Hi, we moved into our current home in Oct 2024. The house has an old imperial meter which was changed on 22 Nov 2024 to a new smart meter (along with the electric meter) and I have since been getting half-hourly readings from the meter.
The house had a new heating and hot water system installed in 2023 and we had a service done before buying the property to ensure everything was in good working order. The boiler installed is a Vaillant Ecotec Pure 430 Open Vent Boiler.
The house has 5 beds, but only 2 adults and 2 kids, using 2 bedrooms with a third being used as a WFH study by me. We have a tado heating and hot water control system and I have turned off most of the radiators apart from those in the rooms that are used.
After having our first energy bill from Octopus energy after the meter change (for the period 24 Nov to 23 Dec 24), I noticed we were billed for using 5,000 kWh (or about 450 M3) of gas! Looking online, the average annual usage for a 5+ bed property is about 17,000 for a whole year. So how can we have used 4 months worth of gas in one month? The tado system shows that we used a fraction of what the meter is reporting.
The only gas appliance we have currently is the boiler. So I have since been investigating to see what might be causing this.
The first thing I thought was that maybe Octopus did not have the correct meter reference (MPAN) but the bill before and after show that this was changed and a quick calculation showed that we were being billed "correctly" per the meter readings. Just today I checked and sure enough the meter is now showing for Jan so far we have used another 450m3!
The next thing I tried was to turn off the boiler and see if there was a leak. After turning off the boiler for a couple of hours, the meter reading had not changed at all.
I then thought that maybe the meter was not reading the amount of gas usage correctly. So I rang Octopus energy again and asked if they could send out an engineer to check this. They said that there would be a charge of roughly £200 if they checked the meter and there was no fault. And reading some similar stories here about high gas usage I saw that this does normally happen.
So I am not sure what to do next as I am stumped. I would be grateful for any help or things you could suggest that I try. Apologies if I have missed out any details, but if I have I can add these in.
Thank you
The house had a new heating and hot water system installed in 2023 and we had a service done before buying the property to ensure everything was in good working order. The boiler installed is a Vaillant Ecotec Pure 430 Open Vent Boiler.
The house has 5 beds, but only 2 adults and 2 kids, using 2 bedrooms with a third being used as a WFH study by me. We have a tado heating and hot water control system and I have turned off most of the radiators apart from those in the rooms that are used.
After having our first energy bill from Octopus energy after the meter change (for the period 24 Nov to 23 Dec 24), I noticed we were billed for using 5,000 kWh (or about 450 M3) of gas! Looking online, the average annual usage for a 5+ bed property is about 17,000 for a whole year. So how can we have used 4 months worth of gas in one month? The tado system shows that we used a fraction of what the meter is reporting.
The only gas appliance we have currently is the boiler. So I have since been investigating to see what might be causing this.
The first thing I thought was that maybe Octopus did not have the correct meter reference (MPAN) but the bill before and after show that this was changed and a quick calculation showed that we were being billed "correctly" per the meter readings. Just today I checked and sure enough the meter is now showing for Jan so far we have used another 450m3!
The next thing I tried was to turn off the boiler and see if there was a leak. After turning off the boiler for a couple of hours, the meter reading had not changed at all.
I then thought that maybe the meter was not reading the amount of gas usage correctly. So I rang Octopus energy again and asked if they could send out an engineer to check this. They said that there would be a charge of roughly £200 if they checked the meter and there was no fault. And reading some similar stories here about high gas usage I saw that this does normally happen.
So I am not sure what to do next as I am stumped. I would be grateful for any help or things you could suggest that I try. Apologies if I have missed out any details, but if I have I can add these in.
Thank you
