First gas bill $1484.83!

johnboy said :

Frankly if your bedding isn’t warm down to 5 degrees you haven’t set yourself up for winter.

Are bed thermometers a Canberra thing?

jettman said :

Everyone certainly has an opinion about this. The comments have been quite interesting, I was simply raising a query as clearly I have not had gas heating before. I don’t think it warrants comments like ‘You, my friend, are a gas guzzler’. And put a jumper on? Seriously people, what do you think we are doing? The heading of this story was ‘FIRST gas bill’. People are so quick to jump to conlcusions! For the record the setting (and thanks JC for pointing out) of 21.5 has no bearing on the ACTUAL temperature. For the first week we experimented with the temperature SETTINGS until we reached a favourable temperature. This so happend to be 21.5 on the head unit. It is most certainly not 21.5 in the house and this is very reflective of the location of the thermostat. We did drop it down overnight but found we woke up during the night cold (and we have 2 doonas). I am of the opinion that if we have heating on shouldn’t we at least be comfortable? I don’t see the point of having central heating with a setting that is too low and walking around in my snow jacket?

Thanks to those who actually read the post and added some valuable advice. I was very interested to hear a few opinions that shutting vents off don’t make any difference. I will look into this a little further. I think a lot temperature is being lost through the floor? It always seems cold on the floor.

To those who just made smart ass comments about putting a jumper on, I forgive you for those comments as clearly you didnt actually read the post correctly and I’m sure you are all really nice people.

I hope you are all warm and toasty tonight 🙂

You’re a gas guzzler…..and you’re precious.

Buy a proper doona. I have one and the heater goes down to 14.5 at night. I have never woken up cold

Stop running it while in bed. Buy some hot water bottles, fall asleep and you’ll be fine. Running it all night is not economical. We have a 4 bedroom house with a large living space – and some issues with doors and windows not being sealed tight, but our mid winter bill is around $700 … Either that or buy an electrical heater and live out of one room.

That bill sounds like ours last winter and we had a similar consumption pattern (having just returned from living in Asia we were really feeling the cold). This year we have done what others suggested – we turned the themostat to 18, switch off the heater at night and bought a double doona (two doonas that clip together to make one super-warm winter blankie) plus a good electric blanket. I am hoping this winter’s bill won’t be quite so extravagent!

poetix said :

Do people with low blood pressure take longer to warm up?

Yes. Unless their partner is as hot as Genie’s.

poetix said :

Do people with low blood pressure take longer to warm up? I don’t know if that makes scientific sense or not.

Not sure, but it’s well known that women run at a colder temperature than men, and often suffer from circulatory issues that affect warmth, like Reynauds. Their extremeties get colder earlier, too.

The person with a hot husband so she couldn’t have an electric blanket, um, get one and just run your side?

As for the double doona, we’re in for a very cold week! Give it a go. Makes your bed look nice too, with a big warm-looking puffy quilt. I use a sheet set with my doonas, so I can change the sheets each week (fresh sheets!), and that also increases warmth, you can wrap the top sheet over your head if the bedroom’s a bit cold. and you only have to change your doona cover when you are sick of it (or run out of suitable sheets). Hate changing doona covers.

EvanJames said :

thatsnotme said :

If you like it toasty overnight, my suggestion is this. Next winter, go out and buy the best doona you can get. Go crazy, spend hundreds of dollars on something that’s guaranteed to keep you warm no matter how cold it gets. You’ll almost certainly make its cost back during the first winter you don’t need heating on all night, and every winter from then on you’ll be saving money.

A trick I use in winter is putting 2 doonas in the doona cover over winter. You can do this even with the cheapie ones from Big W, which are nice and puffy. All that puff and air results in a big puffy doona that is the warmest thing ever, yet doesn’t cost a fortune.

Costco were flogging cashmere doonas for reasonable prices, now I think they’re selling silk-filled ones.

My heating is a wood fire which gets turned off (deprived of air) over night and that puffy doona is heaven. If you really want to splash out, you can add an electric blankie. Better than shelling out hundreds or thousands a quarter.

That double doona tip is excellent! Thank you. I may try it next winter, as I am trying to convince myself that spring is just about to start. A bit hard to believe tonight…

Do people with low blood pressure take longer to warm up? I don’t know if that makes scientific sense or not.

don’t stand in the way of a company wanting to rip all it can out of the average Aussie.

Gas is a rip off because the gov don’t keep any gas aside for Australian use it’s all charged at export rates.

