Gas useage

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

Hello again, MelonFool,

Sorry I can't help you with the gas issue. But I know a little bit about plumbing, and I did notice your point about your water leak.

If this was happening to me, what would worry me is (we run an open vented system, you mentioned "repressurised" so I guess that yours is combi, or a sealed non-combi system, but I believe that the principle is the same) was that when a CH loses fluid, it's not just water that is leaking its a mixture of water+CH inhibitor. So when the mains system tops up the "water" to the required level, your resulting fluid contains less and less inhibitor. Hence the system will rust internally - eventually destroying the boiler.

Apologies if someone in one of the intervening posts has already pointed this out to you. Sorting out a CH leak, isn't necessarily the end of the world, there could be several approaches to take, but paying out for a new boiler when you've got unresolved pipe work would be bad I think.

Matt

[Mike4]

As an aside, is it usual to have a boiler in the loft?

It seems to be getting more common. People think is a brilliant wheeze to put it in the loft... except it isn't - for a long list of reasons analysed in detail in a post on my blog!

[funduffer]

Mainly prompted by this thread and Mel's OP containing her gas meter reading history, I went onto my online account with British Gas this morning expecting to see quite a lot of my metering reading history data available for me to look at. Smart meters were installed at my home a good number of years ago and were set to provide half-hourly meter readings. My expectations were not met. The online account tells me that the only meter readings being made available are those used to issue bills. British Gas only issues bills every six months, though the meter readings are probably shown at approximately monthly intervals.

I find this quite unbelievable. If consumers are to get some insight into their patterns of consumption, as Mel is quite clearly attempting to do, then why not make the meter reading/consumption data available to the individual consumer that generated it? No data protection issues involved. If the banks (through the open banking initiative) can get to the stage where individuals can authorise third party services to access their transaction data, I don't see why it should not be possible for the energy supply industry to do something similar with meter reading/energy consumption data. All(!) that is required, as in the case of banking, is a bit of political and regulatory vision with the follow through of regulatory action to make it happen.

Perhaps, stupidly, I have submitted an enquiry to British Gas enquiring as to why I cannot access the detailed consumption data that I am choosing to
provide them with (through my choices of installing a smart meter and allowing it to submit half hourly readings). The text of my enquiry is reproduced below.

I'm not actually expecting anything meaningful in response and I regard the time spent composing my enquiry as a catharsis as much as anything else. But you never know, so I'll endeavour to update this thread if anything sensible emerges. As I note, my expectations are that this will not be the case.

My enquiry to British Gas:

My smart meter sends you half-hourly meter readings. So you have massive amounts of data that I am allowing you to collect. However, when I look at my account on your website there are only a very limited number of my meter readings being made available to me. Why is that? It would be useful to me and no doubt quite a lot of other numerate consumers to have access to the much more detailed meter reading history and consumption data derived from this. It might be smart metering but current practice as evidenced from the above it is far from smart. I used to work in the industry (and was involved at the forefront of load research for daily domestic gas demand in the 80's and 90's) and I have to say the industry and you as a company have gone backwards from the days when I was involved (in an old region of the British Gas Corporation). If the country is serious about the looming energy crisis, net-zero targets and all the rest then providing customers with much better access to the personal data that suppliers such as British Gas hold about them is one of the many keys to doing this. Third party services would probably spring up in a jiffy if the data were made available. So why is it not being made available? Don't even think about telling me that only readings used for billing purposes are made available through the website - I can see that and what I'm asking why the rest of the readings aren't being made available. Please push this one up the line because it is a matter of policy, not operations. If I don't get a satisfactory answer, I will take it further, much further, so please view this enquiry as an opportunity.

modellingman

Have you looked at your in-house display unit that came with the smart meter? Mine has hourly, daily, weekly and monthly data that you can look at for both gas and electricity. If it has, you don’t need to bother with British Gas, just get it directly from the meter display unit.

FD

[TUK020]

I've thought of one possibility...........not saying this is the answer, but a possibility.

If you have a water heated on demand system, the hot water has a "pre-heat" setting.
This means that the water is continually heated (burning gas) so that it is hot very quickly when you turn a hot tap on etc.
If one of your plumbers who was investigating the pressure loss fiddled with this, and left it off, then your hot water would be slower to run hot.
Turning off this pre-heat, particularly for people who use less hot water, is one of the most effective ways of reducing gas consumption - the other being to reduce flow and return temperatures, so that your efficient condensing boiler is actually operating in the 'condensing mode'.

It has been calculated that if all of the boilers in the UK were actually set up correctly, we would not have a gas shortage....

