Very large gas usage advice

Gerry1

You'll probably find that everything is OK and that it's just down to having a large property.

However, for peace of mind you could do the leakage checks outlined in this thread.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6456233/british-gas-gas-leak-behind-gas-fire-i-advise-you-to-keep-old-bills-and-take-photos-of-meter/

born_again

hmontg said:

We have a 5 bed house approx 4000 sq ft new build Jan 2023. Underfloor heating both levels,thermostats set to 18 and rarely fire,house is comfortably warm. Mech ventilation also. Gas boiler — hot water and towel rails on timers, gas fires which we have avoided using past year. 
Our most recent gas bill was £1509 for 100 days. We used 14380 kwh…where are we going wrong or is this just normal? We really want to reduce our usage since bills approx £6000 for the year for gas. 

While you think they are not firing much. Try reading meter before going to bed & then when you get up in the morning.
I would hazard a guess it is running most of the night to keep ambient temperature up while you are asleep.

Alnat1

You could try turning the temperature down to 16C overnight.

BooJewels

I'd concur with the suggestion of a lower overnight temperature on your thermostat.  I have mine set to 18°C during the day and 15°C overnight.  I loosely monitor my heating activity through the Hive app and my heating fires overnight maybe a dozen times a year, when it's sub zero outside.  I don't live in a modern well insulated house - it's 150 years old and would certainly benefit from some improvements. Yet I'm surprised that the temperature doesn't drop overnight as much as I might have guessed before I upgraded my heating and thermostat.

I just looked at the data for 2 extremes of weather in the last couple of weeks - Sunday 18th Feb was showing as an outside temp of 8 -11°C  - so mild - and the internal temp only dropped to around 17°C overnight and the heating fired for a total of 2 hours 26 minutes during the day.

This Tuesday was noticeably colder with a range between 1 - 7°C and the temperature dropped to 15.7°C overnight - so didn't fire up - but ran for 10 hours 26 minutes during the day.  So it needed to run quite a bit to maintain 18°C during the day.  Yours is potentially doing that all night when it's cooler - so possibly adding a significant proportion to your heating costs.

coffeehound

When you say towel rails are on timers – are they electric?  One for the other thread, but they could be a kW if large

hmontg

coffeehound said:

When you say towel rails are on timers – are they electric?  One for the other thread, but they could be a kW if large

Ah sorry maybe I should t have split the threads but felt it would be a lot of reading all at once

No sorry they are gas but just have it timed to morning and evening for 1 hour on the master thermostat controlling the towel rail pipe circuit and the hot water for showers.

I am going to adjust the mech ventilation, and also the thermostats overnight, and will also check gas and electric meters once isolate a few suspect items in circuit board. Thank you so much for all the advice, we had tried a number of the suggestions but also felt like we were still missing something so will try again.

MultiFuelBurner

Surely a new home built in 2023 has a smart meter and you have an in home display to track usage as well?

hmontg

MultiFuelBurner said:

Surely a new home built in 2023 has a smart meter and you have an in home display to track usage as well?

No not a smart meter but we have thermostats with app etc for remote control. The house was a fortune to wire also…I’m sure we could have done it better but we followed advice at the time and similar to other new homes in area. 

hmontg

*I am beginning to think we didn’t get the best advice either.

markin

Your response seems odd to me so..

The smart meter is provided by the power company and your Energy provider should be getting the reading that you can then see on the website, or with an app.

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Under floor heating can have a large lag time so you may need to turn it off say 2 hrs early and start it 2 hrs before you want it warm.