Unrealistic Gas Bill from Scottish Power for 4 bed house??

Bigun28

Hi

Just received a massive Scottish Power gas bill for the last quarter which seems totally unrealistic. The property is a 4 bed detached which is rented and we moved into in Jan 08. Changed the utils to Scottish Power Online Energy Saver 4 Dual Fuel via USwitch which commenced on 28 Jan 08. Gas meter was read by them as 22176 on that day.

I've just provided the latest reading on 26 Apr 08 as 24509 (I've checked and rechecked to confirm the figure) and we've now got a gas bill of £679.78 for the last quarter to 28 Jan 08, which apparently meant an average usage of 287 kWh per day for the entire quarter!!

We only have a gas hob and the gas central heating/water using the gas. Heating/water is only on for a couple of hours in the morning and 4 hours in the evening. Room temps independently measured at about 21 degrees C constant, so nothing excessive. Boiler temp on 4 on a scale of 8, house is 10 years old and fully insulated with double glazing and we switch the radiators off in most of the rooms because there are only 2 of us living here most of the time.

So the size of the bill doesn't make sense. As a comparison, the electricity bill for the same period is only £122.99. We've been out of the country for 18 months so don't really have any appreciation of what an average gas bill for a 4 bed should now be. Landlord has no idea of what bills should be and not really approachable about getting anything sorted. I've asked British Gas to come and service the boiler (under Landlord's BG maintenance contract) but we have to wait a month before they can come (god help us if the system actually broke down!!!)

The bill calculations seem correct based on the readings and I suspect if I approach Scottish Power to query the bill they'll just say tough because they have accurate readings at either end. Speaking with British Gas they suspect there may be a leak but I note that the meter reading is static when the boiler times off and stays constant overnight. The boiler was unpressurised for a while (noted on a gauge) until BG came to fix it - would that make that much difference???

At the moment, tracking our gas kWh usage for the past few days without changing any routine, we seem to be averaging about 90 kWh per day.

In essence, what is/should be an average gas bill for a 4 bed detached house? Has anyone had a previous massive bill and then discovered the cause to be something in particular (eg leaky boiler etc)? Any ideas on what has driven this bill to be so large?

Appreciate any help/info.

espresso

Randal wrote: »

Hi

Just received a massive Scottish Power gas bill for the last quarter which seems totally unrealistic. The property is a 4 bed detached which is rented and we moved into in Jan 08. Changed the utils to Scottish Power Online Energy Saver 4 Dual Fuel via USwitch which commenced on 28 Jan 08. Gas meter was read by them as 22176 on that day.

I've just provided the latest reading on 26 Apr 08 as 24509 (I've checked and rechecked to confirm the figure) and we've now got a gas bill of £679.78 for the last quarter to 28 Jan 08, which apparently meant an average usage of 287 kWh per day for the entire quarter!!

First you need to convert your meter readings into kWh. Depending on your meter, it will either read hundreds of cubic feet (imperial) or cubic meters (metric). Convert your consumed units to kWh here.

mute_posting

Randal wrote: »

Gas meter was read by them as 22176 on that day.
.....
Appreciate any help/info.

Are you sure it was "read" by them? It quite unusual for them to send someone out to read a meter just because of a switch.

What was the reading when you moved in (before the switch - I'm assuming you read it?) - does the usage between then and the switch "reading" tally anything like with the usage since then and now?

HTH

MP

Bigun28

Many thanls for the prompt replies.

The meter readings are definitely in cubic metres (that was the first thing I checked after reading through these forums about similar problems) and have then been converted to kWh. I've checked their figures for the calcs using the formulas everyone quotes on this forum (and also quoted on the Scottish Power bill) and also on the link and everything seems OK.

Interestingly, previous gas readings with British Gas from early Jan 08 until the change on 28 Jan 08 also indicate a high usage of about 210 kWh per day. The problem is that we didn't start to actually live in the house until towards the end of Jan 08 and that was when I reset all the timer settings etc. I seem to remember reducing them together with the thermostat setting, but can't be sure.

Ref the meter reading, a guy came with his meter saying that he was reading it for Scottish Power and the figure they quote on their opening bill is refered to as an 'Actual Read'.