[XFool]

Mainly prompted by this thread and Mel's OP containing her gas meter reading history, I went onto my online account with British Gas this morning expecting to see quite a lot of my metering reading history data available for me to look at. Smart meters were installed at my home a good number of years ago and were set to provide half-hourly meter readings. My expectations were not met. The online account tells me that the only meter readings being made available are those used to issue bills. British Gas only issues bills every six months, though the meter readings are probably shown at approximately monthly intervals.

I find this quite unbelievable. If consumers are to get some insight into their patterns of consumption, as Mel is quite clearly attempting to do, then why not make the meter reading/consumption data available to the individual consumer that generated it? No data protection issues involved. If the banks (through the open banking initiative) can get to the stage where individuals can authorise third party services to access their transaction data, I don't see why it should not be possible for the energy supply industry to do something similar with meter reading/energy consumption data. All(!) that is required, as in the case of banking, is a bit of political and regulatory vision with the follow through of regulatory action to make it happen.

If you want that information then all that is required is to change to an energy company that offers it.

Octopus issue me an electricity bill every month, and send me by email a 60 page bill detailing the half-hourly consumption on which the bill is based.

Right. One to avoid then!

But if that isn’t enough then I can download the data as a CSV file.

And if that is too much hassle then they have a web dashboard (and app) where I can view the daily, weekly, monthly, annual, consumption, and all broken down into the half-hour billing periods.

Then for the true geeks they have an API where you can grant third party access to your smart meter data if you want to use some other app to report usage.

And for my non-smart gas meter then they send me a bill whenever I send them a reading which tends to be weekly (I am obliged to send them one at least monthly because of the tariff I am on, which tracks the daily wholesale price of gas).

So given there is damn all price difference between the suppliers at the moment, it would seem to be sensible to just move to whichever offers the best service.

I seem to remember a time when you just used electricity/gas, got a single page bill every quarter, paid the bill, used more electricity/gas...
Oh happy days.

When did that become unfashionable?

[melonfool]

As a result, I have long since stopped using regular payment plans. I'm much happier paying for the energy actually used on an arrears basis and I ignore the fairly regular reminders to set up a direct debit.

I have never had a problem with the amount suppliers take by DD - and I have used quite a few different suppliers over the years. Whenever I came to change supplier at the end of the year then the amount I owed them or they owed me once the final bill was produced was always less than £50 and quite often less than £10.

My current supplier, Octopus, allows customers to change the amount of their DD directly on their website with no need to interact with their call centres at all, so it is pretty easy to ensure that the DD amount is in balance with the annual cost.

Not paying by DD is up to 9% more expensive. 9% of what is about to be quite a lot, is quite a lot.

Eon refused to reduce my DD earlier in the year. I contacted them several times. They tried to put it up to over £500, before the April rise, based on the electricity annual prediction which was entirely wrong simply because they had put ten meter readings into one month. It was ridiculous.

I had to get the ombudsman involved. It's a year now since they put the wrong readings in and my last but one bill showed the annual prediction come back down at last to pre cock-up numbers. But the last bill they've suddenly more than doubled it again (deep sigh!).

They are now suggesting a DD of £400, and the website will not allow me to reduce it. I'm not calling their call centre again because I just don't have the patience for thick people who just read the same stuff from the computer as I can see online.

I'll keep monitoring it all though.

I quite like the geekery so when I have a bit of time I'll read the Bulb thread.

Mel

[melonfool]

Hello again, MelonFool,

Sorry I can't help you with the gas issue. But I know a little bit about plumbing, and I did notice your point about your water leak.

If this was happening to me, what would worry me is (we run an open vented system, you mentioned "repressurised" so I guess that yours is combi, or a sealed non-combi system, but I believe that the principle is the same) was that when a CH loses fluid, it's not just water that is leaking its a mixture of water+CH inhibitor. So when the mains system tops up the "water" to the required level, your resulting fluid contains less and less inhibitor. Hence the system will rust internally - eventually destroying the boiler.

Apologies if someone in one of the intervening posts has already pointed this out to you. Sorting out a CH leak, isn't necessarily the end of the world, there could be several approaches to take, but paying out for a new boiler when you've got unresolved pipe work would be bad I think.

Matt

Hi

Thank you - I am aware of this issue, but I'm not sure there is much I can do about it. The leak cannot be found. It's been going on for years, so I assume there is no inhibitor at all now! Can this be replaced?

I did ask a couple of plumbers about some sealant stuff they can run into the system that blocks leaks. One seemed to think it was a good idea, the other said no, never do that. Online research comes down on the side of the second plumber though I am aware you're more likely to find people posting about problems on the internet than things that work fine, so it is biased.

