Huge Gas Usage of 32,000 kWh per year - Help !

tiya1990

We live in a 4 bed detached house in the Midlands . 2 teenagers and 2 adults - one of whom ( myself ) - working from home last 2 years. 

Our gas usage is around 31,500-32,000 kWh per year as estimated by Octopus for the current year. 
It has always been like this between 28,000-30,000 kWh / year since we moved in 9 years ago - we have buried our heads in the sand till now . We always assumed that it was normal , till having recently enquired from friends with similiar sized houses whose energy usage is only 16-18,000kWh / year.

Even in the month of July , when the heating was turned off and we were away for 22d - the gas consumption was around 600kWh !!

This is a 1990s built house and had an EPC done in 2009 - rated 'C'. - On that EPC , the only recommendation was ' Main Heating Control - Programmer , Room Thermostat and TRVs ' - Average. 

We have an Ideal Classic System Boiler ( LXFF & FF Fanned Flue Gas Boiler - FF280 - Energy Rating E  ) with a separate hot water tank . We have had this serviced by British Gas who have generally said ' If it's not broke - don't fix it '.

Thermostatic Radiator Valves are present in half of the rooms. 

We also have a log fire with chimney in the living room . 

Please could you point me in the right direction as to what to do next - to find out why our usage is astronomical -  do I need another EPC / a Retro Fit Assessor or Coordinator / Home Energy Audit ?  Should I wait till the weather cools down a bit so that they can see how cold the ground floor is despite such huge bills.
Thoroughly confused

Any thing else you would suggest ??

Our Electricity Usage is similiarly very high around 9-10,000 kWh per year but I have bought one of those £20 power meters from Amazon and am trying to find out which appliances are responsible. 

macman

4 b/r detached. Insulation? Double glazing, cavity walls? Any other gas appliances? Cooking on gas?
What temp is the CH set to, and when is it on?
I'd expect a house of that era to have reasonable thermal retention, as evidenced by the EPC.
Leccy: are the kids data-mining, or engaging in horticultural enterprises in the loft perhaps?
Gas should be the easiest to pin down, as the only uses are space heating and DHW, plus cooking if applicable.

theoretica

tiya1990 said:

This is a 1990s built house and had an EPC done in 2009 - rated 'C'. - On that EPC , the only recommendation was ' Main Heating Control - Programmer , Room Thermostat and TRVs ' - Average.

Thermostatic Radiator Valves are present in half of the rooms.

You don't have thermostatic valves in all the rooms?  They are pretty cheap. You might also want to consider smarter controls to turn the heating off in all the rooms during the day except the one you are working in, rather than heating the whole house because you are working from home in one room. Which room is your room thermostat in?

600kWh when your heating was off and you were away - that points to the hot water (or a gas leak). How good is your tank insulation? Is it on hotter or for longer than needed to kill legionella? Couldn't you turn it off when you go away for any period of time? 

MWT

tiya1990 said:

Any thing else you would suggest ??

One quick thing to check is that your meter is not being incorrectly billed as Imperial instead of metric...

It does happen, but your gas use isn't quite bad enough I suspect, but worth a look, just check the meter to see if it is marked as metric, cubic metres (m3) or imperial, cubic feet (ft3), then look at the bill to see if it is using a conversion formula that include a factor of x2.83 which would convert Imperial to Metric...

Coffeekup

Let's figure out gas first..... 600 units used in July and you was away for 22 of them days, so in 9 days you used 600 unit's? Is this correct? 

Looking at your boiler make and model (which appears to be old), your boiler has a pilot light if I understand correctly... Immediately that'll be eating a good chunk of your gas and your not even using it to heat water or heat the rads. ..(I'm no expert on boiler's, but others who understand it more may tell you roughly how much is being used in the background just idling). 
Edit: If it is the boiler pilot light a quick google could save you 1,500-5,000 kWh a year... Upto £600 saving come October the 1st.. 1/3 of the price of a new boiler. A new boiler will be more efficient too, it could pay for itself within 2 year's, sooner if you cut back on your winter usage with a few Rios and tricks.

Do you have anything like a gas powered aga?

For a summer month assuming you have a gas hob with 4 people in the house, I'd expect your summer gas usage to be around 200-300kwh's, maybe a bit less if you have teenagers that don't wash, or higher if you cannot get them out the shower assuming the water is heated by the boiler.

Electric at a rough guess could be halved or more. Some of that usage could be easily found I think.
Do you have.....
Immersion heater? Electric shower?
Hot tub ?
Pond pumps, uv lights?
A sun bed?
Gaming PC? Or multiple PC's that rarely get switched off?
Air conditioning? Electric heating if some kind?
Electric vehicle?
Multiple fridge/freezer's? American fridge freezer? Wine coolers?
Washing machine/Tumble dryer that always on the go?

FreeBear

Coffeekup said: Looking at your boiler make and model (which appears to be old), your boiler has a pilot light if I understand correctly... Immediately that'll be eating a good chunk of your gas and your not even using it to heat water or heat the rads. ..(I'm no expert on boiler's, but others who understand it more may tell you roughly how much is being used in the background just idling)

According to my IHD, my Baxi back boiler consumes 175W on just the pilot light. Comparing gas usage from July last year, I used 155KWh, same period this year, just 22KWh - The difference is down to turning the gas off at the meter except for a few hours when I need a tank of hot water. Also started to turn the tank thermostat down to 45°C which should save me another 20-25%.

