Strangely High Gas Use

Muzzzz

Hi all. I am very confused with my energy bills lately. I am with Avro on a basic plan that I know is too expensive and I can get cheaper but that is not my issue. My gas bill (gas alone) is roughly £115-£150 a month, Jan-Feb was £191. The meter readings are all accurate including their conversion from FT3 (my meter is imperial), a few of them are estimates but are still roughly accurate and nothing strange. Everything adds up fine the issue is how we can use that much gas? There is 2 adults in a 3 bed semi. The heating comes on for an hour on a morning and is set from 5pm-11:30pm every night however the house heats up within an hour or two and it goes off. All in the heating could be on for i'd say 4/5 hours a day tops. Two showers on a morning, dishwasher and washing machine used once every 2 days, if that. Hob is gas but again half hour a night every other night. More weekend usage as you can imagine but mainly electric I think. That is everything I can think of. Yet somehow we have used 3000-5000kwh of gas a month.

Looking at my last two readings we have used 54 units of gas (1749.47kwh) on my current plan that's roughly £63, again I know I can get this cheaper but it's the usage I am worried about.
the readings were: 23/02/2020 - 5476
                              11/03/2020 - 5530
That's in 17.5 days and we were away for 4 days in that time and turned the heating off so there should've been no usage then.

Does this seem excessive to anyone? I can't for the life of me understand how we are using so much?

Any more details just let me know and thanks for any replies!

couriervanman

estimated or your  readings

Muzzzz

The two I posted were my readings. Most bills use my readings with a few estimates in there but these estimates are close enough as to not make a huge difference to what I expected

Gerry1

It's not particularly excessive at this time of year.  You may have a frost stat that turns the CH on even if the controller has switched it off.  In any case, it's unwise to leave CH switched off when away during the winter, it's not good to have no heating and it probably invalidates your insurance.

If you're really worried, switch off the gas overnight at the stopcock and see whether the reading changes.

Muzzzz

Sorry yeah when I said we turned it off I meant I had put it to "off" mode which, as you say, means it won't come on until the house cools to 12c or whatever it is however it never seems to get that cold anyway so I can't imagine it came on at all or for long if it did.
Good point about turning it off and checking, the reason it seems high to me is this was my GF's parents place before ours and they say that we are using way more than they ever did, and they are in throughout the day as they're retired. They had a similar setting on the auto heating control and everything.

Robin9

Your lifestyle may well be different to the parents - you may like the heating on for longer, at a higher setting, take longer showers, more baths ………...….

Muzzzz

All very true points, it just seems very high to me for what I'd consider fairly average usage? I mean, half the radiators in the house are turned off or low as we don't use all the rooms or rarely do.

Robin9

Just read mine - 62 units in 11 days.  But that's (only) about £60 a  month.  

 I know you said you could get better rates - about time you did !

Muzzzz

Wow. Fair enough! I didn't realise how high our current tariff was as even looking into cheaper still came in at around £100-£130 a month at current use! May I ask what sort of daily use you do? 

Robin9

On the basis of my earlier post about 5.5 unit 60kwh - about £2 (and I need to do better)  2 x OAP and always someone at home and we like it warm (1970's 4 bed detached, reasonably well insulated)

Gerry1

Muzzzz said:

I didn't realise how high our current tariff was as even looking into cheaper still came in at around £100-£130 a month at current use! May I ask what sort of daily use you do?

Always think kWh not ££.