Wildly fluctuating gas use - any advice gratefully received!

RadoJo

Afternoon all,
I have just been scrutinising my gas bills and I am a little concerned about how much my gas usage fluctuates. For example, in one billing period (Sept to Nov) we were averaging 1 kwh of gas per day, and during the next (Dec to Feb) we were apparently using an average of 31 kwh per day.

Normally I would assume that these were seasonal and based on our use of our central heating system, but we actually had no central heating for two years, and during the period when the usage above occurred, the only appliance we had which was using gas was our cooker hob.

We definitely weren't eating 30 more meals a day at any point during this period, so I am baffled as to how we were managing to use such large amounts of gas using only the hob!

I submit quarterly readings online, so the bills shouldn't be estimated (and they all say that they are based on the readings I have submitted) so could anyone shed any light onto what could account for this high usage? There are only two of us in the house, and even with our heating working we only seem to be using an average of 15 units a day and that's when we have had the heating on for a significant amount of time.

Your thoughts would be much appreciated as I simply cannot fathom how this is happening.

withabix

You say you haven't got heating and then you say you have. Can you clarify this?

How is your water heated?

RadoJo

Sorry - wasn't quite clear in my OP and thanks for replying! We had no central heating for around two years until February this year when we had our boiler replaced, so we are now toasty warm, but during the billing period I mentioned we had none. We were using our immersion heater for hot water during the non central heating times.

lemontart

what you have forgotton is that the period of dec to feb this year was at the height of the coldest winter for over 30 years. were you snowed in at all, were your bills estimated ?

RadoJo

It may well have been super cold, but with no central heating, we were heating the house using our coal fire the whole time (and occasionally leaving the oven door open after cooking to make the most of the residual heat - very MSE!).