High Gas Bill - 20 metric units a day?!

thebawp

Moved into a new property in November 2010 - it's a 2 floor maisonette with 2 bedrooms on the top floor, and 2 reception rooms with a kitchen, bathroom and spare room on the main floor (1st floor - there is ground floor flat below). First bill came through in December for less than a month's usage at £127 for something like 25 days usage. This seemed very high, I checked the meter, opening reads etc. and everything seemed to suggest that they had charged for the actual amount of units used - when I worked this out, it came to 20 metric units a day. This seemed quite high, although I've only ever lived in flats previously so don't really have anything to compare it to. The boiler is only 4 years old (worcester bosch combi boiler) which has recently been serviced. I didn't really query the bill at the time as was so busy with getting house sorted that I just put it down to us settling in.
Just had a final bill from British Gas as I had switched to Npower shortly after (they took over supply at my request as I'd had them in my previous property) based on my final read - basically they've charged me £20 for 4 days usage. £5 a day for gas seems excessive (I remember in my first flat making £5 last a week on a pp meter!), and again, readings were averaging at 20 upd (but was consistent with previous bill). They are billing me for a metric meter, which I do have. In previous properties, I've usually paid around £30-£40 a month for gas, so for it to effectively triple seems wrong.
The boiler is on a timer, comes on for an hour in the morning and is on for 5 hours in the evening set a 20c - 25c. The day temperature is set at 10c. We probably fill the bath once a day with hot water, and also have had the heating turned on for additional hours during the weekends (3-4 hours at 25c). There are a total of 9 radiators in the property. We have a gas hob, but an electric oven, and one gas fire which we don't really use (looks nice, but pretty useless for keeping you warm!)
I've watched the meter when the heating has been on, and it seems to run quite quickly (although it's hard to know how fast it should run), although I haven't done an hourly read - I will do that this weekend. It's quite a big property, with large rooms and I don't think it's well insulated (we will remedy that shortly) although we did get double glazing put in at start of December and added insulation to a small loft which was above the kitchen/bathroom. So perhaps 20 units isn't unreasonable, as I'm aware 25c is quite a high temperature to run at!
One thing I have also noticed is that there is sometimes a very faint smell of gas in a cupboard in the kitchen underneath the gas hob and also next to a gas fire (which we've had on about 3 times in 2 months) in one of the reception rooms. With the heating off I don't think the meter runs (need to double check), so would that rule out the possibility of a gas leak? We do have a carbon monoxide meter in the house but it's on the top floor, I think I may see if we can move it to main floor.
I understand that I can ask for the meter to be tested if I think it's running too fast, but know that usually you'll be charged unless it's actually defective and I'm not really convinced that it is. So really, just want to get an idea of what average gas consumption is and also if mine seems excessive considering what we have/use it for.
Thanks.

alleycat`

Looks somewhat high but not impossible.
I've just done our read for December (well i did it a few days ago) and it works out at about £3 per day.
This is for a reasonably well insulated 3 bed detached (not overly large at that) which is occupied most of the time.

O and Just FYI:-

Carbon Monoxide is a by product of burnt "gas" (in low oxygen) not Methane Gas itself.

I wouldn't expect a CO meter to necessarily pick up on a Gas leak.

Your nose should pick up on a gas leak as the gas companies add something to make it smell.

CO is odourless which is why there is a need for the alarms.

Ideally you need one near where you sleep and also one in any room that has a gas burning device (especially if that room isn't ventilated very well).

thebawp

Thanks for explaining about the CO meters - the one we have is in the main bedroom, so seems sensible to leave it there in that case.

Need to see about getting the loft properly insulated asap then, hopefully that will help. Might try tweaking the timer temps as well - might drop the night temp a few degrees and increase the day temp a little.

If the readings are correct, then I wonder if anyone also has any tips on how we can reduced this (aside from sorting the insulation!).

rabbitmumu

Hi.

It's difficult to compare when you said you used to pay £30-£40 a month - was it a monthly average DD? If so, you really should be comparing to the usage in previous Dec/ Jan and then allowing for the differences between your old and new properties. That doesn't mean you shouldn't check if there's any error or gas leak though.

Assuming there's no gas leak or any other problem, I think there can be an explanation as to why your gas bill is so high.

