High gas bill and engineers said that everything was ok

iojisw

Hi,

I know this is a very common topic, however, every post I read, cannot explain my current situation, or at least, I cannot understand it.

I rent a Maisonette, with 1 big living room, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and kitchen. The property has a C EPC rating. Only 2 working full time people live at the flat.

We have a regular boiler (Potterton 60L), (cilinder and separate water tank). We have 12 wall radiators, however, only 5 are turned on (7 have the dial in zero).

We have the timer set to work 2 hours in the morning for both water and heating, and then 2 hours only heating in the evening.

We managed to get the agency to send one gas engineer to the flat. He said that the boiler works fine, as long as the timer works fine (allegedly, it does). According to the engineer, the meter is working properly. We haven't called the gas company to check the meter.

We also called the gas company, to see if there was a gas leak (we smelled gas near the boiler sometimes). They said that there was no gas leak.

Now down to numbers. All these are Actuals readings:
6th September 2018: 1133 units
until 23rd January 2019: 2060 units.
However, these readings contemplate the first two months where we overused the water tank.
The last two Actuals readings are:
30th November 2018: 1740 units
until 23rd January 2019: 2060 units.

This has not to do with the invoice, but more with the actual gas usage.

Why the flat is using so much gas? We are almost freezing inside the flat, but we consume as we would have the heating full on.

Is anyone able to tell me if this is normal, if not, which are the possible options for the flat to be consuming so much gas?

Your help is utterly appreciated.

ajbell

300 units in 54 days is not a lot, in fact well below what I would expect for a winter period?. Only around £100 for 2 months.

grumpycrab

(for the latter 61 days) 58KWh (or £2ish) a day is possible. Are the 5 rads all hot for the 4 hours a day that they're on?

iojisw

ajbell wrote: »

300 units in 54 days is not a lot, in fact well below what I would expect for a winter period?. Only around £100 for 2 months.

That would be around 1700 KWh, but we cannot even keep the house warm for a couple of hours. I would understand to pay that but I d also expect to keep the flat warm. That obviusly depends on the isolation (which is not very good), but still, some other flats from friends pay 50 per month and the place is "warm".
Is that something ONLY related to isolation and EPC rating?
My main concern is that this is something that the Landlord should fix, but they dont want to take responsiblity for.

iojisw

grumpycrab wrote: »

(for the latter 61 days) 58KWh (or £2ish) a day is possible. Are the 5 rads all hot for the 4 hours a day that they're on?

Yes, they are hot the 4 hours they are on.

As I mention in the previous reply, I d believe that 1700 KWh for only keeping 4 hours of radiators and 2 hours for the tank, is a high consumption.

Should I be looking for a fault somewhere, or this sounds totally reasonable?

Thank you again for your opinion and advise.

iojisw

Also, everytime I look for estimates, they throw results way below my actual consumption, and that leads me to think that we are overconsuming' and again, it is hard to get my head around over consumption when we only turn the boiler with the routine described above.

ajbell

For this time of the year your consumption is low but maybe you are not keeping the heating on for long enough as it will take a couple of hours to warm up and then the boiler will use less to maintain it.
So 8 hours use wont be 2X 4 hours use.

grumpycrab

iojisw wrote: »

We are almost freezing inside the flat.

iojisw wrote: »

Yes, they are hot the 4 hours they are on.

Sounds like the boiler is on for most of those 4 hours, using 15KWh gas per hour which is possible. So why is the flat not warming up? How many (fully on) rads are in the big living room? What temp does it get to after 2 hours? (and what is the starting temp). Does it have large single glazed windows? How many outside walls...

sevenhills

grumpycrab wrote: »

(for the latter 61 days) 58KWh (or £2ish) a day is possible. Are the 5 rads all hot for the 4 hours a day that they're on?

My smart meter tells me that I use around £2 per day on a normal day, with heavy usage it goes up to £3 per day, I live in a 2 bedroom house.
In the summer its more like £1 per day.

macman

Metric or imperial meter? By units, do you mean meter units, or have you converted to kWh?
You are measuring consumption only in the coldest months of the year, which can account for 80% of your annual usage. Once the heating goes off, your consumption will drop massively.
A system with 12 rads must mean a fairly sizeable property?

Robin9

I don't know how you can expect your maisonette to be warm when you only heat it for 2 hours in the evening. The rooms will be quite cold with no heat in the property since breakfast.

As regards cost have you looked at your tariff and have you switched lately ?