So now thinking about it, I suppose previous trending does indicate a high gas usage somewhere. But something doesn't make sense. We're normally very careful about not wasting energy (eg low energy light bulbs, turn heating off altogether on a warm day, and having settings on minimum etc). And when we lived in the UK 18 months ago, we never seemed to have any big bill issues using the same regime. I do appreciate bills have gone up since, but looking at other peoples bills in comparison, something does seem to be amiss.

Premier_2

Something certainly doesn't seem right there.

Assuming your calculations are correct and that you really only have the heating and hot water on for 6 hours per day, that's almost 50 kW per hour (ignoring the gas hob). You didn't mention the oven so I guess that's electric.

I have noticed a gas hob with 4 burners going full blast does spin the gas meter around quite quickly, but in reality, do you really use all the 4 (or more) bas burners at once on full blast? Probably not and even if you did, I guess they are not on for very long.

So ignoring the gas hob usage for now, if the figures are correct then you must have quite a big gas boiler.

1kW = 3413 btu

so 50kW = 170,650 btu

That might be possible I suppose, but I would think a typical boiler for a house you describe would only be about 120,000 btu.
So check the size of the boiler - you should find that on the information panel somewhere on the boiler, perhaps under a user accessible panel.

Even if you do have 170,000 btu boiler, it would still assume that you are running it on full blast for the full 6 hours - again unlikely as it should cut out once the required temperature is achieved.

So unless you have a massive boiler, I would suspect a faulty meter that is running too fast.

Edit:
Just seen the bit where you say you currently only use 90kWh per day rather than the previous 287kWh per day. That seems much more realistic. So scrub the faulty meter notion - I think either your calculation for the earlier period must be wrong somehow, or the meter readings were not recorded correctly (perhaps the start one was wrong?)

mech_2

That is certainly a lot of gas. It's more than twice as much gas as heating such a house is likely to need. The 90kWh/day figure also seems too high if the weather there is anything like it has been here over the past week. I'm using roughly 17kWh/day at the moment compared to 45kWh/day back in February.

I agree with "Premier". 50kW is probably more than the boiler is designed to consume, so there's something wrong with it, or there's a leak, or there's something wrong with the meter. Maybe the issue will be clearer when the boiler has been serviced.

You could have the meter checked, but if they find nothing wrong they will charge you for the check.

In the meantime all I can suggest is that you try to minimise gas usage until the problem is resolved. Bleeding the radiators might be worth trying too, especially as the system lost pressure at one point, but I don't think it could be the source of such high gas usage.

Bigun28

As a matter of interest has anyone ever had their meter checked and found it to be wrong? And if nothing is wrong with the meter, anyone any idea how much they charge to do the check?

Will your own gas supplier do the check or does it always have to be British Gas?

mech_2

You can ask your supplier. They won't do the check, but they'll organise it. The fee for a check on a meter which is found not to be faulty is around £90. Two thirds of meters tested are found to be accurate. It's the last resort really - check everything else first.

http://www.simplyswitch.com/faulty-meter-what-to-do.html

ScoobieGirl

mech wrote: »

Two thirds of meters tested are found to be accurate.

WHAT! :eek::eek::eek:

1 in 3 meters are inacurate? and from the same link

"Meters do not have to be exactly right. They are deemed accurate if they read no more than 2.5% higher or 3.5% lower than the exact amount of electricity used."

"The meter has to be accurate within 2% of the exact amount of gas being used."

So 1 in 3 meters are out by at least 2.0% or more. That's pretty poor. I hope the modern meters are a lot more accurate than that.

Bigun28

mech

Many thanks for that. Very informative. Had a quick look at the Average Energy Usage Figures as well on the link. For a 4 bed house they are quoting 29000 kWh for gas (I presume that is the annual figure). My gas usage for the last quarter was put at 25846 kWh. That's why it didn't make sense - I've apparently used a whole year's gas in 3 months.

I found another interesting point on this thread (here) which mentioned over gassing of the boiler as an issue for their high bills. Trouble is I will have to wait a month before British Gas can get to me to service the boiler to test it out.

mute_posting

ScoobieGirl wrote: »

That's pretty poor. I hope the modern meters are a lot more accurate than that.

I think to make them much more accurate than that would cost BIG.

Besides there isn't much point in having them so accurate when so many other fiddle-factors are applied to the reading to calculate your "actual" usage (the calorific value is only an everage of multiple samples taken accross the distribution network)

HTH

MP