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Having installed my elderly parents in a nearby bungalow, we are trying to sort out the heating systems and electricity costs. It is a bit of a conundrum and maybe someone has an idea what could be causing the problem. The bungalow is heated by one night storage heater in the lounge and a rather large night storage system in a central cupboard, (left photo) through which air is blown when required into all the rooms, incudling the back of the lounge. This is controled by a thermostat in the lounge. The place also has a very large hot water tank in another cupboard which is also on the Economy 7 night time tarif. The econmy 7 stuff (tank and two NSH's) is on its own fused thing in the fuse box. Before buying the place, I asked about electricity bills and was informed that the average winter bills were about £90. Hhh. Dont think so! We were taking reading of the electrcity over the course of the first couple of months as it got colder to make sure we had an idea of costs. Here is the spreadsheet. As you can see, the costs are far higher than expected. and I havent the foggiest what happened on the21st and 22nd Nov! Why did the night reading suddenly quadruple! parents assure me that nothing changed from normal. then we had two night really low! Our idea was to turn off each unit in turn to see how that effected the readings but 'something caused a major hiccup and they certainly cannot afford to have occasional costs of £12 anight. On Sunday (yesterday)after a few evenings of relative similar readings, we turned off the heater to the hot water tank. And the evening costs did drop. On feeling the tank this morning, the bottom third was cold, middle third warmish and the top hot. So we are leaving it another night before turning it back on. They dont use much water at all as they cannot get into the bath and apart from the washing machine occasionally, they use a sinkful per day washing dishes. The heating is set quite high as Dad feels the cold and the house is certainly warm when I go in but not excessively (usually around 21oC/70oF in the lounge). They turn the thermostat up for about 10 mins in the morning then a bit more in the evening when the other nsh is probably not putting as much out. Any ideas what could have caused the sudden increase the other evening? Thats a lot of electricity to use. And are we doing the right thing to try to calculate what each unit is costing to run? I think we shall seriously be looking at replacing it all with a simple gas combi boiler in the summer. There is gas in the street and we can see many similar bungalows are it connected. And if we plan it with a future kitchen extension in mind, it will save us having to do it in a few years time.