I live in a 2-bed mid-level flat which is very well insulated. Set temperature 16-max 18 (i don't know how you can set a temp to 20-25! I would be taking my fans or aircon out!), no baths just less than 5 mins shower everyday.

Radiators only on for 1 hour in the morning in the bedroom, and 3-4 hours at night for the lounge and bedroom (but set at around 17c), and during day time we simply switch the combi boiler off.... and given it's one of the coldest winter, and I admit I am very tight in terms of using gas thanks to last winter's shocking bill (£70 a month x3 months ) when i moved into this property last Dec..... My bill this December is £25!!

I know I am an extreme case but you can use my example to compare the differences in bills when I just switched everything on last winter and had a £70 a month bill (but i would have never set the temp higher than 18-19 as it would be boiling here), and now a bit more careful it's £25 a month for a even colder winter... so it's not surprising that yours is £120+ when your place is obviously bigger, not a purpose built flat and your temp is set at such a high level.

Hope this helps

Premier_2

thebawp wrote: »

Moved into a new property in November 2010 - it's a 2 floor maisonette with 2 bedrooms on the top floor, and 2 reception rooms with a kitchen, bathroom and spare room on the main floor (1st floor - there is ground floor flat below). First bill came through in December for less than a month's usage at £127 for something like 25 days usage. This seemed very high, I checked the meter, opening reads etc. and everything seemed to suggest that they had charged for the actual amount of units used - when I worked this out, it came to 20 metric units a day. This seemed quite high, although I've only ever lived in flats previously so don't really have anything to compare it to. The boiler is only 4 years old (worcester bosch combi boiler) which has recently been serviced. I didn't really query the bill at the time as was so busy with getting house sorted that I just put it down to us settling in.
Just had a final bill from British Gas as I had switched to Npower shortly after (they took over supply at my request as I'd had them in my previous property) based on my final read - basically they've charged me £20 for 4 days usage. £5 a day for gas seems excessive (I remember in my first flat making £5 last a week on a pp meter!), and again, readings were averaging at 20 upd (but was consistent with previous bill). They are billing me for a metric meter, which I do have. In previous properties, I've usually paid around £30-£40 a month for gas, so for it to effectively triple seems wrong.
The boiler is on a timer, comes on for an hour in the morning and is on for 5 hours in the evening set a 20c - 25c. The day temperature is set at 10c. We probably fill the bath once a day with hot water, and also have had the heating turned on for additional hours during the weekends (3-4 hours at 25c). There are a total of 9 radiators in the property. We have a gas hob, but an electric oven, and one gas fire which we don't really use (looks nice, but pretty useless for keeping you warm!)
I've watched the meter when the heating has been on, and it seems to run quite quickly (although it's hard to know how fast it should run), although I haven't done an hourly read - I will do that this weekend. It's quite a big property, with large rooms and I don't think it's well insulated (we will remedy that shortly) although we did get double glazing put in at start of December and added insulation to a small loft which was above the kitchen/bathroom. So perhaps 20 units isn't unreasonable, as I'm aware 25c is quite a high temperature to run at!
One thing I have also noticed is that there is sometimes a very faint smell of gas in a cupboard in the kitchen underneath the gas hob and also next to a gas fire (which we've had on about 3 times in 2 months) in one of the reception rooms. With the heating off I don't think the meter runs (need to double check), so would that rule out the possibility of a gas leak? We do have a carbon monoxide meter in the house but it's on the top floor, I think I may see if we can move it to main floor.
I understand that I can ask for the meter to be tested if I think it's running too fast, but know that usually you'll be charged unless it's actually defective and I'm not really convinced that it is. So really, just want to get an idea of what average gas consumption is and also if mine seems excessive considering what we have/use it for.
Thanks.

1. If you want to spend less on gas, use less!
Turn down the heating. 18-21 C is usually considered ideal for living rooms.
Don't heat the house at all at times when you are not in it.
(Protect from frost - but if you are heating the property mornings & evenings, I doubt it'll freeze expect in exceptionally cold conditions)

2. If you smell gas, you have a gas leak! You'll smell it a long time before you'll ever notice it on a gas meter. Get it attended to as a matter of urgency.

