Gas meter reading

Hicks09

Hi I'm new to this so please bare with me....

Basically my husband and I brought a house that needed renovating in May, we were with British gas and I informed them of our move straight away. We didn't live in the property until September as there was smooch work to do.

We have fitted underfloor heating all downstairs (about 64 square meters). We switched on the gas officially with the underfloor heating in November and our gas meter (we had a new one on September 7th as previous was prepay, so was at 000000) is now showing we have used 01375.00. I have been and calculated this as described online but I am coming out with a phenomenal gas bill??

We have used the heating quite a lot but I wouldn't say excessively- we have only recently (like mid december put a layer of insulation in the downstairs extension as we just had roof tiles in place).

Does anyone have any idea whats going on? Am I wrong? We are having real issues with our very popular energy supplier, they are not communicating with me and have objected to me changing engr. suppliers.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks

Raxiel

If it really is in m³ then yes, it's an astronomical amount, but you need to be sure what units it's displaying.

All gas meters will display usage in volume (m³ for new meters, or hcf [hundreds of cubic feet] for old and possibly refurbished) But some newer meters (including smart meters) will also display the total in kWhrs.

If it's in kWhrs then 1375 is pretty reasonable, our new meter fitted in early December has a reading of 1823kWh, which equates to around 158m³ for example.

Hicks09

The meter reading is definitely 01375,102 m3.

I'm actually dreading phoning the energy company now! i don't understand how we could have used a whole years supply on a 2 bed cottage! I thought underfloor heating was meant to be more economical!

Ahhhhh!

matelodave

Start reading your meter more often, daily if needs be to see what your consumption is, record it so you've got some evidence to show the energy company what is happening. One reading after three months is no help.

If you can see that your daily consumption is very high then see what happens when you turn the heating down or off. How are you running your underfloor heating.

Generally it's a lot slower to react than conventional radiators - it works like a storage heater, so takes a long time to warm up and an equally long time to cool down so it should be run longer but at much lower temperatures.

What temperature is your boiler set to. Instead of turning you heating off over night and during the day, set it back a few degrees and boost it up again when you need more heat.

Our u/f takes 24-36 hours to heat our bungalow if we let it get stone cold so its better keep it a bit more constant rather than running it like a radiator system at full blast twice a day. It took us a whole winter before we'd worked out the best way to regulate it

Are you absolutley certain that the new meter was at 0000 when it was installed - there are a lot of refurbed ones that get installed that haven't been reset to zero.

footyguy

Hicks09 wrote: »

Hi I'm new to this so please bare with me....

Basically my husband and I brought a house that needed renovating in May, we were with British gas and I informed them of our move straight away. We didn't live in the property until September as there was smooch work to do.

We have fitted underfloor heating all downstairs (about 64 square meters). We switched on the gas officially with the underfloor heating in November and our gas meter (we had a new one on September 7th as previous was prepay, so was at 000000) is now showing we have used 01375.00. I have been and calculated this as described online but I am coming out with a phenomenal gas bill??

We have used the heating quite a lot but I wouldn't say excessively- we have only recently (like mid december put a layer of insulation in the downstairs extension as we just had roof tiles in place).

Does anyone have any idea whats going on? Am I wrong? We are having real issues with our very popular energy supplier, they are not communicating with me and have objected to me changing engr. suppliers.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks

Do you actually have a gas bill? If so, how much is it for? When was it issued?

Or have you claculated yourself what you think the cost will be? If so, what do you think it will be?

Why are BG objecting to you changing supplier?
(It won't affect what you may owe them)

D_M_E

When the meter was changed the fitter should have left a card with the start reading written on it - is it somewhere by the meter, possibly tucked behind it somewhere?

Also, since the new meter was fitted - hopefully outside - have you smelt any odour of gas in the meter cupboard, if so turn the gas off IMMEDIATELY and call the emergency gas number.

Also, when the boiler is turned off - and this includes any pilot light, if any - does the meter still count up the numbers because if it does then it's fqaulty.

System

Yes, the fitter leaves a card, for electric meter exchange and gas meter gets a yellow sticky label on bottom of gas meter usually showing exchange details, start reading and end read of old meter.Many meters do not start at 00000 (or 99999 ) but use a used meter, but that would be on the yellow sticky label.
Many meter fitters dodge this important work and do not do their job properly.

Pincher

Hicks09 wrote: »

We have fitted underfloor heating all downstairs (about 64 square meters). We switched on the gas officially with the underfloor heating in November and our gas meter (we had a new one on September 7th as previous was prepay, so was at 000000) is now showing we have used 01375.00. I have been and calculated this as described online but I am coming out with a phenomenal gas bill??

1,375m3 = 15,381.812 kWh

I used 4128kWh for November
and 3,506kWh for December
So 7, 634 for the two months.

You are using twice the amount, which suggests something is wrong.

My plumber told me he came across a house, where there was no insulation under the UFH, so the heat just heated the ground, not the room. Talk about global warming. :eek:

You can't have very hot water flowing through the plastic pipes. At the UFH manifold, there is a thermostatic mixer, which uses the cooler water coming back from the floor to cool down the hot water from the boiler. This means if the boiler outputs at 70 degrees, it will get back a return flow of say 65 degrees, because the manifold is not using most of the heat. When it's too hot, you get no condensation, so you get more like 70% efficiency, or less.

My Glowworm boiler deliberately optimises for low temperature output, which is great for UFH, and gets lots of condensation. My ground floor kitchen and bathroom UFH has 100mm of Kingspan under the pipes, then scree and tiles.

It is easy to confirm, just compare usage for boiler on and boiler off. Take the meter reading for a day, with the boiler on. Then switch it off, for a day. Take the reading again.

It's easy to turn the boiler output down, but if you have a heat short circuit straight to ground, god help you.