Ridiculous gas usage figures - faulty meter or boiler?

chanz4

by the way blank your msn out as people in the industry can tell where you live

ziggyman99

8.4 cu. metres an hour is impossible out of a G4 meter as it only passes 6 cu. m/hr. Also, if it was faulty it just wouldn't register the usage. It's impossible for them to speed up as they use a bellows affair to turn the dials. The bellows have to be moved by the gas.
Additionally, unless your boiler was on top of your gas meter with a large diameter pipe connecting it, there is no way the gas pipe would allow that amount of gas through. The boiler would stop working due to insufficient pressure. And finally, if the boiler was running that much over-rated it would probably melt off the wall!

ziggyman99

I suppose the 1's digit could be incrementing the 10's?? Suck together? They certainly cannot run fast.

EDIT: Actually that makes total sense. I'd expect about 1 cu.m usage in an hour on your boiler. Your meter has incremented 11. By jove! I think we've cracked it!

elantan

hey all sorry to butt in ... can you tell me how i would work out if my meter is reading ok and how to work out how much my boiler is using as i have been really trying to get on top of our gas usage and i dont seem to be getting anywhere ... my gas and electricity have been put up to £145 a month now and we can see our breath in the house day and night as it is that cold but the meter seems to be spinning away like crazy

i'm not saying it is running fast or wrong i just really want to know how i work it all out so that i can keep on top of it

btw i live in a two bedroom detatched house ... two adults no kids

Cardew

elantan wrote: »

hey all sorry to butt in ... can you tell me how i would work out if my meter is reading ok and how to work out how much my boiler is using as i have been really trying to get on top of our gas usage and i dont seem to be getting anywhere ... my gas and electricity have been put up to £145 a month now and we can see our breath in the house day and night as it is that cold but the meter seems to be spinning away like crazy

i'm not saying it is running fast or wrong i just really want to know how i work it all out so that i can keep on top of it

btw i live in a two bedroom detatched house ... two adults no kids

You really should start a new thread. However you need to check what type of meter you have - it will have M3(like the one in the photo) which means it is a metric meter. Or Ft3(cubic feet) which means an Imperial meter.

Each metric unit(ignore the red digits) is approx 11kWh(about 40 pence) and Each Imperial unit is about 32kWh about £1.20.

squirrel

ziggyman99 wrote: »

I suppose the 1's digit could be incrementing the 10's?? Suck together? They certainly cannot run fast.

EDIT: Actually that makes total sense. I'd expect about 1 cu.m usage in an hour on your boiler. Your meter has incremented 11. By jove! I think we've cracked it!

Thanks ziggyman not sure if this is whats happening as I tested usage by using the red numbers over 2 minutes and 10 mins and multiplying to get an hour as well as just counting the cubic metres used in an hour. (They all came to round about the same figure of 8.4) If the digits were stuck together the number in red would move at a normal speed wouldnt they? Any more ideas?

If the boiler cant handle that amount of gas and the meter cant run that fast than how the heck is it registering these figures?

Cardew

This statement:

the pilot light is also using quite a lot of gas at 0.5 cubic metres per day

doesn't point toward a high reading meter. That is around £60 a year(2,000kWh). There are several posts about pilot light consumption and even several years ago, when gas was 50% cheaper, people were complaining that the pilot light cost more than £60 a year.

energysavingexp

squirrel wrote: »

Hi energysavingexp, here is a pic of meter. I took a reading 3 days ago (Tues night) it was 9330 now 9341, going up 11 cubic m - in that time the central heating has been on about 1 hour 10 mins!

thanks for the pic if you are not using any gas and the meter does move then chech your gas pipe for other use ie: branches off it to someone else. next door
if it does not move put on your boiler on full take a reading then take one 1hr later then give us the readings so i / we can give more advice

squirrel

Cardew wrote: »

This statement:



doesn't point toward a high reading meter. That is around £60 a year(2,000kWh). There are several posts about pilot light consumption and even several years ago, when gas was 50% cheaper, people were complaining that the pilot light cost more than £60 a year.

Crikey I wish it was that cheap! Costing me about double that! But the pilot light is not the real problem, its running the boiler thats using up loads.

energysavingexp - I'll do as you suggest tomorrow and post the 2 readings on here. Ta

Cardew

squirrel wrote: »

Crikey I wish it was that cheap! Costing me about double that! But the pilot light is not the real problem, its running the boiler thats using up loads.

energysavingexp - I'll do as you suggest tomorrow and post the 2 readings on here. Ta

Why is it double? You can only use the Tier 2 figure when calculating costs - and that should be in the region of 3p/kWh. 2,000kWh for pilot light is around £60.

I appreciate the pilot light isn't the problem, but if your boiler is using 4 or more times the maximum possible gas(according to the meter) Then if the meter were faulty, you would expect the pilot light consumption to be 4 or more times higher - yet it is normal consumption.

The other point is that no boiler would be firing continuously using maximum input for an hour - so if it is using 90kWh an hour(according to meter) then that is probably a factor of 6 or 7 times maximum.