The boiler itself isn't that expensive to be honest. Not as expensive as digging up a floor to find a leak that you may still not find!

Mel

[melonfool]

I've thought of one possibility...........not saying this is the answer, but a possibility.

If you have a water heated on demand system, the hot water has a "pre-heat" setting.
This means that the water is continually heated (burning gas) so that it is hot very quickly when you turn a hot tap on etc.
If one of your plumbers who was investigating the pressure loss fiddled with this, and left it off, then your hot water would be slower to run hot.
Turning off this pre-heat, particularly for people who use less hot water, is one of the most effective ways of reducing gas consumption - the other being to reduce flow and return temperatures, so that your efficient condensing boiler is actually operating in the 'condensing mode'.

It has been calculated that if all of the boilers in the UK were actually set up correctly, we would not have a gas shortage....

Both these points have been covered in the thread, but it's really interesting and definitely bears repeating in one post for other readers who come along.

I've still not got up into the loft to check. Maybe tomorrow.

Mel

[Mike4]

I've thought of one possibility...........not saying this is the answer, but a possibility.

If you have a water heated on demand system, the hot water has a "pre-heat" setting.
This means that the water is continually heated (burning gas) so that it is hot very quickly when you turn a hot tap on etc.
If one of your plumbers who was investigating the pressure loss fiddled with this, and left it off, then your hot water would be slower to run hot.
Turning off this pre-heat, particularly for people who use less hot water, is one of the most effective ways of reducing gas consumption - the other being to reduce flow and return temperatures, so that your efficient condensing boiler is actually operating in the 'condensing mode'.

It has been calculated that if all of the boilers in the UK were actually set up correctly, we would not have a gas shortage....

Both these points have been covered in the thread, but it's really interesting and definitely bears repeating in one post for other readers who come along.

I've still not got up into the loft to check. Maybe tomorrow.

Mel

This IS almost one of my ten or so reasons not to put the boiler in the loft....

Shall I risk posting a link?

Oh ok....!

https://miketheboilerman.com/blog/centr ... -in-lofts/

[richlist]

I read the link.
I always thought putting a boiler in the loft (or an uninsulated garage) was a bad idea, something just didnt ring right to me. All of the reasons are pretty obvious once they've been pointed out.

[DrFfybes]

Hi

Thank you - I am aware of this issue, but I'm not sure there is much I can do about it. The leak cannot be found. It's been going on for years, so I assume there is no inhibitor at all now! Can this be replaced?

Mel

Yes - you are supposed to replace it every year!.

We have a slow leak - might have been there on the gravity fed system as well but we only discovered it when we went pressurised!. Takes about 3 or 4 seconds to top up every couple of months, which as we get 6L/min at the tap into an open jug, and the heating system is pressurised, probably equates to about 250ml pr time of a couple of litres per year. We have rough equivalent of 20 singe rads 1200x600 so about 70L in the system. The installer left me a bottle (the system takes 2) and said to add it after 6 months, so that's only a few weeks away.

Paul

[AF62]

I seem to remember a time when you just used electricity/gas, got a single page bill every quarter, paid the bill, used more electricity/gas...
Oh happy days.

When did that become unfashionable?

When energy prices quadrupled!

In the past my annual gas bill was cheaper than my annual water bill and the monthly DD for gas was less than the cost of half a tank of petrol (and that was when petrol was £50 a tank!). The cost of gas and electricity was pretty much an irrelevance, noise on the bottom line of the household bills.

Now we are in a different era where the amount of energy used makes a significant difference to household expenditure, and so if that means getting a 60 page bill every month for electricity so I can see what energy I am using when, well that's fine.

Firstly, it made me look at the standby usage in the house and as a result I am now saving around £200 a year at current costs.

Then it made me consider the time of usage and now 55% of my electricity consumption (excluding EV charging) takes place in a five hour cheap rate period when I pay a fraction of the peak rate cost (and I have gas heating not electric storage heating).

Similarly for the gas, I am happy to do regular meter readings and get a weekly bill if it means I am paying less than 1.88p/kWh for gas (as occurred last week) rather than pay more than four times as much at the government discount rate of 10.3p.

[DrFfybes]

Firstly, it made me look at the standby usage in the house and as a result I am now saving around £200 a year at current costs.

A quick calc suggests that's about 2kWh/day? 75W continuous use from things on Standby? That's a lot of heating to lose

Similarly for the gas, I am happy to do regular meter readings and get a weekly bill if it means I am paying less than 1.88p/kWh for gas (as occurred last week) rather than pay more than four times as much at the government discount rate of 10.3p.

