Is my meter faulty? Huge gas bill!

FlakeHC

Can anyone give me advice please? Just got our gas Bill for the last quarter and it shows we are using 3 x the gas we used over the same period last year. This is impossible as this year we used our coal fire every weekend over the colder months. We were expecting our bills to go down.
The only gas appliance we have is a two year old boiler. Yesterday evening I turned the boiler off at the wall so even the pilot light went out, then checked the meter and low and behold it was still running!. I videoed it to show my husband as I thought he would not believe me. Over the period of about two hours I repeatedly carried this procedure out for varying lengths of time and the same thing happened though in some cases it did not happened for 30 min.
We called British Gas our supplier and they were not very helpful but did agree to hold off putting our gas and electrics to £307 a month to cover our usage. We gave them a new reading as the meter had only been read 3 weeks earlier and were told that in that 3 week period our usage had gone up even higher. They still maintained that it was unlikely that our meter was faulty but did say our bills were double the national average for a house of our size (4 bed, detached) BG did offer to check our meter if we really wanted but told us they would charge us £200 for the pleasure ! This we would get back if our meters was proved to be faulty.

Has anyone else had an experience like this?

Nada666

Do you have a metric or an imperial meter? If you have a metric meter and British Gas have it logged as imperial then that will result in a mistaken trebling.

One metric meter unit is about 11.2 kWhs whereas an imperial unit is 32 kWhs.

FlakeHC

My meter is metric. Any idea why my meter is turning and the electricity to the gas boiler is switched off? I switched it off for an hour tonight and it did not move for a while but when I later checked I'd used 1.5 units. Yesterday I had used 67 units

FlakeHC

Should have said, the heating is normally on for 4 hrs a day. Yesterday this would have been more like 2 hr due to me testing the meter. Additionally my meter keeps going to 000000000 every 30 seconds or so. Is this normal?

[Deleted User]

FlakeHC wrote: »

My meter is metric. Any idea why my meter is turning and the electricity to the gas boiler is switched off? I switched it off for an hour tonight and it did not move for a while but when I later checked I'd used 1.5 units. Yesterday I had used 67 units

Yes, your meter is metric but is the supplier billing you as if its an Imperial meter. Its not uncommon, I found one only yesterday. ring cust services and check

FlakeHC

Will call them. Checked the bill and it does not say on it what the units are. How're, at the bottom it does say:
We convert your unit used into kilowatt hours of energy using the the following formula
A) metric units used
x calorific value
C) divided by metric conversion (3.6)
E) = kWh

Over the last 12 hrs the heating and hot water were not used and the meter clocked on 11 units. I then took a shower with the boiler switched on. Over the 20 min period I was in the shower for 5 min and a further 3 units were used.

From the 4th dec to 7 th march we have used 34651.13 kWh based on actual reading and their calculations

Johnandabby

Is it a new smart meter then? The traditional gas meter has a mechanical dial rather than an electronic display.

has this been installed since last winter? Could they be charging you for the actual usage rather than it being spread across the year?

Johnandabby

FlakeHC wrote: »

Will call them. Checked the bill and it does not say on it what the units are. How're, at the bottom it does say:
We convert your unit used into kilowatt hours of energy using the the following formula
A) metric units used
x calorific value
C) divided by metric conversion (3.6)
E) = kWh

Over the last 12 hrs the heating and hot water were not used and the meter clocked on 11 units. I then took a shower with the boiler switched on. Over the 20 min period I was in the shower for 5 min and a further 3 units were used.

From the 4th dec to 7 th march we have used 34651.13 kWh based on actual reading and their calculations

35,000 kwh!!! Thats equivalent to a 16kW boiler running flat out for 24 hrs a day, every day!! Just not possible and BG should know this.

Sounds like a returnable fee of £200 to get them to look at your meter could be money well spent. Problem with the meter or a gas leak somewhere.

FlakeHC

This is the usage since December only. Since the March reading they are saying my usage is up.... I have a heating engineer I know well coming to have a look on Monday. He will test the boiler usage against the meter. I'm informed that the meter (digital) should not turn while the boiler is switched off at wall as I have a modern boiler with a pilot light that only goes on when there is a call for heat.
I should add that both my dishwasher and my washing machine are solely electric and the bath is used max 2 times a week.

We changed to BG two year ago come June. Since the our bills have mor than doubled despite fitting a A rated Bosh boiler.

Just don't get it.

daveyjp

Turn off the gas at the meter and see what happens.

FlakeHC

Ok here goes.
At 10.35 reading now 14010.0446
Switched off gas at meter
Checked at 11.15 reading no change
Checked at 11.35 reading now 14010.0676 - slight change but not as much as when boiler switched off at wall
Checked at 11.55 reading now 14010.6866