Oddly low gas usage

[Kilicat]

Apologies for another energy bill thread. Like many I am trying to budget properly for our winter energy and finding our situation a bit odd and hoping other can shed some light on it.

We have moved house over the summer and our expected has bill has risen from £380/yr to £3100/yr. I've looked closely and see that in addition to the price increases our expected use has also increased from c.8000 kwh per year to nearly 29000 kwh/yr. However, when I look at our most recent bills (both based on meter readings and not estimates), from Sept 1 until 23rd October, we've used around 8kwh for the entire time (the bill has done the calculations and states that we've used on average 0.3 kwh/day). So this has left me hugely confused - both the insanely high predicted annual use (3 times higher than last yr) and the oddly low use in the last 2 months or so (way lower than last year and much lower than any use I've come across online). I know that ultimately our actual use is what gets billed for so ultimately we'll pay the correct price but I'm really struggling to work out how much to budget for....Octopus wants to put my DD up to £375 (up from £71/mm a few months back) but I'm wondering if this is really necessary as can't imagine our use will hit 28000 kwh. I could really use some of that money for other expenses but equally don't want to end up with an enormous bill by the end of the winter. Can anyone offer any thought on this situation? Is our predicted use being influenced by the previous owners habits (from the nest we inherited I can see they had the thermostat set for 21C most of the time and at least one of them worked from home so likely they used significantly more heating than we will, we also inherited a gas leak when we moved in so I'm wondering if that may have upped the gas use?).

For context - we are a family of four and consider us to be quite frugal but we do live in a four bed Victorian semi with single glazed windows. However, we are all out every day from 7.45-5 and all eat our main meal at school/work, so low cooking done during the week (gas hob, electric oven). We have our hot water on (gas boiler with a tank) for one hour per day which seems enough for our needs and could perhaps try to reduce this further). Heating has only been on a few hours since we moved in, mainly when DH was sick and off work for a few days).

@GasPanic hmm...well they'd be unlike any electric shower I've ever seen (and no idea where the unit would be to heat the water electrically as I've definitely turned the immersion heater off). The old owners also left notes about the system and they installed it so quite confident we have a tank heated by a gas boiler that feeds the showers. I guess I can turn the hot water off tomorrow morning to be doubly sure.

Well the only other thing I can suggest is reading the meter before and after you turn on the hot water for 1/2 hour or so.

If you are filling a full tank, maybe 10 kWh = about 1m3 or 31 ft3 of gas (31 units) on your meter.

If it doesn't go up by that much (or at least half) then something is wrong. Note down the last two numbers as well.

I've heard of someone once whose boiler was actually plumbed into next doors gas ! So not impossible to have some weird stuff going on in older houses.

@GasPanic I've done as suggested and it seems only the final two digits are going round.

Well that would suggest to me either

a) the meter is wrong

or

b) the ft3 is actually the last 2 digits (so you have used 15 ft3 not 0.15 ft3)

15 ft3 is about 5 kWh, so that would be consistent with a cylinder of water heating up.

0.15ft3 is next to nothing, a hundred times less or 0.05 kWh. A gas hob burner would use that in about 3 minutes.

Don't know what else to say really. Maybe someone else has that type of meter and can comment. I do know that when reading the meter they normally tell you to forget the red digits, so my belief is you are reading the meter as people are supposed to.

I think the meter is actually owned by the gas supplier so checking it shouldn't incur any cost to you.

Oh one more thing, have you thought about asking your next door neighbour if they have the same meter type and how they read it ?

Thanks all for your thought and ideas. The mystery continues but at least it looks like there is an issue with the amount of gas we've used!

@Kilicat

Sorry I am slightly obsessed with solving your problem !

So I googled and found the following :

forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4440443/imperial-digital-gas-meter-reading-ft3-or-100-s-of-ft3

So that implies your meter may well be in 100ft units rather than 1ft. So the energy provider may have the units of the meter incorrect, 1ft rather than 100ft.

So the bad news is that would mean for 1st-23rd Oct you used 700 kWh and not 7 kWh which corresponds to a 24 kWh boiler being on for about 1 hour per day over the period. I think this probably makes more sense ?

I think that is it, so I will shut up now !

www.gov.uk/guidance/gas-meter-readings-and-bill-calculation

Yes, your type of meter should be read including the two red numbers at the end. The part units are read with the little dial. So your latest reading is actually 253537 and a bit.

Or you need to tell your supplier to bill in 100ft3 not 1ft3.

I'm stood at the busstop, so not looking properly, but have they actually calculated it as cubic feet, instead of 100s of cubic feet?
I get 22 cb ft on a meter to be 700kWh, or £70, which could be in the right order.

Fairly sure you don't submit the red digits tho, so check that out before you put it in with 6 digits.

Sorry to jump on your original post OP. We have also recently moved and I am trying to work out what the first month has cost us for gas, can anyone signpost to a calculator where I can input the units used and then work at what number of KwH we have been using?

Meter reading is difference of 68 units over 4 weeks and the meter is metric.

Thanks

@martha78

selectra.co.uk/business/convert-gas-units-to-kwh

I think each supplier probably has it's own calibration factors, you can find them on your gas bill.

For metric I assume each m3 is about 11.2 kWh.

So 68 m3 x 11.2 = 761.6 kWh.

The standing charge is about £0.28 and the cost per kWh £0.103 I think for the new price cap.

So for 30 days kWh use + standing charge :

(0.103 x 761.6) + (0.28 x 0.30) = £78.44 + £8.40 = £86.80.

I think that's right !

Sorry that should be (0.28x30), £0.28 standing charge for 30 days ...

Thanks @GasPanic that’s really helpful, much more helpful than the British Gas website!

We were on a fixed tariff in our old house so have been careful with how much gas we’re using in new house. We’ve a gas hob and have had the hot water on for 1 hour twice a day, no heating on so far, would be interested to hear from others how that compares to others bills under the new pricing. We’ve an old boiler so probably not very efficient! Dread to think what cost will be once we need to put the heating on.

I use .2 units of gas on my meter every day on average in summer.

That's just the job and boiler kicking in for heating water.

You're being billed incorrectly. I have the exact same gas meter as you. Each unit is roughly 30kw of gas. You need to let them know or they will cotton on eventually and you will get a horrible bill

This is how you should be billed

It's hard to come up with any sort of guidelines because people have different usages, different boilers and different family sizes !

Still, I reckon you should be able to do 1x 5 minute shower for about 0.3-0.4 m3 per day.

So if you are a family of 2 then you are probably heating up quite a bit too much water (you are on 68/30 = about 2 m3 per day) but if you are a family of 4 people then probably not much saving to be had. You might be able to eek out 25% saving.

Now is a good time to optimise the hot water because the heating will probably be much larger than the hot water usage and more erratic !

Thanks @GasPanic and others for helping with this. I think that's definitely the issue although I've just checked on the Octopus app and according to their own instructions I've read it correctly, so I guess I'll need to get in touch with them to.sort it out.

If you look at your bill v the other bill posted, they have 100’s of ft3 written and you have ft3.