Monthly kWh used for gas and electricity?

[deuxgarcons]

So the price cap (average family use) for gas is based on using 12,000 kWh pa (1,000pm) and electricity 2,900 pa (242pm).
I sat down this morning to review usage and am astounded at our kWh usage and really need to work out where we use it as we use much more than this.
I started to take monthly readings in July and our usage has been
Gas
July 437
Aug 909
Sept 1908
Oct 2272

Electric
July 456
Aug 523
Sept 526
Oct 484

Gas hot water, heating and gas fire which we haven't used in above figs and won't use this winter as we have now blocked up chimney to reduce drafts. Our boiler is ancient so it must be that?. We have turned down temp on water and have it on less. Heating now on 1 hr in morning and 2 hours evening.

Electric I am wondering about old freezer in our cellar which is an 'overflow' freezer for main one but think I'll defrost and switch off as it only has frozen chips and bread in it!! Also cellar has old fridge and florescent light which is always on so will turn that off now. No electric showers.

We are in a semi 5 bed (drafty) Victorian house. 4 people down to 3 now as one has gone off to Uni which is why I think electric went down in Oct!!.

What is everyone else's kWh usage?

We're 5 people in a 4-bedroom house. I've added our kwH figures after yours...

Gas
July 437 - 220
Aug 909 - 173
Sept 1908 - 169
Oct 2272 - 350

Electric
July 456 - 271
Aug 523 - 231
Sept 526 - 246
Oct 484 - 246

October was just under £20 for gas but that was without heating. November will be much higher, we are using about 10 units, so 110kwh a week at the moment.

Having showers/baths, cooking food and washing up for large families ?

Problem is you hit the point where claims of low usage are barely credible within the laws of physics.

31 kWh per month is 1 kWh per day.

For this you could have a gas burner on the cooker for 1 hour per day. Or heat 20 litres of water 40 degrees C :

(4200x20x40) / 3,600,000 = 0.93 KWh

If you are a family of 4 having one 5 minute shower each (about 50 litres) that's about 9 kWh per day or 270 kWh per month. Without factoring in any efficiency losses.

@Athenen0ctua How long do you have your heating on per day? That is very low usage. Are you in a new build Do you mind telling me what make and model boiler do you have, it must really efficient and it might go on my list of contenders for when I do finally get a replacement.

I don't understand what people were doing all summer with their gas usage

Hot water and cooking?

We turn our boiler off completely in the summer and use the immersion heater as it works out cheaper despite the difference in cost between gas and electricity.

We used 18000kwh of gas over a year. Which is 50% more than average, however, we live in an, old terribly insulated detached house.
We tend to use under a 100 a month in the summer months but thousands in the colder months.

There isn't much difference in efficiency between the top boilers these days.

They are all about 90-95% give or take a couple of %.

Even if you are a 50 kWh a day user 5% difference is going to equal less than £100 per year.

Replacing old boilers with new boilers is also a bit meh in cost savings unless you are using a truly horrific amount of gas.

Older ones (pre condensing) I think can be as low as 60%, compared with modern ones around 90. Even if you manage to get the efficiency savings, you are still looking at using about 70% of the gas. So a 50 kWh daily usage would become a 35 kWh one, or for 1 year at high usage £2000 becomes £1350.

If you say a new boiler install is £3K, then your are looking at 4.5 years to payback, and that is at the upper limit of daily usage.

3 bed semi, Midlands. 2 adults, 2 teenagers. House is badly insulated ( will be better next year). We have a newish boiler, fridge-freezer, and a heat pump dryer. Heating on 19c from 7am to 9pm as wfh and to prevent damp, not overnight. Dehumidifier running some of the day as well.

Gas
Jul 142
Sep 238
Oct 226
Nov 1158

Electric
Jul 204
Sep 252
Oct 258
Nov 318

I think it is your boiler.

Our usage from 25th Oct to 25th Nov was 1678 kwh for gas

We live in a 5 bedroom house with a very large living room, dining room and kitchen diner downstairs.

We have an energy efficient combi boiler. It is on a timer with a room stat in the hall set at 19 degrees. It comes on from 6am - 8am then again from 5pm - 10.30pm.

