Advice on gas usage, incorrect billing and checking please

eclareb

jalexa wrote: »

No, that's 23kWhrs/day in the middle of summer for 2 x young person baths a week (and electric showers). Something isn't right. Pls pls edit the read/dates transposition typo. Keeps catching me out when I do calcs on your other readings.

Edit now done.

Ive done the bath test.
Started stop watch meter read: 18403 050
Ran bath water for 10mins to fill the bath and stopped watch at 10mins exactly. Meter then read 18403 433

Im not sure how to put a pic on here, the insert image above is asking for a URL?

macman

You post the pic on a photo hosting site and then link to it.

eclareb

[QUOTE=dogshome;
I started this excercise to see if your lifestyle showed a weekly pattern, which it doesn't.
You may know reasons why the consumption drops to 'normal' useage for the periods of 20th/22nd Sep & 24th/25th Sep, but outside that I think a meter check is needed - what type of display does the meter have?
Do you have any comments jalexa


[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

I have taken a pic of the meter but dont know how to put it on here.
The display is numbered 'drums' that roll, not digital (if thats what you meant?)

jalexa

eclareb wrote: »

Ive done the bath test.
Started stop watch meter read: 18403 050
Ran bath water for 10mins to fill the bath and stopped watch at 10mins exactly. Meter then read 18403 433

OK. What you did was run your boiler at what should have been (depending on boiler settings) close to full rated output for 10 minutes.

So (18403.433 -18403.050) x 11.2 x 6 (to convert to one hour) = 26kWhrs

So a little lower than I might have expected but that could just be flow settings setup for winter cold water temperatures. Definitely not gross over reading by the meter which was the point of the test.

So now you need to consider dogshome's points.

eclareb

macman wrote: »

You post the pic on a photo hosting site and then link to it.

thanks macman, could you expand on that a little please. Ive had a look around the mse site but cant see any obvious 'how to' or help sections to advise me.
Thanks

macman

I'm not sure I can expand on it any more. You upload the pics to a 3rd party site such as flickr, and then paste the hyperlink into your post.

eclareb

dogshome wrote: »

Hi elcareb - I did a few sums on the readings you posted which showed some very odd results on your daily consumption

Thurs.20th Sep - Sat 22 Sep 0.51 Units used in 50.5 hours
Sat. 22nd Sep - Mon. 24th Sep 5 Units used in 45 Hours
Mon 24th Sep - Tues 25th Sep 0.343 Units used in 21 hours
Tues 25th Sep - Wed 26th Sep 2.234 Units used in 24 hours
Wed 26th Sep - Fri 28th Sep 9.1 units used in 51 hours
Fri 28th Sep - Sun 30th Sep 8.7 Units used in 45 Hours
Sun 30th Sep - Mon 1st Oct 3.95 Units used in 28 hours

I started this excercise to see if your lifestyle showed a weekly pattern, which it doesn't.
You may know reasons why the consumption drops to 'normal' useage for the periods of 20th/22nd Sep & 24th/25th Sep, but outside that I think a meter check is needed - what type of display does the meter have?
Do you have any comments jalexa

Thanks, your post now has me seriously worried....
The period 20th - 22nd when I started this process was when i was paranoid about using the hot water at all.

I have a dishwasher and Ive been trying to wash up by hand rather than use that, but Im not sure if thats more economical or not. (During this time, I didnt do either!)

on 26th eve had heating on for 1 hour,
on 27th had the heating on for 2 hours.

is it worth doing a heating test similar to the water test of reading the meter and then putting it on and then turning it off? or has the hot water test shown results that would just be repeated?

Bottom line, Im confused that installing a more economical supposedly better boiler in Sept 2011 has resulted in my usage going up by so much, even tho the timer settings are the same?

macman

Your dishwasher runs off a cold water feed and heats it's water by electricity, so it's irrelevant to your gas usage.

jalexa

eclareb wrote: »

I have a dishwasher and Ive been trying to wash up by hand rather than use that, but Im not sure if thats more economical or not.

Is your dishwasher (and washing machine) not cold feed only?

eclareb

jalexa wrote: »

Is your dishwasher (and washing machine) not cold feed only?

yes, checked. They are.
So not making much difference to my gas. Saving on my elec and increasing my gas... not a very good plan was it!