3. You should fit a CO detector in the room that would be the source of CO, (i.e. where the aparatus is fitted) not the room that will identify your cause of death!
Follow the instructions for more information.

ginvzt

25C is quite a high temperature. We have a detached house, and I have used up to about 10 units a day - the temperature is set for 20C, reduced temperature 15. (I can't stand cold, and we have a couple of fishtanks as well). However, when we just had boiler changed (a month ago), one day when the heating engineer was still working in the house, he managed to use nearly 30 units in a day!!!! He was testing the boiler, and checking the pressure, etc, but I was shocked to see the number.

One thing to check is that you have no draughts (doors/windows) and if you have TRVs on your radiators, make sure they are set to an appropriate setting. There is no point in having TRV and setting it to the max. I have set mine to 3 in most of the rooms, and then to 1 in the ones we don't use much.

I don't know your boiler, but on ours we can adjust 'heating curve', and I have mine set to 1.6. We had it initially set to 2.4, which resulting in little condensing, and more gas usage. Is there something similar on your boiler? Might be worth checking.

rabbitmumu

ginvzt wrote: »

I don't know your boiler, but on ours we can adjust 'heating curve', and I have mine set to 1.6. We had it initially set to 2.4, which resulting in little condensing, and more gas usage. Is there something similar on your boiler? Might be worth checking.

Agree - this is very important. For our boiler we were told several months ago to set it at 1.3 which is the most efficient setting. Last year before we had the boiler checked I don't even know what it was on and seeing our bills drop by 2/3 I wished i had the boiler checked when we first moved in last year!

thebawp

Thanks. We've never had a timer which allowed us to set the temperature in the past, but we were having problems with our pipes freezing so the o/h pretty much insisted on keeping temps higher to stop the pipes from freezing (didn't work in the end, still had a burst pipe!). The rooms have very high ceilings (it's a tyneside flat, which is basically an old victorian terrace) and fairly large, if we set the temperature at less we don't really feel the benefit at the moment! At work I complain all the time about being too hot (temps usually hover around 25c mark there)!

Also, we have no shower which means we are using the bath more - never had baths in previous properties because I prefer showers!

Tbh after doing a bit of reading, and seeing your comments, I feel like the higher bills do make sense (as much as I hate to admit it). Will try knocking the temps down a few degrees and maybe turning off some of the radiators we don't need on.

I'm not sure about the heating curve, I had the boiler serviced recently and was told there were no problems with it - but will check documentation see if there's anything that mentions it?

Two posters have mentioned turning off heating during day - I'd read in other threads that this could be detrimental as it takes longer for the house to heat up on an evening which could result in higher bills than if you had it at a moderate temperature running all day? I'm not really sure what to think about this, both make sense in their own ways?! I think because of the big rooms, it does seem to take a while to warm up, so not sure if having low temps during the day would be beneficial?

Thanks again for everyone who's posted, it's really appreciated!

Airmike23

Don't bother turning off the radiators in unused rooms, you're boiler is pressurised to heatthe no of rads in the property, just turn to the lowest setting in the unused rooms, turning them off will save nothing and could lead to problems if we get more harsh cold weather

Premier_2

thebawp wrote: »

...Two posters have mentioned turning off heating during day - I'd read in other threads that this could be detrimental as it takes longer for the house to heat up on an evening which could result in higher bills than if you had it at a moderate temperature running all day? ...

Try reading the threads again

As for raising the temperature to avoid freezing pipes, do some reseach into what temperature water freezes. Then you'll understand why it doesn't matter if the temperature is 10 C or 25 C to prevent freezing ... but will have a considerable impact on your fuel bills.

rabbitmumu

I agree there's lots of discussions in terms of whether to switch off the heating during the day when no one is in. I am not an expert so can't really advise. My guess is that it really depends on individual properties - like my flat which will be warm in less than 10 mins vs yours which has high ceiling etc.

However, I remember reading some posts here before saying it depends on how long you are actually NOT in the property during the day. If you are talking about from 8am -7pm , then it's pointless to have it on throughout the day. For your flat - if you have a timer, then perhaps can have it switched on say 2 hours before you go home in the evening.

Re freezing pipes - probably you also wish to check if it has anything to do with the on/ off radiators- or you can simply set the boiler at the anti-freeze settings during the day if it has nothing to do with having the radiators on or off.

The other thing is as others have suggested - sort out all the insulations especially the loft and windows + reflective things? (silver stuff) behind the radiators. Then hopefully you will feel warmer even when the temp is set at 20c.