Gas Meter Still Increasing Whilst Gas Isolated (Siemens/Landis+Gyr E6S)

Chrysalis

I will add my own opinion to Dolor's opinion, his reply assumes that all untested meters are not faulty, I think a fairer way of looking at is based on the test data which is 1094 out of 1209 were found to be not faulty.  Which unless my maths suck is slightly under 10%, of course meters can be under reading not just over reading.  The data above indeed says only 3.7% were over reading.

However 3.7% is not 0%, the odds are not lottery odds.  So I wouldnt use those figures as a means of backing down.  In fact I would say thats actually a high fail rate.

From my own experience I have reported 2 meters to my supplier's.

The first one was the gas meter in use when I moved into my current property, this was many years ago, over a decade ago, what I do know is I was refunded, and not charged for the meter swap aka "found to be faulty".

The second one was early last year after I submitted a meter reading which suggested i was using circa 30 KwH a day of electric for about a year or so in a small flat living by myself no dependents.  I was taking daily readings with little changes of usage patterns, and the readings were very inconsistent all over the place, in the end despite me agreeing to be liable for the fee if it was found to be operating within spec my supplier dragged their feet and simply refused to book a meter test, to force the meter out of my home, I arranged a smart meter to be fitted, and I followed the engineers advice that if the smart meter had significantly lower readings to use that as evidence for my case.  After a couple of months of Octopus refusing to issue a deadlock and multiple months of smart meter data, it was raised to the ombudsman, and Octopus settled with me for a 4 figure sum and compensation on top.  But make sure you are collecting data, do lots of testing, at the very least do a creep test, which is what I think the guys are trying to assess with the advice they giving you here.

I can understand your hesitation to not fiddle, as really they should be doing the testing.

CSI_Yorkshire

I agree.  Faults are rare, but they do happen.  You seem, from everything here, to be in the rare category.  Push for a test.

MeteredOut

Zandoni said:
<snip>

These meters can and do register without passing gas.

Do you mean by design, or when they fault (eg, low battery)?

As of yesterday evening, it seems to have stopped incrementing when no usage is happening - the same as I saw last year, the issue being intermittent, but absolutely noticeable when happening.

I'm just glad I have the videos showing it incrementing when isolated (which I have now uploaded to YouTube and sent the links to EDF).

Zandoni

MeteredOut said:

Zandoni said:
<snip>

These meters can and do register without passing gas.

Do you mean by design, or when they fault (eg, low battery)?

As of yesterday evening, it seems to have stopped incrementing when no usage is happening - the same as I saw last year, the issue being intermittent, but absolutely noticeable when happening.

I'm just glad I have the videos showing it incrementing when isolated (which I have now uploaded to YouTube and sent the links to EDF).

No definitely not by design, self incrementing was often caused by dry solder joints. I’d imagine a low battery can make it worse but some done it from new. One of the tests that were done was to leave the meters for a period of time to ensure that they didn’t increment in the factory.

Gerry1

MeteredOut said:

Zandoni said:
<snip>

These meters can and do register without passing gas.

As of yesterday evening, it seems to have stopped incrementing when no usage is happening - the same as I saw last year, the issue being intermittent, but absolutely noticeable when happening.

Could well depend on the ambient temperature (high recently of course) especially if battery related.  Think of starting a car with an old battery on a freezing morning !

Bung a few freezer gel packs in the meter box and you may be able to re-create the fault at will.

markin

GrubbyGirl_2 said:

MeteredOut said:

Quick update - after a few more phone calls, I have finally managed to speak to someone at EDF who can the request in for an OFMAT test. This has been sent to their gas metering team.

However, they also asked for photos of the last 7 days of meter readings, which I have provided. I did this before and the metering team looked at them and said there was no discrepancy, so they refused to take things further.

Their mailbox could also not accept the video showing the meter increasing even when isolated (it was compressed/reduced as much as I could).

Fingers crossed they actually schedule the test...

Upload it to YouTube and send them a link

Probably help a lot of people if you made it public with the model number, put something over the S/N.

MeteredOut

Zandoni said:

No definitely not by design, self incrementing was often caused by dry solder joints. I’d imagine a low battery can make it worse but some done it from new. One of the tests that were done was to leave the meters for a period of time to ensure that they didn’t increment in the factory.

Thanks, any idea what the diagnostic letters after the reading means? b, d, C, E are the ones I've seen - in the past week, its been mostly b, switched to C for a couple of days, now back to b.

Zandoni

MeteredOut said:

Zandoni said:

No definitely not by design, self incrementing was often caused by dry solder joints. I’d imagine a low battery can make it worse but some done it from new. One of the tests that were done was to leave the meters for a period of time to ensure that they didn’t increment in the factory.

Thanks, any idea what the diagnostic letters after the reading means? b, d, C, E are the ones I've seen - in the past week, its been mostly b, switched to C for a couple of days, now back to b.

Although I was inspecting the factories during production they never told us there were other codes other than b for the battery.

MeteredOut

Interesting response from EDF today (they have reviewed the videos)

Thank you for the links to the videos, I have viewed both of these. I can see on the first video the meter read shows as 30117 502 and changes to 30117 507 within approximately 5 minutes. The second video shows the read has advanced to 30117 674 and this was taken approximately 15 minutes later. As we have advised previously, this would just be the gas flowing through the pipes from the meter to appliances as pressure in the internal system will still draw gas through until all gas in the pipes have been used. This can continue to flow for around 30 minutes. 

I've now sent them photos from a 2 1/4 hour period on the same day when the gas meter was isolated and the readings went up by over 1 unit (around 12kWh) and have reiterated that I firmly believe the meter is faulty and requires testing.

CSI_Yorkshire

That's a new one - "of course the meter counts up when the isolation valve is closed, because it's counting the gas that's already in your house"