CraigT said :

My winter quarter is around $1,000. If women were capable of closing doors and windows and putting a jumper on when they are cold, I daresay it would be considerably lower.

1) this is the winning comment
2) this advice should be the first in all those handy hints circulated on how to reduce your energy bill. “Step 1: identify whether there are any females living in your home. Step 2: kick them to the kerb. Step 3: … Step 4: Profit!

why do you need the heater going in the middle of the night? turn it on at 5.30 am if you’re desperate. The house doesn’t need to be warm – you just want to take the edge off.

I turn mine off each night, never have it on in the morning and was under $200. bliss!

Skidd Marx said :

Masquara said :

I agree JC – one of my heaters’ thermostat is confused (reads five degrees out), so I refer to an independent thermometer and over-ride the heater and keep the room at around 19 degrees.

Ducted blown air heating is horrible – too dry, too difficult to finetune. Why haven’t Canberrans embraced the gentle background warmth of hydronic heating?

Probably because hydronic heating can only be installed at the time the house is built; after that it ain’t an option. Additionally it is expensive to set-up (approx 20k) and not particularly cheap to run (my bill was $1300). But like you say, the upside is that it’s the most pleasant form of heat.

We’re on hydronic slab heating. Winter gas bill (heating plus cooktop only) was about $300. And we have it set on 21, but only switch it on manually when we want it and the sun hasn’t been out. But the heat transfer ducted fan from upstairs does a good job to move warmth from the warmest part of the house to the coldest, making sun-only temps of 23 common.

I agree that it is the best form of heating if you can build it into the slab on construction. But if the house is already built, you can still install hydronic wall panel heaters. You get that same even heat gradient, none of the freezing cold blast on startup, or the noise, dry eyes and nose bleeds that come with ducted gas.

But you do need to canvass all the possible points of heat loss throughout your home.

Skidd Marx said :

Masquara said :

I agree JC – one of my heaters’ thermostat is confused (reads five degrees out), so I refer to an independent thermometer and over-ride the heater and keep the room at around 19 degrees.

Ducted blown air heating is horrible – too dry, too difficult to finetune. Why haven’t Canberrans embraced the gentle background warmth of hydronic heating?

Probably because hydronic heating can only be installed at the time the house is built; after that it ain’t an option. Additionally it is expensive to set-up (approx 20k) and not particularly cheap to run (my bill was $1300). But like you say, the upside is that it’s the most pleasant form of heat.

Just like light rail really — expensive to put in (especially to retrofit) and expensive to run, but it gives you such a warm feeling.

Masquara said :

I agree JC – one of my heaters’ thermostat is confused (reads five degrees out), so I refer to an independent thermometer and over-ride the heater and keep the room at around 19 degrees.

Ducted blown air heating is horrible – too dry, too difficult to finetune. Why haven’t Canberrans embraced the gentle background warmth of hydronic heating?

Probably because hydronic heating can only be installed at the time the house is built; after that it ain’t an option. Additionally it is expensive to set-up (approx 20k) and not particularly cheap to run (my bill was $1300). But like you say, the upside is that it’s the most pleasant form of heat.

Have been reading eagerly before deciding to post anything…

To the OP, welcome to the RiotAct, you’re always going to get smart alec and unhelpful comments.

In relation to your usage.. It is quite excessive. 21.5 overnight is insane.

We have ducted gas heating (vents in the floors) and keep it set to around 12 degrees over winter, most days it will get turned off while we are at work or not home. When we are home it is set anywhere between 14-18 degrees, this is usually only for around 3-4 hours in the evening. Pretty sure our most recent gas bill was about $600. (higher than expected as hubby was home a fair bit during the day)

We walk around the house in jumpers, trackies and ugg boots. I also live in my dressing gown when at home and will always have a blanket over me when sitting on the couch.

Last winter I bought some cheap rubber backed curtains from Big W and this helped significantly to keep the heat in over winter and out in Summer.

Hubby gets too hot in bed so I can’t have a electric blanket, but if the bedroom is quite cold I’ll turn on an oil fin heater for around an hour before I go to sleep. The bedroom door stays closed 24/7 to trap the heat in. The master bedroom is actually the warmest room in the house, so most nights I wont even bother turning the heater on and i’ll watch tv in bed with just the oil fin heater on to remove the chill out of the air.

Be careful closing vents off as we did this in the spare bedrooms and kept overheating the system. A certain number of vents need to be open at all times.

