Recently moved house - gas usage seems high

Bigphil1474

OP, I'm in a 3 bed mid terrace, and use the heating in a similar way to you, but only on twice a day and for slightly less total time. The figures you quote sound about right given the time of year. After a year you'll see your annual consumption figures. Mine is around 12,000 kwh a year, but as others have said, most is used October to March ish. If it's 45 a day Oct to Dec = about 8,000 for that 6 months, half for rest of year, comes to about right. Depending when your contract started, you might find they DD you a bit more than expected, but once the sun comes out in April, your consumption will drop and you'll probably end up in credit. Unless it's snows in April of course.

girlxface

Hengus wrote: »

Don't kid yourself into believing that being out of the house for 7 hours will save you a lot of energy/money. It very much depends on the level of insulation in your home, and the outside air temperature. I have a 24kW boiler that for the first 30 minutes of each day is at maximum output. My monitor shows that my gas consumption in the first hour was 0.83CM3s or 9.31kWhs just to get my home up to temperature. Since then my boiler has been ticking along at a consumption rate of 0.13Cm3s/hour or 1.6kWhs/ per hour to keep my home at 20C(upstairs and down). We have a hot water cylinder as opposed to a combi which re-heats before the heating comes on. This used 0.16CM3s/1.8kWhs this morning. I had a shower after I got up so further cylinder re-heating is included in the first hour's CH figure (0.83CM3s) above. So far today, we have used 2.30CM3s or 25.8kWhs for heating and HW.

The point that I am trying to make is that if you live in a property which is not well insulated, you will end up with two first hour's of heating usage/costs as your home heats up again late in the afternoon. Yes, you will have saved a few kWh/pence by having your heating off but not that much. Modern gas boilers are designed to become more efficient when a property is at a stable temperature. The boiler modulates down and the flow temperature falls. At the moment, my downstairs radiators are barely warm to the touch and my boiler has a flow temperature of less than 50C.

I am not trying to re-open the annual debate on 'is it cheaper to leave my CH on all day': all homes are different as are people's lifestyles.

Thank you for this. This is where my thought process was going - in that is it using more energy to fire up the boiler three times a day which then has to heat my house up to 19 degrees or so? Or if it fired up once in the morning but kept it ticking over at a stable temperature would cost a little less. I guess it's a matter of trial and error.

girlxface

Bigphil1474 wrote: »

OP, I'm in a 3 bed mid terrace, and use the heating in a similar way to you, but only on twice a day and for slightly less total time. The figures you quote sound about right given the time of year. After a year you'll see your annual consumption figures. Mine is around 12,000 kwh a year, but as others have said, most is used October to March ish. If it's 45 a day Oct to Dec = about 8,000 for that 6 months, half for rest of year, comes to about right. Depending when your contract started, you might find they DD you a bit more than expected, but once the sun comes out in April, your consumption will drop and you'll probably end up in credit. Unless it's snows in April of course.

That's great thank you, and makes sense. Put my mind at rest a little

System

girlxface wrote: »

Thank you for this. This is where my thought process was going - in that is it using more energy to fire up the boiler three times a day which then has to heat my house up to 19 degrees or so? Or if it fired up once in the morning but kept it ticking over at a stable temperature would cost a little less. I guess it's a matter of trial and error.

I picked up an optical meter reader on EBay for about £25 a year or so ago. The last digit on the meter has either the 9, 6 or 0 filled in with a solid blob of silver. The reader just counts the rotations and sends a usage count every 15 minutes. I get a daily graph showing my usage in cM3s; kWHs (based on a 11.22 conversion) or £s. This simple device has enabled me to work out the best heating pattern for our home. Set up was a 5 minute job and not a smart meter installer in sight.

chrisw99

OP - since I got smart meters installed, these are my daily readings for November gas so far...

https://imgur.com/a/7pqY9c5

Usually around 40kWh, although my wife works from home some days so it gets up to 60 on those.