Excessive Or Normal Gas Usage? ~92664Kwh For Year

Gerry1

Switch all gas appliances off before going to bed tonight and see whether the reading is the same when you get up tomorrow.

GraemeMiller

As far as I can see in about 10 hours less than a week I've used 63 cubic feet. These are white numbers so x100? So trend seems to be continuing and seems inline with initial read. Current usage rate seems higher even after turning radiators down etc.

It is an imperial meter and I'm not out by a factor of 100 or even 10 really so something seems wrong. 

welshmoneylover said:

My money is on the opening read being incorrect.
Unless it’s a mansion on a thermostat of 30degrees!

GraemeMiller

The gauge with pointer span one revolution  in about 1 min 30 seconds as I took this.
As far as I see that is white numbers reading 4673. Same numbers Tuesday morning at 09:30 read 4609.

Talldave

The worst gas consumption I've experienced was in a sprawling single glazed cottage where the boiler was on almost 24/7 during winter. I think we got through 52,000kWh in a year. Current place is big and gets through 42,000kWh. So I do think your consumption is off the scale. 

As suggested, shut everything off. Then maybe run boiler for an hour, see what it apparently uses and check against specification.  A meter test might be the next step.

GraemeMiller

I have turned the gas boiler off - this is the only consumer of gas in the house. There was zero meter movement on any red dials or the cubic foot gauge in 2 hours. So doesn't look like a gas leak on that basis.

There has never been any smell of gas in the 1.5 meters from the meter to house. So I'm guessing that is not a leak only when on or something similar.

Therefore either:
1. It is a faulty gas meter - that is accumulating gas very quickly when running. Is this even a realistic possibility if analog meters are reliable? 
2. The house just burns 92000kwh per year - has anyone ever had a gas bill like that? Could a fault with the boiler cause it? It certainly varies on how much it is outputting as I see lots of exhaust when it kicks in at other points just minor amounts of exhaust
3. I am literally cannot read the meter correctly - though as far as I see it is simply reading the 4 white digits - I assume everyone agrees the above meter from last night read  4673  cubic feet (x100)? The same reading is now 4678

Thanks

tim_p

Try running the boiler for an hour to get an idea of how much that consumes, it won’t necessarily be conclusive but is something else you can give a go. I think it was suggested earlier in the thread.

ARH_2

GraemeMiller said:

Therefore either:
1. It is a faulty gas meter - that is accumulating gas very quickly when running. Is this even a realistic possibility if analog meters are reliable? 
2. The house just burns 92000kwh per year - has anyone ever had a gas bill like that? Could a fault with the boiler cause it? It certainly varies on how much it is outputting as I see lots of exhaust when it kicks in at other points just minor amounts of exhaust
3. I am literally cannot read the meter correctly - though as far as I see it is simply reading the 4 white digits - I assume everyone agrees the above meter from last night read  4673  cubic feet (x100)? The same reading is now 4678

Thanks

Scratch option 3. Your massive bill, the photos of the meter, and the fact the consumption is ongoing seem to pretty much rule it out. 

A leak of hundreds of cubic feet a day that you can't smell also seems very unlikely, even though a lot of people have been losing their sense of smell recently. 

Option 1: You can ask your energy supplier to test your meter.  It is very rare that these are faulty, but it does happen. If you ask them to test it they'll send the old one off to a lab, and give you a new one. If the old one turns out not to be faulty, you'll have to pay for the testing. 

You could switch to a suppler who insists you have a smart meter, and then they'll come and change it. Not an ideal option, as if it solves the problem (and you then believe the old meter is faulty)  you're now holding a big peoples energy bill whilst the evidence (the old meter) is in the landfill. At least this avoids paying for the meter test.  

Option 4 - Faulty Boiler: A £2,000+/year gas bill just isn't right for your boiler. Have you had it serviced recently? If not it's always a good thing to do coming into winter. 

GraemeMiller

So in the last hour (I ignored the first 15 minutes as the boiler goes into some sort of start-up routine), it has used 75 red units (so I think that is 75 cubic feet)
From 09:30 on 24/11/20 - it read 4609
From 14:00 on 1/12/20 - it reads 4678.80
So give or take it used 69 white units (x 100 cubic feet)
So it in the 1 hour it used 75 cubic feet
In about a week it burned 6900 cubic feet. For the week I calculate that is using gas at a rate of 40 cubic feet an hour (6900/173). I make that only 13kwh average,
I guess I just had the heating off - so the 1 hour is it kicking back in at a higher rate than normal.
Is burning 40 cubic feet an hour something a Worcester Greenstar FS 42CDi will do? It says its heat output is 42kw. Does that mean it can effectively pull 1.28 units per hour to generate 42kw and therefore it is entirely possible?  
As far as I figure that is only having the boiler running at 1/3rd of peak 24/7. That seems entirely possible to me
However, I know very little about boilers and my maths could be totally wrong

GraemeMiller

ARH_2 said:

GraemeMiller said:

Therefore either:
1. It is a faulty gas meter - that is accumulating gas very quickly when running. Is this even a realistic possibility if analog meters are reliable? 
2. The house just burns 92000kwh per year - has anyone ever had a gas bill like that? Could a fault with the boiler cause it? It certainly varies on how much it is outputting as I see lots of exhaust when it kicks in at other points just minor amounts of exhaust
3. I am literally cannot read the meter correctly - though as far as I see it is simply reading the 4 white digits - I assume everyone agrees the above meter from last night read  4673  cubic feet (x100)? The same reading is now 4678

Thanks

Scratch option 3. Your massive bill, the photos of the meter, and the fact the consumption is ongoing seem to pretty much rule it out. 

A leak of hundreds of cubic feet a day that you can't smell also seems very unlikely, even though a lot of people have been losing their sense of smell recently. 

Option 1: You can ask your energy supplier to test your meter.  It is very rare that these are faulty, but it does happen. If you ask them to test it they'll send the old one off to a lab, and give you a new one. If the old one turns out not to be faulty, you'll have to pay for the testing. 

You could switch to a suppler who insists you have a smart meter, and then they'll come and change it. Not an ideal option, as if it solves the problem (and you then believe the old meter is faulty)  you're now holding a big peoples energy bill whilst the evidence (the old meter) is in the landfill. At least this avoids paying for the meter test.  

Option 4 - Faulty Boiler: A £2,000+/year gas bill just isn't right for your boiler. Have you had it serviced recently? If not it's always a good thing to do coming into winter. 

Yeah - guess we are on to options 1, 2 and 4
Doesn't sound ideal on giving up the money on the meter if it really is faulty. I'd be best to pay the cost of testing if after a service it keeps doing it. I just have no idea how likely it is that it is faulty. Can you prove a fault with new averages as evidence? Or is meter testing only accepted evidence in a dispute?
Got a call in for a service on the boiler now. I was told it had been recently serviced but who knows.

ARH_2

I did a similar back-of-envelope calculation based on the information in your first post, and agree that at the rated power of your boiler it can theoretically consume that much gas, but they just don't operate at their full power all day everyday. Not much at night, not in the summer and when you can hear it going, it's not doing the full 42kW the whole time. 

When I worked for an energy supplier back in 2012, we came across a domestic customer who'd been incorrectly classified as a business customer as they had a consumption of c.90,000 kWh/year.  After some investigation, it turned out they had multiple boilers in their castle. A castle is what it takes to get through this sort of consumption. Something is wrong and until resolved it's costing you.