Help - gas usage!

vjacx

Hi, looking for pearls of wisdom! Recently moved to new house (6 Jan) - gas was supplied by British gas, moving in reading was 00124 (measured in cubic meters). Changed suppliers and submitted final read on 23 Feb - 00682. Just got final gas bill from them just under £300! For 6 ish weeks. It's a 3 bed detached with 2 adults, 2 children living here, gas hob and oven but only used once a day generally.

Called them today to double check they have correct readings (they do) so clearly the bill is right.

I now urgently need to reduce our gas consumption - we have a 30 year old boiler and are looking at replacing this anyway, it's timed to come on at 5.45am until 8.30am and 4.30pm till 11pm. There are no seperate hot water controls so this comes on at the same times (though I've just reduced these to 2 hour timeframes am and pm). There's no thermostat on the water tank - hubby thinks this could be the problem - are we better off turning the water controls off totally and using the electric shower to reduce power heating the water?

Totally gobsmacked by usage - if anyone has any ideas what else we can do to reduce it, I'll be grateful! I am of the put another jumper on and get on with it brigade, hubby isn't but I think he is about to be converted like it or not!

RedFraggle

How well insulated is your house?
What are the central heating controls like i.e. is there a room stat and are TRVs fitted to the radiators?
Have you had a leak test done to see if anything is leaking gas?

vjacx

Hi, loft and cavity wall insulation, but loft needs topping up (100mm). Room stat is in the hall and not sure it's working well (eg turning up or down seems to make little difference to radiator heat), no TRVs. We turned everything off tonight to check there wasn't a meter fault - there isn't but now can't get the boiler to reignite (one way of saving money ).

Do I need a gas safe engineer to check for leaks? The vendor actually had a gas safety cert (type landlords supply) done just before we moved in, they left us the certificate, everything was fine on that.

macman

An opening meter reading of 00124 implies a recent meter change (unless it's gone around the clock). Have a look to see if there's a label on it giving the fitting date. If so, I'm wondering if you are being billed on imperial rather than metric units? 558 cu m is about 6,340kWh-is this what you've been billed for? If you are still being billed in imperial units (100's cu ft), then your bill will be nearly 300% higher. The old meter would have been imperial.
Make and model of your boiler? There's no automatic reason to change an old boiler, but you do need to sort out the tank 'stat, room 'stat, TRV's and the loft insulation (you should have 170mm, not 100mm). Deal with those before you start changing boilers.
If there was a gas leak you'd know about it.