Honeywell do a kit to convert the pilot light from being on all the time to an intermittent one. Two small problems. One is cost, and the other is it is not approved for retrofitting to boilers in this country.

BUFF

I am a big fan of having good controls (programmer/thermostat & TRVs) as, used properly,  they will more than pay for themselves over the life of a boiler with reduced energy usage. The best time to install them though is often with a new boiler or a service.

As for your existing boiler - a new condensing boiler, again set up & used properly, will save you some gas usage. E was ~75-78% efficiency when new (at 20 it probably isn't performing at that level now)  & a current new boiler will be rated 92% or more so let's say that you are looking at a 20% improvement (& no permanent pilot light).
20% of 30,000=6000 & as of October, unless you are on a fix, 1kWh of gas will be 15p so you could potentially save ~£900 per annum from a boiler change. If with better controls, a new boiler & some behaviour changes that those may allow you could get down to your neighbours consumption you could be saving £1800 p.a.
It will, of course, cost you several (3-5?) £thousands to change boiler etc., so it will take several years for the change to pay for itself but with gas prices being what they are forecast to be the roi is a lot quicker than it would have been a couple of years ago.
~

FreeBear

BUFF said: I am a big fan of having good controls (programmer/thermostat & TRVs) as, used properly,  they will more than pay for themselves over the life of a boiler with reduced energy usage. The best time to install them though is often with a new boiler or a service.

I switched to a smart(er) control system for my boiler - This was part of a home automation system that allowed me to set different temperatures throughout the day & week. Coupled with a variable pump over-run, it delivered around 15% saving on gas without compromising on comfort.

For those people without the skills/knowledge to put a HA system together, there are plenty of alternatives. From a cheap programmable thermostat off ebay (£20-30), through to complete systems such as Drayton Wiser (my usual recommendation) or Hive/Nest. All have potential to deliver significant savings, and with careful selection, should be compatible with a new boiler.

Robin9

A few comments re the Electric. You will find that Power Meter useful but it's also time for some serious detective work.

In recent times we've that posters with multiple fridges / freezers / fish tanks / garden ponds with blocked pumps. People working from home doing high spec design.

Go through every room, the shed, the garage, the loft and look for the energy guzzlers - those heaters, water heaters, showers, high spec gaming PC's.  Don't bother with the small thinks like phone chargers - in the scale of things they don't matter.  Any electric underfloor ?

Read that meter daily, keep your own records.


PS Have you checked the info on your bills -   is the actual gas meter ft3 - what is it on the bills ? and the serial numbers.   Are the meter reads the same ? Are they correct - some meters are difficult to read - for modern ones watch out for the decimal point, the ols ones with dials going in different directions can be challenging.

Give us photo's of your meters please.

tiya1990

Thank You for the replies . 

( We do have a Smart Meter installed by Octopus in April 22. )

I will answer them in order

1) macman : Double glazing throughout , Cavity Walls - insulated as per EPC . Apart from heating and hot water , only other appliance on gas is the hob - we batch cook once a week for the whole week and then freeze everything . 

2) theoretica : Thermostatic valves - We have this in the 4 bedrooms only -  : Its called Danfoss - photo attached - works intermittently in some rooms . Is this supposed to communicate with the thermostat ?- thermostat only in hall - 'Drayton Digistat + 2 ' as shown in photo- none in any other room. 

BTW  - downstairs radiators are all covered by wooden radiator covers - would this affect the heating ?

Tank insulation is good. 

3) Coffeekup : I have attached a picture of the boiler , thermostat in the hall and the hot water tank . Summer gas usage has been :
May 1070kWh ,
June 920 kWh ,
July 600 kWh ( when we were away for 22 days ! )  

Electricity : We do not have an electric shower / hot tub / pond pumps / UV lights / Sunbed / Air Conditioning.  One Gaming PC which is played on perhaps 6 hours a day in holidays and 1 hour a day during school time. We do have fridge freezer in the garage - and I am checking on the Power Meter for these.

4) FreeBear : I have turned down the thermostat at the hot water tank to 45 degrees after your suggestion . Thanks. I think we do need home automation but need to convince OH who still thinks that I am overplaying this!

5) BUFF : I think we need to go down the new boiler route in any case however I still wonder whether there is something else that we are missing that is accounting for such a huge gas usage. There are draughts through the doors and I wonder to what extent that is contributory. 

6) Robin9 : We don't have any other fancy equipment other than 2 fridge freezers in the garage which I will be tracking on the power meter. We have Smart Meters and I have attached the photos.

Electricity usage during July when we were away for 22 d was 350kWh which is seriously concerning. 

We do have an electric car which consumes 250kWh per month ie 3000 kWh per year. But the strange thing is that , our annual electric consumption without the car in 2020 was 9000 kWh and is now still 9-10,000 kWh which does not make sense !

Is there any merit in getting a retrofit assessor or a heating engineer or any other professional in , esp regarding the gas usage ?
? 
 

macman

Are your fridge/freezers actually rated for use in a garage? Many are not, it's too cold for much of the year.
Boiler last serviced September 2015? A little googling says that the Ideal Classic LXFF was last made in 2001, so it's got to be 21+ years old. So it's non-condensing and low efficiency.
I'd suggest a new boiler and uprate to TRV's on all the rads as a starting point.