Leaking radiator- gas bill usage

FreeBear

mexican_dave said:

FreeBear said:

And also check to see what units they are charging you for. It is not unheard of an old imperial meter to be replaced with a metric, and the supplier continues to bill for (100s) cubic feet - They did it to me...

Yes FreeBear that happened to me too, from memory in rough terms this error increases the bill by a factor of three! Obviously incorrectly.

The magic number is 2.83 (as near as damit 3) - Look at the little box where the gas consumption is converted from meter units to kWh. Every bill should show this calculation.

BooJewels

The OP already said that they have smart meters, so will be metric - as long as their bills are too.

I don't think a leaky radiator would increase gas use - I've had 2 leaking/failed TRVs recently and didn't notice it making any difference to gas consumption.  If anything it was perhaps reducing it whilst leaking as the rad in question wasn't getting warm - that's how I found the leak.

But my suggestion would be to keep the heating on with the thermostat - but lower the temperature.  I have mine during the day at 18°C and rising to 18.5°C in an evening.  It's at 15°C overnight, but only comes on very occasionally when it's around freezing outside.   What we did a while ago was try different approaches for a week at a time, with meter readings, and found that for us it made little difference in gas usage when keeping it on all the time, but it certainly improved our comfort levels, compared to timed intervals.  But you need to be sensible with the actual temperature.

For example, I recently had a boiler breakdown and was without it for a good 24 hours and the house got really quite cold, as it was around freezing at the time.  Going from my Hive stats; the house dropped to just above 12°C overnight and once the boiler was fixed, it came on 6 times the following night to get over 15°C, then ran constantly all day to try to get it to 18°C again and didn't reach it until gone 8pm - burning for 19 hours 18 minutes in a 24 hour period.  The following 24 hours, it only fired for 7 hours 29 minutes and fluctuated on and off all day, in around 20 minute bursts. 

Also according to Hive it was 3°C warmer on the later day - but I don't think that accounts for all of it - I think a lot of it was due to getting much colder inside than usual. So my own experience would suggest that keeping moderately warm is more efficient than yo-yoing from cold to very warm.

Cheryl2010

Thank you all for your help. Unfortunately we cannot see our daily usage via the British Gas app so will need to wait until our next statement is due to see if using the timer method made any difference.

I have downloaded the Loop app to see if that would be able to give me rough estimates of usage but it hasn't all connected up yet. 

EssexHebridean

Yes, loop is pretty decent and should show you your use the following day if it's anything like mine. 

MeteredOut

EssexHebridean said:

Yes, loop is pretty decent and should show you your use the following day if it's anything like mine. 

It also gives in-day usage, albeit typically a few hours behind (eg, as of now, 3:30pm, its showing my Gas usage to 10:30am and Electricity usage to 12:30pm)

https://energy.guylipman.com/sm/home also gives in-day usage, currently up till 2pm and 3pm for Gas and Electricity respectively.

EssexHebridean

Interestingly I’ve just checked mine and find I am now seeing some same day data - I never used to see anything until after 0030 which I believe is when Octopus pull my data.

Cheryl2010

So Loop account set up, but annoyingly it can't seem to connect to our gas meter! 

FreeBear

Cheryl2010 said:

So Loop account set up, but annoyingly it can't seem to connect to our gas meter! 

When I signed up for the Bright app, electricity came up almost straight away. Gas took a few days before it started displaying data.