Gas meter queries - hot water fault?

MWT

Based on everything you've said so far your usage is high, but not manifestly wrong, especially if one of more baths are a daily occurrence as heating that much water from the cold mains supply is going to take a lot more gas in a short period of time than warming up the already warm water circulating in your heating system. 

Tallerdave

You've picked a really cold period to look at gas consumption!  Over the last three weeks we've used 468m3, but that's in a 5 bed place with a large extension with underfloor heating.  The last week has been so cold that gas consumption was almost 50% higher than the week before and the underfloor heating was coming on during the day, whereas it usually heats up in the morning and is good for the rest of the day.

Hasbeen

OP. I would suggest keeping a log of daily usage and what days you use bath etc to give a more rounded figure of your consumption.

Do you have a shower above bath supplied from combi?

Ensure you give monthly meter readings to provider.

Gerry1

An estimated annual usage figure is meaningless.  Assuming you've been in the property for more than a year, you need to find two actual (not estimated) meter readings a year apart and convert the volume used to kWh.

In any case, 16,000kWh is only a third more than the average, and that could easily be explained by working at home and lockdown.  An old style meter such as yours is unlikely to over read so it would be unwise to waste money on a test without hard evidence of a fault.

bootybounty12

Thanks all, we will keep an eye on usage and actual readings over the next few weeks. 

We do have some historic actual readings - for example one in June 2020 and then another in Jan 2021. The time period between these two readings was 7 months and 12 days (225 days in total) and gas usage on the meter increased by 967 units. Going from 6987 to 7954. 

Gerry1

Make sure you're not paying for the whole terraced house !

Turn off all the gas appliances for a while on a few occasions and make sure the meter reading doesn't change.

Verdigris

Gerry1 said:

Make sure you're not paying for the whole terraced house !

Turn off all the gas appliances for a while on a few occasions and make sure the meter reading doesn't change.

Yes, make absolutely sure it is your meter. I notice from the photo that it is in a meter bank. As a retired meter reader I can assure you that mistakes are made in these situations. Don't take as gospel what is written on the meter. As Gerry says, turn everything off and see if the meter stops or turn off at the meter and then check that nothing works in your flat (or you hear another resident shouting that their gas isn't working!).

MWT

bootybounty12 said:

...If we turn everything off, the meter does not increase. And from what we can see, central heating does obviously increase it, but it doesn't seem too rapidly. Unlike the hot water... 

I'd say the OP has already checked it is their meter as it responds to no use and high use correctly.

leonj

My gas meter doesn't 'tick' if the boiler is switched on unless I have the heating on or hot water running

bootybounty12

Hi all,

An update on this thread - any help very much appreciated. I think we should get a gas safe engineer in to check the meter.

To recap, turning all gas appliances and the boiler off, and the meter does not increase at all. But for a one bedroom small flat, recently renovated and insulated, we’re seeing excessively high gas bills which seem to be equivalent to a 5 bedroom house. Based on actual readings:

Jan 24 - 7954
March 22 - 8452

total of 5531kw/h in just these two months