I was wondering about this - I assume you pay the spot rate, but capped at the guarantee? If so then it is a no brainer.

Paul

[AF62]

Firstly, it made me look at the standby usage in the house and as a result I am now saving around £200 a year at current costs.

A quick calc suggests that's about 2kWh/day? 75W continuous use from things on Standby? That's a lot of heating to lose

Yes it was around 75-100w of continuous draw - but in respect of heating I will be out of the country in the sun from December through to March so heating at home isn't so much of an issue

Similarly for the gas, I am happy to do regular meter readings and get a weekly bill if it means I am paying less than 1.88p/kWh for gas (as occurred last week) rather than pay more than four times as much at the government discount rate of 10.3p.

I was wondering about this - I assume you pay the spot rate, but capped at the guarantee? If so then it is a no brainer.

Octopus Tracker is the daily market rate marked up by a small amount, but does have a cap so you don't get the Texas situation where prices went sky high when demand exceeded supply.

I was lucky because I took a gamble back in May this year to move onto it when the cap was 11p/kWh so during the summer I could theoretically have been paying more than the 7p capped rate at the time, although as it turned out the wholesale prices stayed low for most of the time. As it was a 12 month fixed term (but not price) tariff mine benefits from the government discount to fixed tariffs so the cap has been brought down to 10.3p.

However more recent versions of the tariff have had increasingly higher caps and the current cap is 30p/kWh and because it has been restructured so it isn't a fixed term tariff it doesn't benefit from the government discount or cap, so moving onto it now is a bit of a gamble - will prices stay below 10.3p or not, although as one of the better companies they do let you move off it and onto the normal government discount rate without notice or penalty (although they won't let you constantly 'chop and change').

[XFool]

I seem to remember a time when you just used electricity/gas, got a single page bill every quarter, paid the bill, used more electricity/gas...
Oh happy days.

When did that become unfashionable?

When energy prices quadrupled!

I confess I was recently reconsidering getting a smart meter, as an easy way of keeping track of costs given the increases in energy bills. But then I read this:

Use of electricity meter and gas meter personal data collected through the Energy Price Guarantee scheme: privacy notice
Published 1 October 2022

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-price-guarantee-scheme-privacy-notice/use-of-electricity-meter-and-gas-meter-personal-data-collected-through-the-energy-price-guarantee-scheme-privacy-notice

Back to the drawing board?

[TheMotorcycleBoy]

Hello again, MelonFool,

Sorry I can't help you with the gas issue. But I know a little bit about plumbing, and I did notice your point about your water leak.

If this was happening to me, what would worry me is (we run an open vented system, you mentioned "repressurised" so I guess that yours is combi, or a sealed non-combi system, but I believe that the principle is the same) was that when a CH loses fluid, it's not just water that is leaking its a mixture of water+CH inhibitor. So when the mains system tops up the "water" to the required level, your resulting fluid contains less and less inhibitor. Hence the system will rust internally - eventually destroying the boiler.

Apologies if someone in one of the intervening posts has already pointed this out to you. Sorting out a CH leak, isn't necessarily the end of the world, there could be several approaches to take, but paying out for a new boiler when you've got unresolved pipe work would be bad I think.

Matt

Hi

Thank you - I am aware of this issue, but I'm not sure there is much I can do about it. The leak cannot be found. It's been going on for years, so I assume there is no inhibitor at all now! Can this be replaced?

Yes. With open-vented systems just go to your water expansion (header) tank, either string up the ballcock, or switch off your water feed. Then remove an equivalent of water from the tank (just scoop it with a jug!) and bung in your CH inhibitor (I usually get Fernox). Then switch the water feed back on.

Sometimes (to get a better/quicker) distribution of the inhibitor you can remove more water, by opening a drain cock e.g. near the boiler or a rad, and 1) take out enough to empty the header tank, then another gallon or so.

I've no experience of a pressurised system, I thiink that you inject it in.

The boiler itself isn't that expensive to be honest. Not as expensive as digging up a floor to find a leak that you may still not find!

Thing is, I don't see the point of trying to optimise your gas usage, if your boiler is already compromised by an absolute shedload of rust particles.

Couple of options for you to consider.

