Gas meter must be wrong?

Coffeekup

casualwalks said:

What I've found is that my gas usage this year seems bizarrely low (around 4300  KWH) the previous 2 years usage was around 9000-9300 KWH per year for a very small 2 bedroom mid terrace house. We use our heating sparingly in the winter, and we had our house insulated with exterior cladding last summer, but I can't see how our usage more than halved. Our meter must be wrong. -snip-

I will call the energy company tomorrow to report my concern. Will they be able to tell what our actual usage was? Or will there be no way to tell how much was missed from the meter reading? I have always given them 100% honest readings. -snip-
I didn't really know how much usage was "normal" until I started to do some research about bills and costs.

Does anyone have any experience of this?

I live in a small 2 bed mid terrace. 12 years ago I got tired of my direct debits going up and down like a yo yo and seemingly always owing money to the energy companies.

My usage back then for gas was  24,000 kwh a year. Which at the time according to my bills was quite high compared with others in my postcode. So over the years I learned to cut back and got it to 15,000 then 12,000.
3 year's ago I eventually I got it down 9,000 kwh's a year and was consistent over the last few years +/-200 kwh's.
Last September knowing/anticipating the prices were gonna jump somewhat I cut back as far as I could go on my heating usage to see if I could and help reduce future bills. Only turning it on manually, in the coldest of days(for a couple of hours here and there) and having it on in the evenings between 6-8pm if it was cold. During this time we wore Jumper's and or dressing gowns, and sat on sofa with a fleece/blanket to watch tv.

Now I'm a couple of weeks away from my September reading but I'll round up my usage for the year to the nearest 100 kWh which is 3,600 kwh's. Reason for this is my heating never went on till sometime late November and even when it did it was for a short period to take the chill off the air. The heating hasn't been in since first week of March this year. So since March I've used no more than 100 kwh's a month, which was the same for September, October and November last year. So the bulk of my annual usage was in December, January and February.

There is no "normal usage" is what I've learned, it all depends on numerous factor's i.e. people in the house, how much cooking is done with what appliances, how long people are at home for, how much income comes in the house, if the house has TV's in every room with or without games consoles or tv decoder's, how many fridge freezers, hot tubs, pong pumps, garden lighting, how well insulated, combi boiler, immersion heater the list goes on.

Is your water heated by a combi boiler or and immersion heater?

I would say nothing is wrong with your meter going off my usage and what you have said.

If you take regular meter readings and still have them you can work out your monthly usages I'm guessing they'll be similar to mine. 

My question to you now.....  did the outside insulation make any difference to heat staying in your home in the winter? Also what's it been like on these warm evenings? Worse of better than before?

Edit: dont forget last winter was quite mild. 

Coffeekup

casualwalks said:

That's helpful to know. We did quite a few repairs to the house over the past two years in addition to the insulation.  New roof, several windows and doors replaced. I've checked the previous years summers' readings and they are consistent with this summer, so looks like the insulation  was very successful! More than I thought it would be!

New windows and doors for me also 5 years ago, that made a chunk of difference.

Going back to my post above and me being stingy with my usage I came home on the 23rd December last year to find condensation on the outside of my windows.... Never seen that before, after a quick Google it's a good thing as they are doing the job of keeping heat in and cold out.