I absolutely HATE being cold and would blast the heater if it was cheap enough. But it’s not, so I deal with being luke warn instead of comfortable. I enjoy being rugged up under my dressing gown and blankets, so not much of a big deal to me.

thatsnotme said :

If you like it toasty overnight, my suggestion is this. Next winter, go out and buy the best doona you can get. Go crazy, spend hundreds of dollars on something that’s guaranteed to keep you warm no matter how cold it gets. You’ll almost certainly make its cost back during the first winter you don’t need heating on all night, and every winter from then on you’ll be saving money.

A trick I use in winter is putting 2 doonas in the doona cover over winter. You can do this even with the cheapie ones from Big W, which are nice and puffy. All that puff and air results in a big puffy doona that is the warmest thing ever, yet doesn’t cost a fortune.

Costco were flogging cashmere doonas for reasonable prices, now I think they’re selling silk-filled ones.

My heating is a wood fire which gets turned off (deprived of air) over night and that puffy doona is heaven. If you really want to splash out, you can add an electric blankie. Better than shelling out hundreds or thousands a quarter.

People are so quick to jump to conlcusions!

No jumping needed. You freely admitted to heating your master bedroom, kitchen and family rooms to ‘toasty’ temperatures by running six vents for 13 hours straight.

breda said :

If doonas are not keeping you warm, lash out and buy an electric blanket. They cost pennies to run, and in this climate it’s impossible to be cold with both an EB and a decent doona..

Yeah, a ‘greenie’ friend of mine has run the figures and an electric blanket is much much cheaper than any other form of heating – so long, of course, as you are in the bed…

I have a similar house to you, with kids home from 3pm, and my winter quarter gas bill is about $1300 (roof vents and a LOT of windows – they have coverings but its not as good as a wall). In summer the bill will drop to $100 or so if you also have gas water and stove.

While its true that window coverings and insulation etc work, if the window coverings save you 25% on your bill (say $700 per year), it might take you 5 or 6 or 10 years to cover the cost of the curtains or whatever. So its hardly ever financially worth it to replace something that doesnt need replacing-obviously replacing something worn out with something that is a better insulator is good value. So do focus on the cheap stuff first (gaps around the doors etc).

At the end of the day its what you want. People spend $2000 a year buying their lunch every day or a coffee and muffin or for golf club membership or buying a V8.

RedDogInCan said :

A really cheap and effective way of not feeling the cold is to take a long cold bath. Immersing yourself in cold water for about 20 minutes will lower your body’s sensation of what is cold. The effect lasts for weeks.

“So you can just sit there, eating can after can of dog food, until your tears smell enough like dog food to bring your dog back…”

“Damn. I almost had him eating dog food.”

A really cheap and effective way of not feeling the cold is to take a long cold bath. Immersing yourself in cold water for about 20 minutes will lower your body’s sensation of what is cold. The effect lasts for weeks.

MMR said :

. . Found out the house isn’t insulated and the owner refuses to install it. .

That shouldn’t be right. 🙁 I don’t know what the answer is, an “I’m allright, too bad about the tenants or the planet” tax?

If doonas are not keeping you warm, lash out and buy an electric blanket. They cost pennies to run, and in this climate it’s impossible to be cold with both an EB and a decent doona.

Heating entire rooms just to be warm in bed is, as you have discovered, an expensive luxury. And as a PP said, the cold comes from the floor, so if your vents are high up the air near the floor (and the floor itself) can still be chilly even if the rest of the air is at a comfortable temperature.

My bed is quite low to the floor, so in winter I use an EB to warm the mattress through before I go to bed. On very cold nights, I leave it on the lowest setting. Mind you, there are floorboards under the bed (no carpet) and that makes a big difference. And it is true that the position of the thermostat, and of the vents, affects what nominal temperature you need to use for both heating and cooling.

Take no notice of the scoffers. People’s experience of cold and heat vary widely, and it’s not a sign of moral virtue or decadence. But there are cheaper and more efficient ways to keep warm – although if you are happy to pay the bills and keep doing what you are doing, it’s your call.

Jettman – you mention a new house. Is it newly built, or you’ve just recently moved into an old house?

If it’s an old ex-govvy, they can be pretty grim for new arrivals. We moved from Darwin into one, and it was full of holes and gaps, and no insulation. That was an initiation.

Now we live in a large mid-1980s built house with ducted gas heating – outlets (and inlet) are in the ceiling.

