Why is my gas likely to be costing so much all of a sudden?

B0bbyEwing

Moved to a smart meter at the back end of last year & after a bit of a mess around I finally got a working IHD. 
I have it connected & everything was pretty consistent apart from the odd day or two.

Past couple days though I've woken up to find 60-80p of gas used since midnight. This is on a 5am (yesterday) and 7am (today) get up. 
For some kind of reference maybe, on a normal day outside of these two, once I've got up in the morning, made my porridge (gas hob) & the wife has had her shower, it can be sitting at 30-40p used, so this is more than even that.

TroubledTarts

Your standing charge will.lolely be added between midnight and 2am.

It has also been cold recently so that could account for addition kwh of gas used.

What is your kwh used now and when it was showing 30-40p

NanookOfTheNorth

For my smart meter I can't work out when the 24 hour period resets but it's not as you'd expect at midnight and have seen what appears to be too higher daily use when I get up and only the boiler has been on heating the tank (no more than 30 minutes).   You'd probably better off looking at it over a number of days then taking the average.

QrizB

B0bbyEwing said:

Past couple days though I've woken up to find 60-80p of gas used since midnight. This is on a 5am (yesterday) and 7am (today) get up. 

If you look at kWh instead of £/p, can you see what has changed?

Does your meter give you a bar chart showing when during the day you used the gas?

B0bbyEwing

I'm not sure if I'd be able to go back in time on the IHD and see what it says for past days. I'll have to take a look.

QrizB

B0bbyEwing said:

I'm not sure if I'd be able to go back in time on the IHD and see what it says for past days. I'll have to take a look.

If you can't do it on the IHD, your account on your supplier's website might have the info. Or their app, if they have one and you're a user.

Scot_39

30p-40p for gas at 6.4p average SVT is around the 5-6kWh level - thats enough to lift about 80l of water from 10-60C - so about 2/3rds of a small tank - but far more than an average say shower if some days catching the use others not etc.

So if its not a combi but a tank based hot water system - you might want to look at how much hot water used the night before.

The standing charge for gas is a regional average of 31.6p - so those are zero use nights.

The other days - maybe the boiler - say 20 kW power - firing up for as little as 15-20min to top up a cold tank if have one or the radiators a little.

Some boilers also have a small local tank and some an antifrost setting - that can kick in - and use power unexpectedly if in a cold space even without any actual flow to tank or radiators.

There was a post a while back from someone who had unexpected overnight use - that was the anti frost protection kicking in in mild weather due to a faulty thermostat.

B0bbyEwing

That was what it showed. 

From maybe about 4-5pm today I turned the 2 rads in the living room off & the big rad in the kitchen off (off = to the frost setting) as I had the fire on.
By the time I finished watching a movie at 9:30pm that reading on the left said 22.xx kWh (xx because I can't remember the exact number).

FreeBear

You appear to be using quite a bit of gas between midnight & 06:00 - Is the boiler firing up to heat a tank of water and is the thermostat set very high (or even stuck) ?

TroubledTarts

B0bbyEwing said:

That was what it showed. 

From maybe about 4-5pm today I turned the 2 rads in the living room off & the big rad in the kitchen off (off = to the frost setting) as I had the fire on.
By the time I finished watching a movie at 9:30pm that reading on the left said 22.xx kWh (xx because I can't remember the exact number).

You can clearly see where you use the most gas (the block of green) so how do you have hot water and heating setup to run?

Plus have you looked at what data is available from your supplier on their website or app for your data as you really should be checking there and bills and not relying on your IHD only.

B0bbyEwing

Got a few things to do this morning so I'll have a look later this evening once I've time to go through it. Thanks. 

We have no tank of water. It's just a comb boiler. 

Regards settings, the dials on the boiler haven't been altered. They're not up at max. They're down a few notches & have been that way forever AFAIK. 

As for other settings, the temp controller we have at the bottom of the stairs is set to 14c (I think - I'll need to check) during those hours. I know we've had a cold couple days so maybe it's been triggering for that. Right now for example it's set at 12c & the display is saying we're sitting at 13c.

As for the TRVs on the rads themselves I actually turned them down. Instead of sitting at 3 for some they're actually now on 2.


On the topic of which, and I was going to make a thread on this asking at some point - 

When we moved in we ended up renewing the downstairs rads to double rads. The upstairs ones remained singles, untouched from the previous owners. 
If I set the new ones to a low number like 2 then you can feel them when the heating kicks in. 

If I do that with the upstairs rads then it's like they're off. The one in our bedroom for example, when I know the heating is On and it's set at 2 it'll be cold. I have to actually turn it to about 3.5 to then hear the flow of water & have it heating up. The spare room is similar although the required number may not be 3.5 I can't remember. Same with the box room (all single panel rads). 

Should probably upgrade to double panel at some point but I never understood why they don't warm up on a 1-2 setting, maybe even a 3 setting. 

I know that's a tad off topic but since I'm here asking questions...