V.High Boiler consumption & excessive bills

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Hi all. Hope someone can help me here...

We moved into a house in December. 1st Gas/Electric bill we received was £648 for 6 weeks usage :eek: :eek: Switched to British Gas but we are still getting £200 per month gas and £80 per month electric. The meters are showing we are using approx 20 units of gas and 30 electric per day. Only gas appliance is the boiler.

Our previous house was larger, had more radiators, a gas hob & gas fire. The bill was approx £220 per quarter for gas. We are now paying per month what we paid for over 3 months :eek:

So for the new house:
It's a 4 bedroom 1950's bungalow.
Boiler is a Worcester Bosch 19/24 CBi.
It's a pressurised system (as we have an expansion tank)
Cold water tank in loft, hot water tank next to boiler
12 radiators, 2 are doubles.

Boiler was serviced 2 weeks ago and the engineer found nothing wrong. Gas pipe has been checked for leaks - all fine.
We have had cavity wall & loft insulation installed.
New timer fitted so we could split the hot water & heating timers.
New valve fitted as the old one was sticking.
7 radiators have been changed (as the old ones were pretty but didn't give out much heat)
All radiators have been bled - no air in the sytem.
BG is checking the meter in 2 weeks, but I'm sure it will be fine. it's a metric/digital meter for both gas & electric.

Boiler is on for 6 - 8 in the morning and 4 - 10 at night.

Appreciate it's difficult to identify exactly what the problem is, but I'm hoping someone can tell me what to try next. I can't afford these bills for much longer :evil:
 
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rates of units vary between companies and area. i would base 1 unit to 4 pence as an average. Then of course you have an A rate and a B rate, the B rate being less at around 2.5 pence.
 
So are you suggesting that the ridiculously high bills are due to the unit cost and not related to consumption at all? I don't have anything to compare to, so don't know if 20 units per day is high or normal?
 
Since your meter appears to measure in m� (metres cubed), we don�t have to worry about converting to metric, however, we do need to convert it to a standardised volume. (Volume varies with pressure so before any calculations are done, the actual volume you have used is converted to the gas company's standardised volume unit.) This is the Volume Conversion Factor shown on your bill.

We now need to work out how much energy was in the gas you have used. This energy is released when you burn it and is known as the calorific value. The SI unit of energy is the Joule, and the calorific value given on your bill is measured in Mega Joules per metre cubed of gas. (1 Mega Joule (MJ) = 1 000 000 Joules.
The gas company works out the average calorific value over the period you have used it, (since it can, and does vary).
They will give you a figure for the average calorific value on your bill. This figure will probably be around 38 � 40 MJ per m� .

So, now multiply your converted volume of gas used (in m�) by the calorific value given on your bill to get the absolute amount of energy contained in the gas you have used (in MJ).

You are actually charged by a unit known as the KWh (KiloWatt hour) � the same unit used in your electricity bill. It is a derived unit that represents the amount of energy used by a 1KW device in one hour. The amount of energy this represents can be calculated;

A Watt is the unit of power, and represents a rate of energy equal to 1 Joule per second.
Therefore, 1 KW = 1000 Joules per second (J/s)
There are 3600 seconds in an hour, so using energy at a rate of 1KW for a duration of 1 hour would use 3,600,000 J or 3.6 MJ (Mega Joules).

Since we know the total amount of energy in the volume of gas you have used in MJ, and that there are 3.6 MJ in a KWh, then divide your total by 3.6 to get the total of KWh you have used.

So (finally !!) this can be summarised by;

{ Your Meter Reading (m�) x Conversion factor* x Calorific Value* (MJ/m�) } divided by 3.6

Using typical values

317.75 x 1.022640* x 39.4*
3.6

= 3555.85 KWh

Therefore, if you pay 3.2p per KWh, your bill at this point would be;

3555.85 x 0.032 = £113.78
 
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Am I the only one here who has noticed it has been a long cold winter in the UK? even the soft south!

May I respectfully suggest that the Boiler is 'gas rated' (your local registered gas installer will have all the data required) and the flue gases analysed? (usually this part of a service) and checked against the manufacturers specs.

Now, as an installer I never claim a new 'A' rated appliance will save money, just that the gas used will be burnt more efficiently - after all, once my tools are packed away I have no control over a)the price of gas, b)outside weather conditions c) how consumers choose to use their heating/hot-water d)how long they leave doors/windows open during the heating season e)how often they bathe........ for some its not often enuff. ;)

DH

Oh yeah, what SAP ratings did the Energy Assessment (part of the HIPS survey) come up with?
 
Thanks for the replies....


At this time of year in our old house, the heating would have been on 24 hours. In the new house we are turning it off during the day & at night (and bloody freezing cos of it). It's on for 2hrs morning & 6hrs night & we are still getting stupid bills. Appreciate it's been a cold winter, but the numbers just don't add up.

I can only compare usage against my old house. It doesn't make sense that a house that is smaller, with less radiators and less gas appliances should use 3x the amount of gas - does it?

Oh and we used BG in both houses so the tariff is the same.

HIPS pack energy rating was D.


linkyplumb - I'm slightly south of Tadley..
 
did you give and keep your readings for when you moved in!!

is the bill based on actual readings or estimates!!
 
Yup. All the bills are based on readings I've made & reported, so I know they are accurate :(
 
Leave the heating and hot water off for a few hours like overnight.

