Gas meter indicating excessive gas usage

Fire_Fox

lemon_jelly wrote: »

I've just been reading through the tenancy agreement again which states:

"The landlord agrees to take reasonable steps to ensure that the landlord's domestic gas and electrical appliances and other similar mechanical appliances in the premises for which he is responsible are safe, in proper working order and in repair both at commencement of, and during the tenancy, as may be necessary from time to time in order to comply with the landlords obligations..."

Does "proper working order" require him to fix the faulty ignition and identify the cause of such a high gas consumption (assuming the meter test comes back with no fault)?

I'm going to put this in a letter to both the landlord and the letting agents.

I'm guessing I also need permission off the landlord to have the meter replaced and tested?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Already told you this, it doesn't even need to be in the tenancy agreement by law the landlord must keep the heating and hot water safe and in working order. If the faulty ignition means there is sometimes no heating or hot water it needs properly repairing.

Meter does not belong to the landlord, the supplier will replace if it is faulty. You would only need consent to electively switch from a credit to prepayment meter or vice versa because this affects future tenancies. Arguably you getting the meter tested and replaced if faulty is 'acting in a tenant like manner'.

lemon_jelly

OK, so I recorded the gas usage measured on the meter over a 2 to 3 minute period. The heating was off and the boiler was just on the pilot light. It gets through 7p in a minute, just on the pilot light.

Using the calculation in another forum post, it's getting through around 8kw just on the pilot light. I think the boiler input is 19kw for normal usage (I admit my calculations could be wrong).

Is there a setting on the boiler that could have been changed by the plumber to increase the use of gas by the boiler (a quick fix to stop the pilot light going out all the time)?

lemon_jelly

Actually, I think I misread the meter and the usage is worse than I thought.

The two readings I took are:

6071.372m3 (06071372b) start
6071.627m3 (06071627b) after 1 minute.

On the meter I have, the decimal point is drawn on the casing rather than part of the digital display and falls directly in line with the "1" in the above figures.

So this would mean that the pilot light has used 0.255m3 in a minute.

flubrush

lemon_jelly wrote: »

Using the calculation in another forum post, it's getting through around 8kw just on the pilot light.

I checked my pilot light usage last summer when the central heating and water heating were switched off and I was using about 33kW per week, which is almost 5kW per day. So your 8kW is not too far away and it could be that there is an adjustment in your boiler to set the pilot light flame level. I must admit that I was a bit surprised at the 5kW figure for my pilot light.

Jim.

rogerblack

flubrush wrote: »

I checked my pilot light usage last summer when the central heating and water heating were switched off and I was using about 33kW per week, which is almost 5kW per day. So your 8kW is not too far away and it could be that there is an adjustment in your boiler to set the pilot light flame level. I must admit that I was a bit surprised at the 5kW figure for my pilot light.

Jim.

Not 5kW - 5kWh/24h/day = 200W.

kWh - kilowatt-hour - which is what many fuels are billed in is an amount of heat - 1kW - produced for an hour.
You can have a 5kW heater using 5kWh - which means it's been on for an hour.
Or it can use .1kW if it's been on for 0.1/5h = .02h = 1 min.

.25m^3/min is about 3kWh.
This is 180kW.

You can't draw this from a standard meter, if you hacksaw off the outlet pipe, and light it.
(I do not recommend this as a form of home heating).

Get it replaced.

flubrush

rogerblack wrote: »

Not 5kW - 5kWh/24h/day = 200W.

kWh - kilowatt-hour - which is what many fuels are billed in is an amount of heat - 1kW - produced for an hour.
You can have a 5kW heater using 5kWh - which means it's been on for an hour.
Or it can use .1kW if it's been on for 0.1/5h = .02h = 1 min.

.25m^3/min is about 3kWh.
This is 180kW.

You can't draw this from a standard meter, if you hacksaw off the outlet pipe, and light it.
(I do not recommend this as a form of home heating).

I'm not quite sure what your are getting at here. My pilot light apparently consumes 5000watts per day or, if you prefer, 200watts per hour. If I want to find out how much that is costing me then I would convert into kWh and get the price using my supplier's price per kWh. I fail to see where 180kW calculation comes into the discussion.

Get it replaced.

How can you make that statement? At the moment the boiler heats my three bed semi for £30 per month (might go up at a bit after this colder winter) so it's not too bad on the efficiency stakes. The apparent pilot light usage is costing me around about £75 per year, which I might save installing a new boiler with a cheaper method of ignition, until I take the cost of the installation into account.:)

BTW, I will investigate the pilot light usage again this summer when I can turn all the gas heating off - it still seems a bit high to me.

Jim.

victor2

My aging gas boiler pilot light uses just under 5kWh per day.

Don't think in money, think in kWh, and find out how much gas is being used over say a day, with the heating at a comfortable level.
You can then convert the kWh to cost for the tariff in use, to establish what the meter should have taken.

ValHaller

flubrush wrote: »

I'm not quite sure what your are getting at here. My pilot light apparently consumes 5000watts per day or, if you prefer, 200watts per hour. If I want to find out how much that is costing me then I would convert into kWh and get the price using my supplier's price per kWh. I fail to see where 180kW calculation comes into the discussion.

What he is getting at is that energy is measured in kWh - kiloWatthours - and you quote energy measurements inkW - kiloWatts. kiloWatts are the speed at which energy is delivered, kiloWatthours are the amount of energy delivered.

What you are saying is as meaningless (or ridiculous) as saying "My car travels at 1200 miles per hour every day, or if you prefer, 50 miles per hour every hour'

The 180kWh is a calculation based on 1m^3 of gas delivering energy of about 12kWh. So if the meter is reading 0.25m^3/min, this is 3kWh/min (slight mistake from rogerblack here) which is 180kWh/h - which is 180kW

Now, if you know what a kW is, 180kW is a ridiculous amount of power - approx 10 times what a boiler will run at - so the conclusion is that the gas meter is well in error.

lemon_jelly

Hmm, I ended up with a figure of 164kW as follows:

0.255m3 (gas flow per minute) * 60 = 15.3m3/h
15.3 * 10.72 = 164kW

My calculations could be wrong though. I just used a calculation found on another forum (I can't link to it as I can't post links). Anyway, the figure of 15.3m3/h is physically impossible anyway, if the figure of 6m3/h max on the meter casing is right, as rogerblack has already pointed out.

Anyway, the latest is that the letting agent are getting their plumber to get a price for a new part for the ignition so they can put pressure on the landlord to get it fixed (this is after I steadfastly refused to use a match to relight the boiler!!).

I also rang the gas suppliers again and kicked up a fuss, so the meter issue is on their complaints list now. They have promised to ring me back tomorrow.

Now I just have to wait and see.

Thanks for everyone's comments

lemon_jelly

Actually, as a software engineer myself, I'm astounded that there are no checks in place by the gas supplier that prevent people from being charged more than the gas pipe can actually supply. You'd think some sort of warning would come up on the account.