High gas usage 2 February at 12:07PM in Energy 35 replies 1.7K views

walsh1229

Hi, 
Could anyone give me some advice please? 
My gas usage is coming up really high, I live in a 3 bedroom semi-detached house, the third bedroom being a loft conversion and is not used as its just me, and 2 young children who share a bedroom, my meter reading for gas from the 17/11/22 were 38779 and my meter readings for today 02/02/23 are 40044, with it being cold I have the heating on low for around 3-6 a day and off all night, I have an electric cooker and gas hob and the bath is filled two or three times a day depending, I'm just wondering if this is normal or if there's a fault somewhere maybe with the boiler or the gas meter?

MikeJXE

It sounds normal for what you're doing

3-6 hours heating 

3 baths a day 

Others will know more than me I'm no expert just my opinion 

EssexHebridean

What temperature is the heating at? (One person's "low" is another's "tropical"!)
Is the loft space heated? And what is the insulation above it like?
Is the loft space open or does it have a door/hatch?

How do these readings compare with the same period last year? 

Remember that the very cold snap that affected pretty much the entire country will have dramatically increased the energy used for heating during that period too. 

Gerry1

Welcome to the forum.

You need to think in kWh, not metered units.  Is it a metric meter (cubic metres, m3) or an imperial one (cubic feet, ft3)?  A rough approximation to get kWh is to multiply the volume by 11.2 if it's a metric meter or by 32 if it's an imperial meter.  If it's a metric meter, make sure your supplier isn't billing it as imperial (if you see a figure of 2.83 in their calculation it's a problem).

Better still, look back over your bills to establish annual consumption in kWh derived from actual meter readings (customer, meter reader or smart), not estimates.

The average annual gas consumption  is 12,000kWh but obviously there can be wide variations depending on property size, number of occupants, insulation, latitude, temperate or tropical preferences, etc.

molerat

That is very high use, 1265 units over 77 days is 16.4 units per day which is 184 kWh per day.  As a guide I have my heating on 24/7 in a really cold spell and use 6 to 9 metric units per day with an antique inefficient boiler.

Can you confirm whether your meter reads in cu ft or cu m, it will be on the front of the meter, and your readings only show the numbers before the dot.  If this is a misread imperial meter the use would be perfectly normal, quite good in fact.

walsh1229

Hi, thanks for your replies, I'm really not clued up with all this, so I have the thermostat at 20 and the radiator and tap dial on the boiler are on half way, the meter is a metric meter and I have worked out in kwh that the usage would be 14151.2673kwh which i find to be very high for less than 3 months, my kods stay with their dad 3 nights a week and I work 3 double shifts a week so not here all day every day, I understand more would be used during the Christmas holidays and with it being do cold. Also I moved into this current property March 2022

walsh1229

molerat said:

That is very high use, 1265 units over 77 days is 16.4 units per day which is 184 kWh per day.  As a guide I have my heating on 24/7 in a really cold spell and use 6 to 9 metric units per day with an antique inefficient boiler.

Can you confirm whether your meter reads in cu ft or cu m, it will be on the front of the meter, and your readings only show the numbers before the dot.  If this is a misread imperial meter the use would be perfectly normal, quite good in fact.

This is the meter 

walsh1229

EssexHebridean said:

What temperature is the heating at? (One person's "low" is another's "tropical"!)
Is the loft space heated? And what is the insulation above it like?
Is the loft space open or does it have a door/hatch?

How do these readings compare with the same period last year? 

Remember that the very cold snap that affected pretty much the entire country will have dramatically increased the energy used for heating during that period too. 

The loft has a door then stairs to go up and is insulated pretty good

molerat

Looking at that meter shows an overall average of around 20000 kWh per year so fairly high.

Do you have historical meter readings ?

You need to start doing daily meter reads, maybe multiple per day, and keep a log.

Is this house owned or rented ?

Is there a chance the gas is supplying something / someone else ?

walsh1229

molerat said:

Looking at that meter shows an overall average of around 20000 kWh per year so fairly high.

Do you have historical meter readings ?

You need to start doing daily meter reads, maybe multiple per day, and keep a log.

Is this house owned or rented ?

Is there a chance the gas is supplying something / someone else ?

The house is rented, and I'm not sure as the meter doesn't run if I have all appliances off so I don't think anyone else would be using the gas, I've done a space test from last week with using hardly any gas, heating on for 2-3 hours for 5 of those days and 1 hour the other two day and the reading started on 39984 from one week ago and today is 40044, so 60 units have been used, using the bare minimum gas and when ypu say historical readings do ypu mean the previous months I've lived here as I only moved in in March so have no readings from the previous years 

walsh1229

molerat said:

Looking at that meter shows an overall average of around 20000 kWh per year so fairly high.

Do you have historical meter readings ?

You need to start doing daily meter reads, maybe multiple per day, and keep a log.

Is this house owned or rented ?

Is there a chance the gas is supplying something / someone else ?

So I've worked out that from March 11th 2022 until 17th November 2022 I used in total 795 units of gas in total 795 units of gas for that period and then the jump is from 17th November 2022 until today which states I have used 1265 units in that period 😳