, washer wtc in the cheaper period. Our water heater is on a timer. It comes on at 5.30am for about 2 hours, to heat up for the. Morning showers, and then again between 10am and 12pm for the rest of the day. We always have piping hot water. These appliances are heavy power draws.We have pool pump which outside of summer I run in the morning. In the Sumer I run it for 8 hours a day between 8am and 4pm.

I would suggest you note your readings at the split times for a week, and then work out the savings. I have an excel spreadsheet model I designed for somebody on another forum if you want to pm me.

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Blimey! I'm stunned. I have wall-mounted electric radiators in all the rooms except my bedroom where there's an air-con warm air thingie though I haven't used it for warm, only in the summer for cold. The lounge with the big woodburner is upstairs and when that's on I leave the bedroom doors open so the heat warms the two upstairs bedrooms. And we put the leccy blankets on an hour before going to bed. Downstairs in the big entrance / dining / office space which is hard to heat I use one of those 2-bar radiant thingies which was about €30 and would cost €10 to run 24hrs for 7 days if I did (which I don't).

I think electric hot water is REALLy expensive. Mine is gas-heated so hot whenever I want it but only costing when I use it. One bombona a month does me.

There was a very useful thread in the autumn called something like "Living in Spain for Under €1000 a Month" which resulted in lots of detail, lots of different types of houses / families (all of which makes a massive difference to bills) and ended in some useful monthly budgets being set out.

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I should add in the cost of the woodburner. I had one delivery of about 1.5 cubic metres of mixed almond and olive wood. It was €60 delivered and stacked in the back, and Francisco had come round to see the size of my woodburner door first so he only brought stuff I could put in without chopping. I've got some left and won't need to re-order until next season.

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2 euros a night x 2 thats 80 euros a month straight onto the bill a month just for the kids bedroom.

lets say daytime all day for the aircon has to be a good 4 euors a day if its a big central one

4 x 30 120

120 + 80 is 200

cooker, washer, bolier

still dosent come to 400

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Yes Mungry I was adding up everything too and thinking there must be something else sucking up a lot of power or dodgy meter or somebody stealing from it or we were paying for the community lighting, pools etc in the complex.

When we bought the heaters we were not too careful about turning them off in the morning so they would often run all day too, as the kids are young and do take naps in their rooms, so that would explain some of it but not all.

The washer and dryer seems to be running every day washing kids clothes but when I put the power meter cost controller on the washing machine, dishwasher etc the amounts are a few pence a time so don't really make a huge difference. 

When we moved in there was no instruction for any appliances or the water heater etc so no idea if it is best to run this all day or not. It has no thermostat so we can't even turn down the temp of the water which comes out of the taps much too hot anyway.

 

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Your power consumption will be shown on your bill. Last month I used about 1200 kwh, so about 39 kwh per day. With the cold over the last couple of days we're upto about 50 a day at the moment.

I've already posted how I use my power. Working it out is very simple. Every appliance has a wattage, which is the amount of power it draws at full use. A dishwasher for example is probably 2kw, but it will draw this much when it's heating the water, and drying. A washer is the same. An a/c unit ( well mine anyway) uses 1.1kw,, but it only uses this when it starts and is warming up the room. When it's warmed up it uses about half that, because it only boosts occasionally.

Make a list of all your appliances, to see the wattages, and then work out where the problem is. The biggest users are normally kettles, but they're normally only on for a short time. wqter heaters are another big user, but they should turn on and off via the thermostat, although this may be faulty.

Another tip is turn everything off, and then check your meter, and then again in say 15 mins. You might find you're lighting the street. One other point, you have read your meter, and checked its your meter they're billing you for. It's not unknown for them to bill you for another meter.

Also check you're not being surcharged ( depends on your potencia). As I posted, it would be helpful if you posted some info from your bill.

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