Very high gas bills

Davearia

I'm not ignoring the electric bill figures but would rather concentrate of working out my gas bill as that is the biggest problem. I will look at the electric side soon.

For electric mainly we have:
Induction hob/oven
2 TVs usually not both on at the same time
Washing machine used maybe twice a week
Dishwasher used maybe 3/4 times a week
Fridge freezer in kitchen and one in the garage both have reasonable energy ratings
2 computers

That's about it

Spent today writing down everytime I see the remote stat say the boiler is on or off to see what got used throughout the day set a 20c (starting temp was 15.7c) from 8am this morning to 10pm tonight. Up to now 5.15m3 used which until the day is done I can really tell much.

Would say this where in a post yesterday by Hengus his initial hour the consumption was 1.12m3 in the first hour. This morning my consumption was 2.308m3 in the first hour ( took 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to 20c). The rest of the day average around 0.7145m3. I know there lots of factors here but this still seems to be high given how low the heating is on as this on till 10 approximately I might use another 5m3. 10m3 over 90 days would be 900m3 approximately 10,000KW hours. Tomorrow I'm testing at 21c and dreading it already.

ajbell

10m3 on a January day is not outrageous as it's only around £3.
Your electricity consumption at 18 kwh per day is incredibly high and electricity is 4x as expensive.

Robin9

10 m3 is 110 kwh

Ballymoney

I've had a quick read of this thread and compared it to my usage.

We (Myself and wife, no kids) live in a 4 bed detached and use 27,000 kWh of gas per year. This is using a 30kWh combi boiler with central heating set to 21 in the morning for 1hr and 8hrs in the evening (set to 17.5 during the day whilst at work).

On an average winter day we are averaging between 12-16m3 depending on the outside temp.

I would say your gas usage is on the high side but certainly not impossible. I would focus more on transferring to a better rate immediately. You are paying approx 1.5p more than you should per kWh.

Electrcity, on the other hand, is more puzzling. We have the same applicances and usage (minus the induction hob) and use 2800kWh of electrcity annually. Is your house full of 100W lightbulbs? Any high wattage security lights on all night? Any electric heaters?

Robin9

Ballymoney wrote: »

I've had a quick read of this thread and compared it to my usage.

We (Myself and wife, no kids) live in a 4 bed detached and use 27,000 kWh of gas per year. This is using a 30kWh combi boiler with central heating set to 21 in the morning for 1hr and 8hrs in the evening (set to 17.5 during the day whilst at work).

I think yours is as high as the OP's


We have a similar set up but I run with my heating 21 deg all day but only use 11000 kwh in a year.

Davearia

My gas useage for October 2016 - January 2017 was 902m3 / 10121 KW hours @ 3.609p after the standing charge of 30p a day was at £389.87 plus vat. (Using a one pipe central heating system that has since been replaced by a correct flow and return system). With today's rates it would be £423.92. So keep my house at 20c for this quarter that i.e. not really warm that is more than I would expect to pay. Until this bill we've always had it around 22c and never got a bill close to this.

Thought if I made the effort to drop to 21c there would be saving. See what my tests on 21c do tomorrow

Ballymoney

Robin9 wrote: »

I think yours is as high as the OP's


We have a similar set up but I run with my heating 21 deg all day but only use 11000 kwh in a year.

That's impressive. We have no cavity wall insulation and only 50mm of loft insulation so there is room for improvement but I'll struggle to cut 16000kwh of usage!

Sorry to the OP for hijacking the thread but what is the total square footage of the house you're heating? Ours is 1600sqft for comparison.

Ballymoney

Davearia wrote: »

My gas useage for October 2016 - January 2017 was 902m3 / 10121 KW hours @ 3.609p after the standing charge of 30p a day was at £389.87 plus vat. (Using a one pipe central heating system that has since been replaced by a correct flow and return system). With today's rates it would be £423.92. So keep my house at 20c for this quarter that i.e. not really warm that is more than I would expect to pay. Until this bill we've always had it around 22c and never got a bill close to this.

We've just had our bill for the Oct 17-Jan 18 quarter and our usage was 958m3 (10,800kWh). Very similar to your usage.

System

Ballymoney wrote: »

We've just had our bill for the Oct 17-Jan 18 quarter and our usage was 958m3 (10,800kWh). Very similar to your usage.

Comparing usage is a pointless exercise in my opinion. My gas usage for 2017 was 8793.8 kWhs for a 5 bed property with people at home throughout the day. There are various reasons for this: not least, an efficient modulating boiler with a modest set temperature for the house.

matelodave

It's not easy to keep tweaking and measuring on a day-by day basis unless you also take into account the outside temperature. The temperature today is about 12 degrees warmer than it was on Sunday.

You are trying to evaluate it with too many variables so you need to leave the settings alone for several days to compare consumption with the outside temperature.
Then do the same with different settings otherwise you cant see the effect of changing settings has on your consumption. Just change one thing at a time and give it time to settle down

Our heating is electric so it's easier to see how the heating consumption varies on different days (we've got an energy monitor on the heating circuit). Over the weekend when it was -2 outside our heating used around 60kwh in a day, yesterday without any changes to any settings it was 27kwh, today it's gonna be a bit less because it's quite mild out.

However, as we've got an air source heat pump you have to multiply the consumption by between 2 -3 times to get the actual heat produced in kwh = 120-140kwh on Sunday and around 60-70 yesterday.