We have thermostatic radiator valves on all the radiators. Currently only one of the bedrooms is being heated upstairs as the kids are at uni etc.

We keep all the doors closed in the house. The curtains are open in the day to allow the sun in then we have thick curtains we close at night which help to insulate the rooms.

3 bed semi 5 people
Gas

July - 191
August - 135
September - 180

then we changed the dates of our meter readings 😅 so will see November soon

electric

July - 357
August - 332
September - 363

Since April we have used 2,117 gas not taken a reading since the 1st November and 2,687 electric

October was just under £20 for gas but that was without heating. November will be much higher, we are using about 10 units, so 110kwh a week at the moment.

how are you calculating 10 units is 110kwph?

Government page giving calculations for people to work out themselves

during this period I used 9 units and you can see what the calculations come to 283kwph this is using the standard calculations above

Because if your meter is in m3, 1 unit (1 m3) is 11 kWh.

So 10 units is 110 kWh.

Five bedroom house, just us two at the moment, kids at uni:

October:
Elec: 260
Gas: 60
November:
Elec: 390
Gas: 170

Heating, hot water and cooking all gas. We have recently changed all our bulbs to LED, had about half/half before, and had a new boiler last year. We haven't really cut down meaningfully, other than just being a bit more aware. I have the heating on, and have been using the tumble dryer.

I think we must have a pretty efficient house.

1 gas unit would equate to approximately 31.5 kwph

therefore 10 units would be 310kwp

It's roughly 11.2 on my bill, varies a bit

I’m with you, opposed to feet and inches

What does your bill say about your annual usage? Have a look on your bill and it should say what you use per year on average

1 unit is around 11 kwh unless you are on an older meter in which case I think it is 32kwh per unit, according to another poster on this thread or maybe it was on one of the other myriad of threads on gas use!

Thanks @GasPanic that is pretty much my thinking, though I suspect the house would be warmer with a better boiler and new radiators ( some of them hail from the 1970s!).

Two hours after work now. Yes, we are very lucky to be in a new build, I couldn't afford some of the prices others are paying. No clue what the boiler is, I'm at work and we rent so I didn't buy it.

It's different for everyone. But what has helped me is dehumidification.

I find I can run my house about 2C lower, because it doesn't feel as damp when the air is lower humidity. I prefer to run it at 15 degrees C and top up with either a small heater in the home office during the day or a heated throw if I am watching TV at night. If you can lower your house temp then it makes a big difference to the amount of energy you use because your house loses energy at a greater rate when the temperature difference between the inside and outside air is larger. I am also lucky that I don't have a humidity issue - if I did I would have a dehumidifier in every room that had a problem.

Boiler replacements I would say if your boiler is one of the old non condensing types and your heating engineer is saying it is knackered/difficult to get spares (you can check on ebay) then maybe time to replace. Thing is a boiler failing in the middle of winter (they always tend to fail then because that is when they are used the most) is miserable. Mine failed at the beginning of Dec last year and I was lucky to get a new one fitted on Xmas eve.

Everyone's comments have been so helpful so thank you all. After all your comments and lots of research etc I have concluded our boiler is very old and is a non condensing one. I think we probably have the temperature on the boiler too high (had no idea it could be changed). We have no 'room' thermostat so when it's on it is just at full pelt. I didn't really think about the TRVs on the radiators so have turned some down and the one in unused room off. We have ordered a tado thermostat to be put in on Friday and looking forward to having some control. When the heating was on earlier I went to look at the meter and it was spinning like mad!!
I also got some thermometers to see what the temp is in our living room, kitchen etc. When I got back from work it was 16 and went up to 19 by the time the heating went off. I find even at 19 I'm a bit cold (it's me though as DH and DS in shorts and t shirts most of the time....). I definitely won't be supplementing with the gas fire though!!
I will possibly update on usage once we have made the changes.

I’m not buying it. My boiler isn’t inefficient and goes through 8-10 kWh per hour.

must be units from an old meter rather than kWh.

I see not an old meter.. then possible a fault.

a gas boiler that’s really low energy in a small house will burn well we 20kwh per hour. You can’t be using a gas boiler for 2 hours a day at the rates discussed above. (Though apologies if I skimmed over an explanation)