Turn the boiler on so that its burning away on maximum power at first and then read the gas meter EXACTLY at a two minute interval.

Using the information in the FAQ on this site you can calculate the Gas Rate. Thats the power in kW that the boiler is using.

If the calcs are too much for you then just give us the meter readings and we will do it for you.

Then multiply the kW by say 0.032 to get the hourly cost in pounds. Multiply by the daily hours used and then by 30 to get the monthly cost.

Then you and us can see whats going on.

The boiler is unable to use a lot more gas than its designed for but the meter COULD be out of calibration but dealing with that is a complicated business. I am not very happy with it as its arranged by the energy supplier and I dont fully trust them. EON were charging me about £1000 per month for a two bed house which is not really possible to disipate.

Tony
 
Thanks & will do tomorrow..

And that is interesting. The encumbant supplier here when we moved in was EON and we had a £680 Gas/Electric bill (£420 Gas) for less than 6 weeks usage before we switched to BG.

Now with BG the bill is £300 per month combined. Still really high than our previous property but not as high as EON..

Meter is being checked by BG next week.

I'll report back with the readings tomorrow.
 
First off it seems that you have moved from having your gas billing from being averaged over a 12 month period i.e the 220 quarterly bill to paying for what you actually consume on a monthly basis

80% of your annual gas consumption will be in the months of Dec, Jan and Feb and maybe march. When you turn the heating off it will drop to very little. I measure my gas usage every week and in the winter here when it was the very cold snowy week in Jan I used 1200Kwh of gas in units approx 16 metric units per day. When I turn the heating off I use 33Kwh per week 0.42 metric units per day. My monthly gas bills in winter are about 140 per month average and when the heating is turned off they are 13GBP per month.

Your comsumption will have increased if you moved to a house with more external walls i.e from a terrace to a detached. Is the new house draughty if it is start draught proofing it. Have you moved from a house with TRVS to a house with no TRVS and no thermostat?

Basic rule is that if you want to save gas turn down the temps of the radiators in the rooms that you do not use much i.e dining rooms spare bedrooms, etc and keep the doors closed.

The 648GBP bill is the problem as this is very high did you read the meters the day you moved in or did you take the previous occupants word for the reading? It is common but not nice that people when they leave houses submit lower readings when they move out than are actual so the new occupant payds for the gas and the elecy that the previous occupant used. I say this because the gas useage in the months following december is significantly lower but it has been colder weather.

Your electricity useage is very high seeing as you have gas central heating. In the UK the avreage houshold elecy use is about 3300KWh per year or about 10 units per day you are using 30 units a day. Do you have a massive ammount of halogen downlighters?
 
Kingsway said:
Since your meter appears to measure in m� (metres cubed), we don�t have to worry about converting to metric, however, we do need to convert it to a standardised volume. (Volume varies with pressure so before any calculations are done, the actual volume you have used is converted to the gas company's standardised volume unit.) This is the Volume Conversion Factor shown on your bill.

We now need to work out how much energy was in the gas you have used. This energy is released when you burn it and is known as the calorific value. The SI unit of energy is the Joule, and the calorific value given on your bill is measured in Mega Joules per metre cubed of gas. (1 Mega Joule (MJ) = 1 000 000 Joules.
The gas company works out the average calorific value over the period you have used it, (since it can, and does vary).
They will give you a figure for the average calorific value on your bill. This figure will probably be around 38 � 40 MJ per m� .

So, now multiply your converted volume of gas used (in m�) by the calorific value given on your bill to get the absolute amount of energy contained in the gas you have used (in MJ).

You are actually charged by a unit known as the KWh (KiloWatt hour) � the same unit used in your electricity bill. It is a derived unit that represents the amount of energy used by a 1KW device in one hour. The amount of energy this represents can be calculated;

A Watt is the unit of power, and represents a rate of energy equal to 1 Joule per second.
Therefore, 1 KW = 1000 Joules per second (J/s)
There are 3600 seconds in an hour, so using energy at a rate of 1KW for a duration of 1 hour would use 3,600,000 J or 3.6 MJ (Mega Joules).

Since we know the total amount of energy in the volume of gas you have used in MJ, and that there are 3.6 MJ in a KWh, then divide your total by 3.6 to get the total of KWh you have used.

So (finally !!) this can be summarised by;

{ Your Meter Reading (m�) x Conversion factor* x Calorific Value* (MJ/m�) } divided by 3.6

Using typical values

317.75 x 1.022640* x 39.4*
3.6

= 3555.85 KWh

Therefore, if you pay 3.2p per KWh, your bill at this point would be;

3555.85 x 0.032 = £113.78
Click to expand...

how many candlepower is that?
 
All the bills are based on meter readings that I have provided, so I know they are OK..

We moved from a 4-bed detached house (built 1999) to a 4-bed detached bungalow (built 1950 but substantially modified).

There were originally 40 halogen downlighters, but these have all been changed for LEDs. Main reason was so we could insulate the loft over the lights - which has now been done.

We've had a sparky in who has checked each circuit & socket and he is stumped as to where the electricity is going.

But it's the gas I'm most concerned with as there just doesn't seem to be an obvious reason why the bills are so high. Appreciate that taking Dec/Jan billing only is taking it out of context and bills will be lower in summer. But I've compared the bills with the same periods (last year) in our old house and we have approx 3x the Gas consumption we had before. With 4 radiators less & no gas fire or hob.. Just doesn't make sense :confused:
 
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