Heating is never on at night, and besides the 2 nice fluffy doonas, we have a couple of light blankets over our feet too, and wear long sleeved t-shirts to bed (we slept nude all year round the previous 35 years in Darwin).

We bought a tape type door sealer to stick along the door jamb and keep out the breeze, and the first winter I checked all the windows to ensure no gaps. Check the base of your doors for a draft, and use a ‘snake’ if necessary.

I’ve noticed if I shut the doors those particular rooms get hotter, so the house is always open, except if we are holed up in a room, in which case the gas is off, and we just use an oil column heater.

Only a couple of vents are shut, to stop the draft where we sit.

We are rugged up indoors all winter, except on those nice calm winter days when it gets over 16.

Good luck reducing your gas bill.

jettman said :

Thanks to those who actually read the post and added some valuable advice. I was very interested to hear a few opinions that shutting vents off don’t make any difference. I will look into this a little further. I think a lot temperature is being lost through the floor? It always seems cold on the floor.

If the vents are in the ceiling the floor area will always be colder. This isn’t due to loss through the floor, but due to the fact that heat rises, and when vents are in the ceiling the heat never gets low. This is much more noticeable when the return air vent is high as the return air vent pulls the air more than the vents push.

Now if the vents are in the floor it will feel warmer at lower level as the heat is passing through these levels on it’s way to the top.

We rent a 4bed open plan 2 storey house with ducted gas heating through the ceilings. Our first gas bill was enormous, similar to yours. Found out the house isn’t insulated and the owner refuses to install it. Have a tiled floor downstairs and there’s plenty of drafts. We’ve had to alter our winter living style to prevent bill shock. Close doors, reduce the thermostat, and only run it for a couple of hours. Not rocket science but it cut our bill in half. Personally, I think the price of gas should be investigated. It’s a luxury item these days and a ripoff.

Everyone certainly has an opinion about this. The comments have been quite interesting, I was simply raising a query as clearly I have not had gas heating before. I don’t think it warrants comments like ‘You, my friend, are a gas guzzler’. And put a jumper on? Seriously people, what do you think we are doing? The heading of this story was ‘FIRST gas bill’. People are so quick to jump to conlcusions! For the record the setting (and thanks JC for pointing out) of 21.5 has no bearing on the ACTUAL temperature. For the first week we experimented with the temperature SETTINGS until we reached a favourable temperature. This so happend to be 21.5 on the head unit. It is most certainly not 21.5 in the house and this is very reflective of the location of the thermostat. We did drop it down overnight but found we woke up during the night cold (and we have 2 doonas). I am of the opinion that if we have heating on shouldn’t we at least be comfortable? I don’t see the point of having central heating with a setting that is too low and walking around in my snow jacket?

Thanks to those who actually read the post and added some valuable advice. I was very interested to hear a few opinions that shutting vents off don’t make any difference. I will look into this a little further. I think a lot temperature is being lost through the floor? It always seems cold on the floor.

To those who just made smart ass comments about putting a jumper on, I forgive you for those comments as clearly you didnt actually read the post correctly and I’m sure you are all really nice people.

I hope you are all warm and toasty tonight 🙂

Put a jumper and warm socks on over your summer dress.

I think you need to wean yourself off the 21.5 setting.

Put it at 20 when you’re up, and put it at 17 overnight for a while and see how you go.

or turn it off overnight and put a small oil heater in your bedroom.

It does seem a waste to have it going full blast all night just to heat up the empty kitchen and lounge area.

I agree JC – one of my heaters’ thermostat is confused (reads five degrees out), so I refer to an independent thermometer and over-ride the heater and keep the room at around 19 degrees.

Ducted blown air heating is horrible – too dry, too difficult to finetune. Why haven’t Canberrans embraced the gentle background warmth of hydronic heating?

I find it funny how people are recommending temperatures to use and poo hooing those that use higher temperature. Now this may come as a bit of a shock but different houses and people need different temperatures. Now before you all laugh and say 20 degrees is 20 degrees, in a house this is not quite true. What 20 degrees is, is 20 degrees as read by the thermostat in the location of the thermostat. However you need to keep in mind that thermostats generally have a tolerance of plus of minus 2 degrees and can be effected by placement of thermostat and the height it is mounted at.

