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

tiya1990

Fridge Freezers may or may not be rated for the garage - I will check on that . 
Boiler was last serviced in 2019 - they didn't have stickers then !!

bagand96

What times do you have set for the hot water? It could be that you have hot water on far longer than needed? 

macman

Your boiler is so old that it has a pilot light, which may account for the consumption while you were away, unless you shut it down?
I'd be amazed if a modern condensing boiler wasn't 25% more efficient, so the way gas prices are going, the payback would be very rapid.

macman

bagand96 said:

What times do you have set for the hot water? It could be that you have hot water on far longer than needed? 

It's thermostatic, so will not be heating throughout the 'on' hours.

Coffeekup

tiya1990 said :

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

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 .

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. 

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 ?

Stop! Turning the water tank down to 45*C is a legionella risk at that temp. Put it it back to 60-65*C, I think @freebear was talking about a combi boiler water setting.

Radiator covers are not great as you not heating the rooms you just trapping much if the heat into the cover's.

Much of your gas usage is down to that boiler which is just burning gas all day everyday even when your out, in bed, at work and on holidays, it's so inefficient to at 78% or lower as. It's so old. Personally I'd get 3 quotes in from local businesses and get one fitted asap, they should clean the system out too which will help warm the house better. It may even contribute to you electric usage too by 1kwh a day (but that's a guess)

350kwh of electric used whilst you were away for 22 day's that's 15kwh a day.
I'm guessing you have 3 fridge freezer's 1 in house and 2 in garage... They could be using a minimum of 2.5-3 kwh's a day, more if their old, damaged or American style. 
I'm guessing nothing got turned off at the wall whilst you were away, if I didn't you back ground usage is high and you need to figure out what is using this much energy and either replace them or get used to turning them off at the house wall.
15kwh's base usage a day will cost £7.50 in October and that before you've actually wanted to use something that consumes power.

How long is your Immersion heater on for a day? How many times a day? If you use some hit water does it fill back up and reheat the water? 
Do you have 2x double oven's, wine chiller's?
Sky boxes can consume minimum of 25w an hour when not in use, if you have one of these in a few rooms that can account for some of your daily usage, old TV's sitting in standby too can do the same. Even that gaming PC not being shut down with it's monitor will eat upwards of 150w an hour.
If you want to get to the bottom of it you have to go round each room look at what's plugged in and switched on at the socket.

When electric was cheap we all left thing's on at the wall, now prices are going up these electric items are more accountable. We need to decide if it's worth turning these off to save some money or worth keeping on for quality of life/ease of use..

HampshireH

Have you ruled out a leak on the gas?

Does the meter move when the gas is isolated?

Do you have a Carbon Monoxide detector near your boiler?

That said any leak should have been detected when your meter was fitted and/or on your last service.

bagand96

macman said:

bagand96 said:

What times do you have set for the hot water? It could be that you have hot water on far longer than needed? 

It's thermostatic, so will not be heating throughout the 'on' hours.

I know that it doesn't heat the whole time. But you do see people who leave the water on all day long, or even H24, which will mean the boiler does fire at times to keep the tank up at temperature.

Depending on use patterns just having it on for an hour or two in the morning and maybe a boost in the evening if needed will be more than enough with a decent tank. And it will save some gas, every little helps. 

jimjames

tiya1990 said:

Fridge Freezers may or may not be rated for the garage - I will check on that . 
Boiler was last serviced in 2019 - they didn't have stickers then !!

I've been looking at our fridge freezers with an energy monitor. Looks like they're costing around £300-350 each to run per year which has focussed minds on whether we need them both!

stewie_griffin

Going slightly off topic but in 6 months you’ve used 4300 units of electricity, so you’re looking at 8500 a year which considering you’ve got gas central heating is huge.

Alnat1

We live in a 4 bed house built 2003 with integral garage, guessing yours could be quite similar? Only 2 of us (now empty nesters) someone home all day and our gas use for the last year was 11,000kWh. Aiming for 8,000-9,000kWh this year. Our hot water tank set up looks just like yours.

What do you actually use the hot water for? We thought about it and realised it was only really 2 showers and hubby's shave, we have a dishwasher and only occasionally need hot water for cleaning etc. We both shower in the morning. We now set the water to heat for 40 minutes at 7am. We reduced it gradually from 90 minutes. Work out how much you need and when and try and cut the time. If you need extra hot water, say someone wants a bath, switch it on manually for 15-20 minutes. Boil a kettle if you want a bucket of hot water for cleaning.

TRVs in all rooms would help, but you need to keep internal doors closed to zone the rooms. Having the room thermostat in the living room rather than the hall is better, nobody is sitting in the hall. Heating set at 18C and programmed from 1/2 hour before you get up to 1/2 hour before bed, OFF overnight, get higher tog duvets if needed. Your house should be quite well insulated, shouldn't drop below around 13-14C overnight anyway.