We moved to Scottish Power but haven't had a bill yet and I've worked out for the last month that we have used 40 units of gas with the heating on plenty.

Think it's about 4p per kilowatt hour?.

I'm with British Gas, but I only use 1 unit every 3 months! My bill is about £1 I think.

Incidentally, I only use gas for the hob.

(They also come and read my meter every quarter, and look at me suspiciously.) I know what they're thinking.

The units on the meter aren't in kwH often.

The conversion used for my meter is: kWh = units2.83*1.0226439.1/3.6

I pay 3.77p per KWh, but that depends on your contract. Quite often you pay more for the first so many kWh & then less for the rest.

OK,that went wrong...

conversion should be

units x 2.83 x 1.02264 x 39.1 / 3.6

and the figure is 1257.31315

so is that £12.57 (unlikely)

£125.70 (scary as hell)

or £1257.00 (kill me now)

aaaaarghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.............maybe I should call them up, why is it so difficult to work out?

It's 1257x your price per kwh.

so, if you pay 4p/kwh it's about £50.

oh great, that makes sense now. £50 a month to have it on as much as I like - was really worried it would be much more.

This was a test month to see what it was like being warm whenever I wanted.

It will cost a bit more when the weather is colder since you have further to raise the temperature of the house to get it up to a comfortable temperature and also the heat loss from the house will be more when the temperature difference is greater so it will take more energy to maintain the comfortable temperature when it's colder outside.

In short, if we have a really cold snap, it will cost more even if you run the heating for the same number of hours per week.

I don't have a thermostat though, just on individual radiators so it's either on or its off (has never gone above 20 degrees as very poorly insulated house)