I’ll give an example of what I mean, when my house was first built I had to set the temperature to around 25 to feel comfortable, though my bills were not what I consider high, about $300 a quarter, this is around 2001. A year or so latter I had an issue with the heater and I had a yarn (separate to the fault) to the repair guys about why I needed the temp so high to feelcomfortable. He pointed out that the builder had mounted the thermostat above the return air vent, which was also below an outlet. The end result was the return air was pulling warm air from the vent over the thermostat, thus making the zone around the thermostat artificially high, hence why I needed it so high, so 25 there was more like an average of 21 throughout the house. But as mentioned the temperature is relative, so my bill wasn’t that high as the heater was only heating the house to 21, despite showing 25 at the thermostat.

He moved it to an adjacent wall and I could get the same comfort out of setting it at 21 degrees, though even now if I take a thermostat around the house, with the thermostat reading 21 I find the temperature in the lounge room, near the thermostat but taken at lounge height is 18, the temperature in the main bedroom at the same height as the thermostat is 18, and in the back bedrooms at the same height they are about 23.

Multitude of reasons why, in the case of the front bedroom we leave the door shut, which means less warm air is pulled through, leave the door open and the temperature will go up by about 2 degrees. The back bedrooms being warmer I put down to poor balance in that part of the house.

OP be careful about shutting off vents. The reason being most heaters need a minimum number of outlets to be open to work effectively, too many closed causes pressure issues in the pipes. Also systems are balanced so shutting off vents in some locations will make some rooms hotter and some colder.

Can you also clarify when you run it over night is your temp set to 21.5 or lower? If 21.5 then there is your problem, overnight is a long time to be running at that kind of temperature. In my place we do ‘run’ it overnight, but at at temperature of 12. The house seems to get to 12 around 4 in the morning in the coldest of months so that just takes the edge off the cold, before the heater kicks in at 6:15.

poetix said :

CraigT said :

My winter quarter is around $1,000. If women were capable of closing doors and windows and putting a jumper on when they are cold, I daresay it would be considerably lower.

Perhaps she’s trying to escape.

Well, she should definitely put a jumper on, if that’s the case – it’s cold out there.

If you like it toasty overnight, my suggestion is this. Next winter, go out and buy the best doona you can get. Go crazy, spend hundreds of dollars on something that’s guaranteed to keep you warm no matter how cold it gets. You’ll almost certainly make its cost back during the first winter you don’t need heating on all night, and every winter from then on you’ll be saving money.

Also, when you talk about roller shutters, are you talking about those ones that cover the outside of your windows? If so, they’re not really doing anything to insulate the inside of your house in winter. If you have no other decent window coverings, then you’d be losing a heap of heat from your windows.

Your thermostat isn’t in a great place for night time running either. Your heating is having to work to heat up a large open plan space, and bring it up to temperature. Meanwhile, your bedrooms are probably well above your 21.5 degree setting.

The way you’re running your heating, I agree with everyone else – your bill isn’t a surprise.

About $700 for ours in a similar setup. We usually have ours set at 19. I’ve noticed that if it’s set at 21 the heating unit barely turns off. It’s not very efficient when running constantly at full blast. Our meter is one of the newer ones with 3 decimal places and it spins at a fair rate of knots with the heat on.

CraigT said :

My winter quarter is around $1,000. If women were capable of closing doors and windows and putting a jumper on when they are cold, I daresay it would be considerably lower.

Perhaps she’s trying to escape.

Yep, sounds quite feasible.

I assume your system has a timer. Just turn it off when you go to bed and set it to come on again half an hour or so before you get up. That should save you at least 30%, and you won’t notice the difference.

Unless your house is totally lacking in thermal mass, It shouldn’t cool down more than 7 or 8 degrees while you are sleeping.

My winter quarter is around $1,000. If women were capable of closing doors and windows and putting a jumper on when they are cold, I daresay it would be considerably lower.

You run it overnight?

Have you thought about buying a blanket or two?

Oh, yeah… and where do you live?

“It is also worth noting we are never home during the day and on average not home 1 night a week. “

Thanks. Noted. Also noted the bit about shutters on the windows. But, do you keep a spare door key handy?

I think RCAC is cheaper to run if you insist on having it on all the time. Biggest bill I ever got was because of the ducted gas heating in the place I used to live (and I didn’t even like it that warm, my sister did). It was about $1000 from memory. The place I am in now only uses gas for the instant hot water and cook top. Our gas bill is generally around $120. We only run the RCAC for a few hours maximum, only when it’s really hot or cold. I suspect ducted gas heating uses a lot of gas.

Our most recent electric bill was $447 which also included cooking and water heating. We have been quite warm enough. It’s not healthy to swelter as you sleep – leads to bad sleep and thus tiredness. I have had bedroom windows open overnight to let in fresh air. I hate the cold as much as the next person, but I also hate that stuffiness from being too warm.

