Gas usage quadrupled?

FreeBear

dharm999 said:

Forgot to say, that the boiler fires up regularly, when switched on, even when hot water and heating aren’t on, but the house doesn’t have a thermostat anywhere, as there is UFH at the middle level, three storey house, and radiators at the ground and top level.  From a previous thread I posted, the feeling seemed to be that it firing up regularly was normal.

A MegaFlow tank should be reasonably well insulated, so heat losses will be minimal*.

I'd suggest reading the manual for your timer and set it to heat the tank up once a day - If you shower/bath daily, an hour before you actually need hot water is good. Also look to see what temperature the thermostat is set to. For a sealed system, 50°C is plenty hot enough.

*) Some hot water systems have a pump that constantly circulates hot water so that there is no delay when turning a tap on. This will allow all your water to get cold as it circulates through poorly insulated pipes and require the boiler to fire up at regular intervals to get the water back up to temperature - Grossly inefficient just to get instant hot water out of a tap.

dharm999

I suspect you may be right about the pump circulating hot water, as there is a pump in the loft, a heavy duty Grunfoss (?) one that comes on for a few seconds at all times of day and night, incredibly irritating at night, as it’s directly above one of the bedrooms.

Have checked the gas meter after switching off the boiler and no usage at all in the last couple of hours, which I’m guessing probably means no leak.

QrizB

dharm999 said:

I suspect you may be right about the pump circulating hot water, as there is a pump in the loft, a heavy duty Grunfoss (?) one that comes on for a few seconds at all times of day and night, incredibly irritating at night, as it’s directly above one of the bedrooms.

My parents have a circulation pump. It's on a time switch so it only runs during the daytime. Less noise and lower electricity use. You might look into something similar?

FreeBear

dharm999 said:

I suspect you may be right about the pump circulating hot water, as there is a pump in the loft, a heavy duty Grunfoss (?) one that comes on for a few seconds at all times of day and night, incredibly irritating at night, as it’s directly above one of the bedrooms.

If you don't mind waiting for hot water to come out of a tap, ask your plumber if he can remove the pump (or bypass it) - I'd suggest a bypass if possible, and then you can revert if it doesn't work out. Failing that, put the pump on a timer as per GrizB above.

With the price of energy being so high, we all have a duty to cut consumption.

WiserMiser

dharm999 said:

Just noticed today, when taking a reading that my gas usage has quadrupled in the last two weeks from 1.5m3 a day to over 6m3

dharm999 said:

We have an old style gas meter, so no issues with a problem with an electronic one, but that’s not to say there isn’t a problem with the existing meter.

You have a mechanical bellows meter that registers m³?

Robin9

@dharm999  If you can a photo of the meter please

WiserMiser

dharm999 said:

MWT said:

dharm999 said:

Just noticed today, when taking a reading that my gas usage has quadrupled in the last two weeks from 1.5m3 a day to over 6m3, which doesn’t make sense given that we only use gas for hot water at the moment, and that hasn’t changed in the last two weeks

Have you actually turned off the gas central heating?

Over the last couple of weeks we were surprised to notice that despite generally warm days, it was getting cold enough at night for the heating to come on again...

Definitely off, as it’s switched off at the controller

You can't rely on that.  There may well be a frost sensor which will cause the boiler to fire up regardless of what the controller says.  You need to kill the boiler's electricity supply to be certain it's fully off.

WiserMiser

dharm999 said:

the house doesn’t have a thermostat anywhere

Are you sure?  That seems very unlikely.  It would mean that the system would run full pelt when ever it was switched on.  You'd be sweltering most of the time unless the system is seriously under dimensioned or there's a mega Beast From The East.

dharm999 said:

there is UFH at the middle level with wall controllers in each room

Wet (pipes) or electricity (wires)?

dharm999

WiserMiser said:

dharm999 said:

Just noticed today, when taking a reading that my gas usage has quadrupled in the last two weeks from 1.5m3 a day to over 6m3

dharm999 said:

We have an old style gas meter, so no issues with a problem with an electronic one, but that’s not to say there isn’t a problem with the existing meter.

You have a mechanical bellows meter that registers m³?

Definitely a mechanical meter, will add a picture

dharm999

WiserMiser said:

dharm999 said:

the house doesn’t have a thermostat anywhere

Are you sure?  That seems very unlikely.  It would mean that the system would run full pelt when ever it was switched on.  You'd be sweltering most of the time unless the system is seriously under dimensioned or there's a mega Beast From The East.

dharm999 said:

there is UFH at the middle level with wall controllers in each room

Wet (pipes) or electricity (wires)?

There are two controllers for the heating, one for the UFH and one for the radiators.  Each radiator has a trv, so we control the heating by using the individual room controllers for the UFH or the trvs for the rooms with radiators.  Definitely no room thermostat that controls heating for the whole house as it’s controlled within each room.

UFH is a wet system.