1. Obviously since the leak is in your CH system, it will be from a pipe feeding a rad.
2. Figure out how your rads are fed. 20 years ago I tee-ed of the pipe to an existing rad in order to plumb one in an extension, by just feeling (for the warmth) along at the bottom of the skirting board in between the boiler and the first rad in the circuit! (First rad is usually the first to warm up). Then I just pulled up the carpet, scraped up some screed and located the feed pipe.
3. Of course some rads are fed by running the pipes to the rad down the wall. Then theres a loop in the ceiling / loft space etc..

A classic CH leak, I find is that some bright spark has done a "exposed timber" job and stripped their floorboards. And they (in order not to sh@g the sander they ve just hired) tap the floorboard nails under the wood surface. Only to hit a hidden pipe! Did the last occupant do anything like this or change something near where pipes could go.

It all really depends on how much effort and thinking you are prepared to do. (But perhaps you need to see whether you can hire someone like this https://www.leakdetectionspecialists.co ... -detection). I mean it aint rocket science, must be electrical/induction based ways of figuring out theres a water pipe nearby etc.

Another option is don't try to find the leak, just cap off the existing feed and return pipes and re-pipe your rads with good copper (or plastic in hidden spaces). You either hide pipes below skirting, or clip them just above.

Not wanting to upset you, but I think youre crazy trying to reduce your gas bill, but with a fundamental CH system issue.

Matt

[DrFfybes]

Thing is, I don't see the point of trying to optimise your gas usage, if your boiler is already compromised by an absolute shedload of rust particles.

Matt

Because the object is to make the most of what you have. How do you know the boiler is full of rust?

MrsF's car does 30 mpg on a run if we're careful, but half that when taunted. Doesn't mean we should always try and get it down to 15mpg

Paul

[chas49]

I seem to remember a time when you just used electricity/gas, got a single page bill every quarter, paid the bill, used more electricity/gas...
Oh happy days.

When did that become unfashionable?

When energy prices quadrupled!

I confess I was recently reconsidering getting a smart meter, as an easy way of keeping track of costs given the increases in energy bills. But then I read this:

Use of electricity meter and gas meter personal data collected through the Energy Price Guarantee scheme: privacy notice
Published 1 October 2022

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-price-guarantee-scheme-privacy-notice/use-of-electricity-meter-and-gas-meter-personal-data-collected-through-the-energy-price-guarantee-scheme-privacy-notice

Back to the drawing board?

That notice isn't about 'smart' meters - it's about all metering data collected by the energy companies, so you're already in their system....

[XFool]

I confess I was recently reconsidering getting a smart meter, as an easy way of keeping track of costs given the increases in energy bills. But then I read this:

Use of electricity meter and gas meter personal data collected through the Energy Price Guarantee scheme: privacy notice
Published 1 October 2022

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-price-guarantee-scheme-privacy-notice/use-of-electricity-meter-and-gas-meter-personal-data-collected-through-the-energy-price-guarantee-scheme-privacy-notice

Back to the drawing board?

That notice isn't about 'smart' meters - it's about all metering data collected by the energy companies, so you're already in their system....

Too late then!

[melonfool]

I've thought of one possibility...........not saying this is the answer, but a possibility.

If you have a water heated on demand system, the hot water has a "pre-heat" setting.
This means that the water is continually heated (burning gas) so that it is hot very quickly when you turn a hot tap on etc.
If one of your plumbers who was investigating the pressure loss fiddled with this, and left it off, then your hot water would be slower to run hot.
Turning off this pre-heat, particularly for people who use less hot water, is one of the most effective ways of reducing gas consumption - the other being to reduce flow and return temperatures, so that your efficient condensing boiler is actually operating in the 'condensing mode'.

It has been calculated that if all of the boilers in the UK were actually set up correctly, we would not have a gas shortage....

Both these points have been covered in the thread, but it's really interesting and definitely bears repeating in one post for other readers who come along.

I've still not got up into the loft to check. Maybe tomorrow.

Mel

This IS almost one of my ten or so reasons not to put the boiler in the loft....

Shall I risk posting a link?

Oh ok....!

https://miketheboilerman.com/blog/centr ... -in-lofts/

Thank you - I can see that some of those apply to my boiler, but many do not. There's flooring, loads of space and zero junk in my loft. While there is a single bare bulb I'm pretty sure that I can supply a floor standing lantern from my camping kit if a plumber needs one.

I do have a separate gauge, I had it put in specifically due to the pressure dropping, for exactly the reason you say - so I can keep an eye on it. I was fed up of finding cold water as I was already naked and about to get in the shower, then having to go up to the loft to repressure the boiler. The extra gauge is in the airing cupboard on the landing.

I do need more insulation though, now you mention it, and will get foam cladding for the pipes up there too. It's never frozen yet but I was aware of this issue.

Mel