Using 4x the national average gas, Help!

seasidernorthwest

Hi all,

Last year we brought a 4 bed bungalow, the place was a wreck and we ended up taking it right back to just to external walls. Everything else was demolished. During the time obviously all utilities were capped off.

We built in masses of insulation and installed under floor heating, with new boiler, pipework etc. The whole place is insulated to within an inch of it's life.

We moved in late October and received a gas bill. Imagine our shock to get an £800 bill for a property that had been a building site with everything capped off!

So even when the supply was capped off for all those months the meter was still spinning at the same rate.

It turned out our meter was running way faster than it should have been, even while capped off. So the CoOp changed our gas meter to try and solve the problem as even they couldn't see how one property could use so much gas and it was obviously a fault. Gas leaks had already been ruled out by gas engineers.

However this new meter is running just as fast! and we have no leaks. The only gas we have is one oven (used once a day) and under floor heating.

We have wood burners (one connected to the boiler) which when on means the boiler doesn't need to fire up at all.

Meanwhile we discover that our lovely neighbour (3 bed bungalow over two floors, home all day) is paying just £7 per month is gas bills!!

To us it's obvious where the possible problem may lie but how do we get CoOp to take action? They claim that now the meter has been changed that there cannot possibly be a fault elsewhere so their bills stands.

We cannot get anyone to look into this further, it's obvious we cannot possibly be using this much gas but no one wants to know or give us any information on what to do next.

Can you help please? Thanks in advance

JJ_Egan

Does the meter run with all gas appliances off .
Have you checked individually what each appliance is using .

Lovelyjoolz

Sounds like you're paying for your neighbours gas too! How on earth are they paying just £7 a month???

The only thing you can do is switch everything off and see if the meter still moves.

matelodave

You should be reading the meter daily and trying to correlate what you are using and how much gas it uses and when. That way you'd get some idea of what is guzzling it all and then being able to do something about it.
I assume you've done the obvious and turned everything it off for a day or so just to check that it doesn't increment on it's own.


Just make sure that your bill and meter are using the same units (m2 or ft3) as that can make a big difference - one digit on a ft3 meter is worth about 33kwh whereas one on an m3 meter is only about 11 and it's quite common for you to be billed for the wrong meter.

Cardew

seasidernorthwest wrote: »

Meanwhile we discover that our lovely neighbour (3 bed bungalow over two floors, home all day) is paying just £7 per month is gas bills!!

Is his gas supplied from your meter;)

If your meter has been changed it will be a Metric meter. So one gas unit is approx 11.2kWh. have you checked to see if you are being charged for an Imperial meter - where one gas unit is approx. 32kWh?

It will be very easy to check your consumption. Firstly switch off the boiler and don't use the oven and check the meter is not showing consumption.

It is apparently almost unheard of for gas meters to over-read, to have two meters with the same symptoms, as you imply, is hard to believe.

seasidernorthwest

Thanks everyone, we plan to switch everything off for a day and test that the new meter is still clocking up. We think the thing in the street that feeds the gas to each house is faulty but getting someone to take ownership of the problem is proving very hard.

The new meter has only been in a couple of days but is still moving as fast as the old one.

will see if it still moves with everything off. To us it's obvious where the problem lie, doesn't take an idiot to realise there's an issue here.

I think once this is all sorted eventually then next door will find their gas bills rocketing.

JJ_Egan

Cannot see how the source can be the problem its the meter that measures it .

spiro

seasidernorthwest wrote: »

Thanks everyone, we plan to switch everything off for a day and test that the new meter is still clocking up. We think the thing in the street that feeds the gas to each house is faulty but getting someone to take ownership of the problem is proving very hard.

The new meter has only been in a couple of days but is still moving as fast as the old one.

will see if it still moves with everything off. To us it's obvious where the problem lie, doesn't take an idiot to realise there's an issue here.

I think once this is all sorted eventually then next door will find their gas bills rocketing.

The 'thing in the street' wont have any impact on your meter as for the meter to be turning the gas must be coming out of your side of the meter. I presume your meter is in a box on the front of the house in which case it should be obvious if you neighbour is running off your supply.

Gloomendoom

Can't you turn the gas off at the meter and see if the neighbour turns blue?

I had a problem like this when I moved in here. They were reading the wrong meter.

macman

Post your actual kWh usage-an £800 bill tells us nothing about actual consumption.

chanz4

Its impossible for a service pipe to be faulty, my guess is your internal supply is supplying the next door neighbour. take me a picture of your meter from about 1 meter away and post it