Troubleshooting Extraordinary High Gas Use

NotSoRedEd

I live in a 4 bedroom bungalow with 4 bedrooms and 2 reception rooms. I've been monitoring the gas use in the house for several years now on behalf of our landlord who pays the bill.


Each year during the winter the gas use spikes as expected, however the actual amount of gas used far exceeds even Ofgem's estimate for high usage.


In 2017 - ~18,000 kWh - high, but not too high

In 2018 - 25,649 kWh

Projected for 2019 - 28,394 kWh


I've just had my meter changed and when it was replaced there was leaked discovered and fixed. But that doesn't seem to have reduced my daily use. Using about 7 kWh a day at the moment with the hot water on most of the day and the hob.


The only gas things we have is a five ring hob and a gas boiler - the hot water is on most of day (I accept that could be adjusted). Once the heating comes on it sends the gas usage through the roof. I was wondering if there was anything I could do to work out what was causing it?


Ideally I'd like a smart meter readout so I could monitor usage in real time and experiment myself - but my supplier isn't rolling them out yet.



Many thanks!

D_M_E

Do you really need the hot water on all day - is it a storage tank or on demand, sounds like a storage tank and if so, what temperature is it set at? Try turning down the thermostat to around 50c.

How well is the property insulated? Have you tried turning down the temp for the heating by a degree or two?

Even a small leak can result in big bills so, now that it's been fixed, monitor usage for a month and see what difference fixing it has made.

matelodave

We have our hot water tank heating activated for just two hours a day between 7-9am which gives us all the hot water we need until the next day.

Try setting it for an hour or so in the morning and a hour or so in the evening if you run out - there's usually no advantage in keeping the tank up to temperature all day and all night.

Likewise try to minimise your use of hot water by not running hot taps to rinse your hands or dishes - use a bowl or even better cold water. Short runoffs leave a lot of valuable hot water siting in the pipes to get cold. Take shorter showers, shallower baths or fewer of them, fit flow restrictors to the taps and shower head to reduce the volume of water. Some showers can dump 10-15 litres/minute which will use 100-150 litres in 10 minutes so halving the time and/or reducing the flow could drastically reduce your consumption of both hot & cold water.

If your boiler is on all day then it will keep firing in short burst just to maintain the tank temperature and firing in short bursts is the most inefficient way to run the boiler as well as all the heat that gets lost in the pipework between the boiler an the tank whilst the boiler is heating.

Try turning your boiler down a bit - the cooler it runs the more efiicient it is especially if its a condensing boiler. Use your room stats, and tank stat to control the temperature and dont have the heating on longer than necessary. If you go to bed at 11pm, turn the heating off at 10pm so that you use up the residual heat in the house.

A programmable stat will give you much better control over times and temperatures enabling you to have lower temperatures at certain times of the day

NotSoRedEd

Take both your points on the hot water, I'll adjust that - although the gas use is very low at the moment despite it!

I believe the property is fairly well insulated, but I'm not expect. We have a programmable thermostat so that's set up at the temperature that's minimal to keep the house warm in the winter, with the option of turning it up manually if needed (its then turned down automatically).

I'll keep an eye on the usage, it doesn't seem to have made a difference as yet, but then again my gas usage is so low during the summer months that even a big meal can spike it. It'll be when the heating goes on that'll make the difference (hopefull).

I'll also have a look at the boiler temperature to see if that makes any difference at all.

Talldave

The hot water is not really worth getting too obsessed about because once the tank is heated, the boiler will only ever come on for a short boost when it cools a bit or someone's used quite a bit of hot water.

That said, I have ours set for 4hrs in the morning and about 6 hours in the evening. Even then, if we have a rare lazy lie-in and have two showers late morning I have to remember to hit the 1hr boost button on the programmer to top it up for any hand washing/washing activities during the afternoon.

How are you calculating the 7kWhr?

SnowTiger

NotSoRedEd wrote: »

I live in a 4 bedroom bungalow with 4 bedrooms and 2 reception rooms. I've been monitoring the gas use in the house for several years now on behalf of our landlord who pays the bill.


Each year during the winter the gas use spikes as expected, however the actual amount of gas used far exceeds even Ofgem's estimate for high usage.


In 2017 - ~18,000 kWh - high, but not too high

In 2018 - 25,649 kWh

Projected for 2019 - 28,394 kWh


I've just had my meter changed and when it was replaced there was leaked discovered and fixed. But that doesn't seem to have reduced my daily use. Using about 7 kWh a day at the moment with the hot water on most of the day and the hob.


The only gas things we have is a five ring hob and a gas boiler - the hot water is on most of day (I accept that could be adjusted).

Can you confirm you're using 7kWh of gas a day at the moment. Was that a typo?

If that's correct it would suggest it's heating that's pushing your gas usage up.

Otherwise, I'd take meter readings and not use my cooker for one day and switch off the hot water boiler for another and see what difference that makes.

NotSoRedEd

I can confirm that we're using between 5 - 20 kWh of a gas a day currently. I have an app that records my meter readings which I swear by! Apologies for not being more clear.

In the past few days that's translated to about 7 kWh a day.


I definitely know it's the heating that's the issue, but I don't understand why it uses so much. As someone said above, it'll be interesting if the fixed leaked solves the problem.

Will bleeding the radiators make the heating work more efficiently?

Robin9

NotSoRedEd wrote: »

....................s I've been monitoring the gas use in the house for several years now ................


In 2017 - ~18,000 kWh - high, but not too high

In 2018 - 25,649 kWh

Projected for 2019 - 28,394 kWh
!

So the 2017 and 2018 figures are yours from Actual readings ? The 2017 for a 4 bed bungalow sounds OK - the 2018 will have included the Beast from the East when I certainly ran my heating around the clock.

Any reason why 2019 is projected so high - what is your projection seeing that we are half way through the year (ie take the Jan-June and double it)

7kwhr for heating I think is high - read you meter several times a day.

Talldave

Bleeding is a good idea, but it's not going to reduce consumption by 10,000
kWh a year!

I wonder if the valve(s) controlling hot water/heating flow are operating correctly? You can waste energy overheating water in the tank when the heating is on and vice versa start heating the radiators when the hot water is on. But again only small savings.

You made a comment earlier about cooking on the hob spiking consumption. I would have thought hob use was immeasurable compared to boiler use.

If you turn the boiler off for a day, does the meter stay on exactly the same reading? The annual safety inspection should test the system for leaks. What is the boiler model, how old is it and when was it last serviced?

Does your app convert from m3 (or cu ft?) to kWhr?

JohnB47

Really good advice here.

I appreciate that you've said "Once the heating comes on it sends the gas usage through the roof" but then you say "Using about 7 kWh a day at the moment with the hot water on most of the day and the hob".

I still want to question how the hot water heating is monitored and controlled.

Do you definitely have a hot water tank thermostat? Does it correctly signal to the boiler that there is sufficient hot water, or does the boiler turn on and off repeatedly during the day? It's possible that the tank thermostat is faulty and the boiler is cycling to the boilers internal stat. Is it lagged really well?

If I was using 7Kw a day at present, I'd be reading the meter at night before going to bed, then in the morning after showering/washing, then every two hours until bedtime. Just one or two days of this ought to do it. This could give you a good pattern of consumption. That's what is missing here - a pattern.

I'd also be listening carefully to what the boiler is doing and when. When it fires, ask yourself why it has.

NotSoRedEd

I'll double check all these things and report back.



The app converts from volume to kWh - my old meter read in ft3 and the new m3.



The problem with listening out for the boiler is that it's in the loft, so I cannot hear it (its the most silly place for it, I don't understand the thought behind that one).