Massive Gas Bill - Advice please?

simonjewell

Hi,

We normally use about 4,000kWh of gas per year, and have done for the last 5 or 6 years. I just opened my Sainsbury's Energy annual statement, and that says I have used about 34,000kWh in the last year!! That's at least £1000 more than normal.

To give some figures, according to this statement, we used 1413kWh in the first 112 days of the billing period, and 19154kWh on the next 95 days!! That's 201kWh per day, compared to 12kWh per day. We've used 2kWh in the last 7 days (which sounds too low, even for us), but 846kWh in the last 28 days???

We only have an external water heater (works like a combi boiler, but without the heating part) and a gas hob in the house - we have electric underfloor heating everywhere for heating. Can anyone give any advice on how that much gas can be used?

We had smart meters installed when we moved in about 7 years ago, and the display of that shows 2 spikes of usage in the last 28 days - most of the days are so low they don't even show up. On one of those days we were out pretty much all day - it was my 40th birthday, so it's quite easy to remember what we did (for my wife, anyway :beer:).

Long post I know, but does anyone have any ideas? Sainsbury's want me to take meter readings every day for the next week - but the last 7 days are barely registering any values.

Cheers,
Simon

Robin9

It is possible that the Smart meter has stopped communicating - do your bills still say A for the reading type ?

simonjewell

Robin9 wrote: »

It is possible that the Smart meter has stopped communicating - do your bills still say A for the reading type ?

Sainsbury's don't actually use the Smart bit of the meter - they only rely on meter readings. The meter was installed by BG, but we have changed providers many times since then.

Robin9

Ok - so are the bills based on Actual or Estimated readings

simonjewell

Robin9 wrote: »

Ok - so are the bills based on Actual or Estimated readings

They are based on actual readings, which is why I think it must be either the meter itself, or one of our gas appliances.

matelodave

Who reads the meter you or someone else. Could it be a misread.

If it's you then surely you'd notice a big jump in consumption and try to investigate rather than just waiting for a ginormous bill to come in and then trying to see why?

simonjewell

matelodave wrote: »

Who reads the meter you or someone else. Could it be a misread.

If it's you then surely you'd notice a big jump in consumption and try to investigate rather than just waiting for a ginormous bill to come in and then trying to see why?

It's someone else - I haven't provided a meter reading for ages (my bad). I've never really checked the gas usage, because it's always been so low - less than £1 a day for years. The meter was read on 31st March, which has prompted this latest bill. As far as I am concerned there has been no significant increase in usage - certainly not an 800% increase!!

I have checked the meter reading and it is correct. That doesn't explain the huge spikes in consumption though. Surely a leak would be more consistent (not to mention smelly and dangerous!). I'll upload the picture I took of the smart meter display, which might make this clearer (or not...).

simonjewell

Well, I wanted to post the pictures I took of my smart meter, but I can't post images or links...

Carrot007

Just post an abbriviated version to get past the filter.

Also 4000kWh seems VERY low, I use around 16,000 so 34K is not unfeasable with heavy usage. I would assume you have no gas heating at 4K.

simonjewell

Carrot007 wrote: »

Just post an abbriviated version to get past the filter.

Also 4000kWh seems VERY low, I use around 16,000 so 34K is not unfeasable with heavy usage. I would assume you have no gas heating at 4K.

Yes, electric underfloor heating in every room. Just a gas hob and a hot water heater. 4000kWh has been the average figure for the last 6 years.

I took a meter reading this morning of 4657.341 - and after a day of washing up, some light cooking and a shower, the reading hasn't changed at all. Not even one thousandth of a cubic meter?

And the images: :j

sygem.com/img/gas1.jpg
sygem.com/img/gas2.jpg

Carrot007

Well from your reads something odd has been going on since Late November., with not so much in Feb.

Looking at the 28 Day view there are some very big use days.

Looks like something is being left on a lot for some days.

Best thing to do now is keep an eye on it and investigate what is occuring on one of the big house days. Does the handheld unit have a current useage "speedo" type display you can keep a look at as much as possible?