Problem £1500 quarterly from BG.

plf060

The ironic thing is that when i did the burns test the weather had just warmed up and the heating had to be turned off. I have been monitoring it and it we are using just under 2 units per day. This is just for the showers and washing pots. Everything else is electric, and that bill and consumption is normal. My average usage over the questionable quarter is 14 units per day. Does anyone know the average?

victor2

You started out talking about dual fuel, but then seem to have concentrated on the gas. Read both meters regularly (like daily for a while) and talk in kWh. That's easy with electricity, as it's what the meter reads. With gas you have to convert the units, and you've already established that it's a metric meter, and the conversion rate you can use.
14 m3, or about 150 kWh of gas is not unreasonable through a cold spell and your 22 kWh per day with no heating on is not outrageous for all your hot water, including showers.
Electricity doesn't vary much throughout the year if you don't have any electric heating, especially as you've fitted energy saving bulbs. But still you should look into how much you are using in a typical day. It does cost around 3 times as much as gas per kWh.
Don't be tempted too much by what comparison sites or other suppliers say they can charge you per month. Only ever use annual kWh usage on the comparison sites and you need to establish what a realistic annual usage is for you, now you're looking in to reducing it. By all means make sure you are not on BG's standard tariff, as there are almost certainly cheaper BG ones you could be on, but I wouldn't jump ship just yet.

What DD amount were you paying after you cleared the £1500 debt? If you didn't increase it from the £22 per month you initially stated then you won't have come anywhere near paying for your actual usage in the first quarter, when heating was probably being used.

Edit:
Sorry, that last sentence doesn't make sense, having read your posts again!
How did you establish you had used another £1500 of utilities in the first quarter? Clearly the increased DD won't have cleared the original debt yet.

plf060

Sorry i mentioned dual fuel because that's the type of service we are on. I have just rummaged around our BG account and i have now found that we have used just over 20000 kWh in that quarter, £911's worth. I find that hard to believe after the tweaks i made to the heating. It is also 3 times the average for my type of household and occupants. I have also looked at the my boiler and it uses 3m3 of gas per hour at maximum pressure which would suggest it had to be burning constant for 4 hours at maximum pressure to use the extra 12m3 it used per day in that period. Except it wasn't. Now my head is even more mangled.

victor2, the February 2013 bill was approx £1500, we have paid £500 of that off. You may as well say that bill is for the previous 12 months. Then another bill for £1500 came in may, so it now stands at £2500. It is the last quarterly that is the problem.

victor2

So your figures are for gas only, although your payments will obviously go towards both fuels on a dual fuel contract?

You really need to talk in kWh when looking at usage, as that relates directly to the amount of gas you have used.
Go through whatever meter readings you have and work out the kWh used over the associated periods. Only then can you link it to the cost.
With your heating, the boiler will run flat out (although not constantly burning gas) when heating the house up from cold, but then after say an hour or so, will settle down into just maintaining the temperature. Obviously, now is not an ideal time to test it though!

plf060

Well, i think i have found the solution, and it is a mixture of a few things, so i am going to have to pay it.

Firstly, the quarterly was not actually a quarter, it was for 4 and a half months, from beginning of Jan to mid May, i will ring them up shortly to find out why this is, but that period was really cold so it has all added up.

On top of that, when i tweaked the thermostat i set it to come on at 15 degrees in the day, to keep the chill off while there was nobody here thinking there is no way the temperature would drop that low. However, this thermostat is on the cold outside wall which gets no sunlight during the winter months, or any month actually (shadowed by adjacent house). Even now the thermostat is saying its only 17 degrees when outside it is a lovely 22 degrees. I can only assume that the thermostat was dropping below the 15 degrees while nobody was here.

The electricity is normal, between £50 and £70 p/m. The gas however, after 25644 kWh of usage, came in at £1134.

From now on the heating will be off until 30mins before someone is due home, even if its -50 outside. I am now going to sulk in the corner. Thanks to those who contributed. TC.

victor2

Sounds like you're making good progress then. And should soon be saving money too!