Huge Gas Bill - Faulty Meter??

dogchew

I have had a read of some of the other posts regarding faulty meters, but they have only left me more confused.
I have a mechanical meter, installed when we moved in Dec 1999.
I read the meter every quarter and submit online.
I did Dec to March 2016, and apparently I have used 108973 (kWh)3 which is an average daily of 1222.39.
Last Dec to March I used 11718, daily average 128.77.
I have a combi boiler for heating and hot water - but electric cooker.
I have got onto Scottish power, they say the meter is not faulty as it doesn't move with boiler switched off.
They have now got me to do daily readings for the past 7 days, and this is coming out as about 10-12 units per day consistently.
My plumber pal says it is not possible for me to have used 10 times as much gas as the previous equivalent period. On the previous figures my daily average varies from 21 in the summer to 128 in the winter.
My questions are:
can the meter be faulty, even though it appears to be reading consistently now?
Is it possible for a combi boiler to use that much gas?
Scottish Power are now demanding 3000 pounds !!!

[Deleted User]

There have been instances of a , I think , it was a Siemens E6 digital gas meter which was going haywire and found to be displaying the same sort of increases in usage. I m not aware of a mechanical meter acting like that .Is the meter metric or imperial ?.

victor2

Is it an old dial type meter, or one with numbers rolling round?
The dial meters are easy to misread and you could have made a mistake on one of the leading digits. You always take the lower number if the pointer is between two digits. Example at:
https://www.edfenergy.com/for-home/help-support/read-meter
click on the Gas Meter tab. Also note the dials turn in different directions.

Robin9

Could you post your actual readings for the last 18 months please.

On face value this looks like an honest meter reading error

[Deleted User]

victor2 wrote: »

Is it an old dial type meter, or one with numbers rolling round?
The dial meters are easy to misread and you could have made a mistake on one of the leading digits. You always take the lower number if the pointer is between two digits. Example at:
https://www.edfenergy.com/for-home/help-support/read-meter
click on the Gas Meter tab. Also note the dials turn in different directions.

There are virtually no gas meters around which operate with rotating pointers like the electric "dial " meters. I do see a few but they are all larger business gas meters, I`ve never seen a domestic gas dial meter.

dogchew

Thanks for all the responses.
It is not a dial meter, mechanical similar to an old milometer on a car.
My energy usage dashboard does not give me meter readings, just usage in kWh
20/6/13 - 17/9/2013 2872 90 days
18/9/2013-9/6/2014 14336 265 days
11/6/2014-15/9/2014 6459 97 days
16/9/2014-15/12/2014 6314 91 days
16/12/2014-16/3/2015 11718 91 days
17/3/2015-11/6/2015 6737 87 days
12/6/2015-9/9/2015 1903 90 days
10/9/2015-07/12/2015 4645 89 days
8/12/2015-05/03/2016 108793 89 days

Could I have cocked up the meter reading that much?
The last meter reading I did was not misread. The last 7 days the meter readings were
40892
40903
40916
40921
40934
40945
40954
40964
so I know I am not using that much gas.
I am sure Scottish Power have been round within the last 2 years to read the meter as well.

victor2

Getting one major digit wrong on the reading can make a huge difference.
Your past bills, either hard copy or online, should show the readings used. You want the readings for the bill up to 7/12/15 and the one up to 5/3/16.
If a digit has somehow clicked over two places, then it could be a fault, or there was a misread. Is it a metric meter, measuring m3, or imperial, showing ft3? As it's 5 digits, I think it is likely to be metric, but I stand to be corrected on that. Either way, a single digit error of 1 doesn't readily compute to the huge kWh increase you had. 10,000 metric units is about 112,000 kWh

dogchew

Update!!
Scottish Power had somehow recorded incorrect meter reading, adding a 9 instead of a zero, adding 9000m3 of gas to my bill!!
Apparently I am still using a lot of gas, but there's 7 of us in my house, 5 of them females so I blame them and all their showers!!
Thanks for your responses!!