How many Cubic Meters of Gas have you used over each month of the winter?

Mr_ChriZ

I moved into my first own property on the 15th of January.
I had a brand new gas meter installed almost instantly as the old one was leaking.

Since then I've managed to use 198 cubic meters of gas. (Aprox £100 worth)

The property is a small/medium size mid terrace house with 3 bedrooms. The property is old but not to badly insulated. Double Glazing all round.

The Boiler is 15 years Worcester 280 Combi, so not the latest eco machine but... theres worse out there I'm sure.

All the radiators have TRV's. There is no separate room thermostat although I think I will fit one fairly soonish.
7 radiators are turned on and set to number 2 on the TRV's. (I don't think the TRV's are actually working well... the rad's always seem to be quite hot). The boiler is set to a medium setting on it's dial.

In the house has been me and one other person, although the one other person has only been there two weeks.

The boilers on a timer. It was set to come on for two hours in the morning, and 6 hours in the evening. (Not too unreasonable?)

It seems then that I'm getting through a lot of gas considering the number of occupants. What I can't tell is if this is just because it has been so cold recently and the systems reacting to that and this is normal, or if something else is up with either my boiler, or the new meter. Swalec weren't all that helpful.

I've done a significant amount of Google searching and can't find any reliable figures for how many cubic meters a month people tend to use specifically at this time of year in a house around the size I've moved into. As a result it makes it difficult to determine if this is really that bad or just typical of a January with temperatures of 0 degrees centigrade!

Instead all I can find are lots of reports about how much people spend a month averaged out over a year. Or how people are getting incorrect bills due to confusion over meters and feet.
My question is then:
"How many Cubic Meters of Gas have you used over each month of the winter?"
There must be others though I'm sure who are keeping detailed records on this?
This seems the right Forum!

Thanks in advance,
Chris

HappyMJ

The average gas usage is 16,500kWh per year for an average property.

13.9% of your annual usage is in January. So about 2,300kWh divide by 11.2 and you get about 205 cubic metres.

You said 198 since 15th Jan until I'm assuming today so you are average.

The number of occupants in the property only affects your hot water usage and not the heating. The heating will be almost the same with more occupants.....but the hot water usage will increase.

edit: if you want to keep detailed records ten enter your weekly meter readings into http://ebico.imeasure.org.uk and that will show you if you use more or less than average based on the weather for last week.

spinningsheep

I just did our readings and between 7th Nov and 11th Feb we have used 300 imperial units making a use of 9478kwh by my reakoning, 846 cubic meters, and this cost £427.93, we are in debit now by about £70 and we pay £52 pm by DD, and we had the heating on MINIMUM 8 hours a day sometimes longer in the really cold snap we just had so we are really happy, was expecting a huge shortfall and a catchup bill. We are 2 adults in a 4 bed end of terrace, average insulation and all but 1 window and door double glazed, 28kw Baxi A rated boiler.

NB> Just spoken to BG and they have reduced our DD on the electric to £62, and Gas is at £52 still. Happy bunny

victor2

Bigger house and higher usage than you report, but gas CH, HW and hob. My usage graph illustrate the winter swing nicely. Notice how electricity usage is pretty constant throughout the year:

Mr_ChriZ

All very useful posts, thanks very much.
Will definitely give that measure tool a go.

Consumerist

You can go direct to iMeasure <here>.

It can be helpful to report your readings each week and get a plot of your usage but don't take iMeasure too seriously because the building types they offer are limited and so are the weather stations they use for degree-day numbers.

chanz4

Myn was very high also this time around, I have put it down to the cold

victor2

January was indeed considerably colder than the same time last year, as my gas usage in post #4 indicates. But the last week or so has been the opposite, when we went through a cold spell a year ago, and it's been a little milder here (in the Midlands). The differences in minimum daily temperatures have been in the region of 4 to 5 degrees C.

sam.4000

My usage has been 267 units since 4th October 2012 which is really low. I have central heating (new boiler 2010) and I don't use my fire as it needs servicing. There is only me in a 2 bedroom terrace house. In the same time I have used 1368 units of electricity about 10.8 kw per day. I do have a electical heater but only use this for 2 hours a week when it's really cold. My house is cold (about 14'c) but as there is only me and I have an electic blanket I use some nights when I need it.

Consumerist

sam.4000 wrote: »

My usage has been 267 units since 4th October 2012 . . .

Are they metric units (i.e. cubic metres @ ~11kWh per unit) or imperial units (i.e. 100s of cu.ft. ~31kWh per unit)?

sam.4000

Consumerist wrote: »

Are they metric units (i.e. cubic metres @ ~11kWh per unit) or imperial units (i.e. 100s of cu.ft. ~31kWh per unit)?

Metric 11kwh per unit 267 units in total over 131 days.