Wily_Bear said :

Gas has to be the biggest rip-off ever. My four bedroom home is kept at 23 degrees 24/7 in winter, and our most recent winter electricity bill was $470.00. That includes running a pool, at least two dryer cycles per day, all cooking and hot water etc. My neighbours all run gas heating and complain of similar heating costs to you. Get rid of it!

$470 for how many weeks?

Definitely don’t run your heater overnight, that’s what we have blankets for. If you make sure the house is draught proof and has decent insulation it will retain its heat overnight anyway. Most draught proofing can be done as a DIY, keep an eye out for gaps around windows and doors, exhaust fans, evap cooling outlets and downlights… They’re usually the main air leakage culprits.

A couple of great products to look up are Heatsaver Vent Covers, Draftstoppa Exhaust Fan Covers and Tenmat Downlight Covers. Gaps around windows and doors can be taken care of with foam seal and fullers ultraclear gap filler. Check out Lish Fejer’s GIY blog http://www.greenityourself.com.au/topics/draught-proofing for a heap of cool how to videos.

You could always get one of our energy assessors in with the thermal camera to give you some comfort and energy saving tips too 😉

When was the unit last serviced? Worth checking as much of the ducting & connections as possible.

Is it normal?

Well if you use a shed load of gas like you do then yes. Our house design is virtually identical. We have kids. We have large north facing windows that enable the busy part of the house to warm up naturally with the sun once its up and intensity increases. We turn the heater on of an arvo when the house drops below 20 degrees. When we go to bed we turn it down to 14.5 so the house doesn”t become freezing and it fires up quickly in the morning. We would melt if we left it on your temp overnight.

We pay on even pay every fortnight. For 11 weeks we would be paying about $500.

You, my friend, are a gas guzzler

Yep sounds about right to me- 18 degrees and don’t run it all night is the only way to run central heating.

Why do people insist on running heating overnight? Extra blanket? Pyjamas? 21.5 is hotter than even a summer night in Canberra. Try a lower temp and try turning it off at about 10pm. You’ll find your house will hang on to a fair bit of warmth.

We have the same size house, and ducted gas, closing the vents makes no difference here and the heating isn’t zoned. The baby way crawling last year on stone floor so we heated to 21 in the mornings and evenings and the winter school holiday. Don’t run it over night and both of us work full time. It was $1200 for a quarter. This year we are running at 18 degrees and a quite warm enough, and the bill is probably going to be less as the march to june quarter was.

Gas has to be the biggest rip-off ever. My four bedroom home is kept at 23 degrees 24/7 in winter, and our most recent winter electricity bill was $470.00. That includes running a pool, at least two dryer cycles per day, all cooking and hot water etc. My neighbours all run gas heating and complain of similar heating costs to you. Get rid of it!

That sounds about right for 21 degrees heating overnight. We have heating down to 14 overnight and come onto 18 at about 5:30am ready for the morning run.

We moved into a 5 bed house 7 years ago with a scary gas and electrics bill and we insulated it to death, put up multiple window coverings I.e blinds and curtains and use a small oil heater in the bedrooms for the overnight. Also draft stoppers and door seals. Saved us about 30-40% on the gas an electric over the years. – due to all the insulation we no longer even need to run the air con in summer so totally worth the investment.

That sounds about right, but maybe on the high side.
Get under the house and check that not of the duct work has come loose.

It’s also possible that the previous owners ran it 24/7 and actew have given you an “average” bill.

We have a similar heater. Closing the vents doesnt change how much gas it uses.

21.5 is probably too hot. Try 18 and dont run it all night. Instead get it to fire up when you normally wake up.

Go hunt for gaps especially in halogen light fittings in the ceiling.

Sounds not outside the realms of possibility. Heating to 21.5 is exponentially more expensive to heating to 19 and wearing a jumper. Also, why run it when in bed? Have it turn of at bedtime, and on before you get up, and use an extra blanket.

Well, my four bedroom house with almost the same setup costs me about $500-600 in the peak quarter of winter. but we have the temperature set to 18 degrees, and don’t run the heat overnight. From the times we’ve run the heat longer and hotter, I’d say that $1,500 is really quite easy to do.

Closing vents/etc helps, but the only real way to save is to lower the temperature and turn it off at night. You’d be surprised how warm 18 degrees seems after the initial adjustment period.