Excess gas consumption potential faulty meter ?

hatchman

I have 2 bed terrace house which has Heatline Gas boiler. Gas is supplied from bulk tanks in the back of the estate not sure if I am allowed to say who the gas company on here but guess that's not important. I moved out of house 7 years ago as family got bigger but couldn't afford to sell so became a reluctant landlord. While living there it was cheap house to heat no real issues. Last December the tenants received a huge 2 monthly bill close to 400 euro. I think the bill was for oct & nov so not the coldest months of last winter. They claimed the heat wasn't being run excessively and were very upset at the cost. They believed they may have an issue with the meter and asked the gas company would they check it which they were told if nothing wrong with it they would be charged 400 euro ! I got an RGI service man to check out everything out and he could not find any issue no leaks boiler performing to its spec. The tenants still insisted something was very wrong and there next bill was big again not sure exactly what the usage was tho. Sorry for rambling on, my questions are the gas meter was changed out as the test point was found to be leaking a couple of years ago, is there any chance the replacement meter is someway giving incorrect readings ? It wasn't replaced with a new one and has Bord Gais written on it which I thought was odd. Is gas supplied from these bulk tanks at a different pressure than what Bord Gais is supplied at and would that make a difference to how accurate the meter works? Is there something else that could cause such a huge gas usage. I cant really afford to replace the boiler this year would a 10 year plus old boiler become this inefficient ? I know the unit cost of gas has gone up alot. But find it difficult to explain this sort of usage. Any ideas ?

John.G

hatchman wrote: »

I have 2 bed terrace house which has Heatline Gas boiler. Gas is supplied from bulk tanks in the back of the estate not sure if I am allowed to say who the gas company on here but guess that's not important. I moved out of house 7 years ago as family got bigger but couldn't afford to sell so became a reluctant landlord. While living there it was cheap house to heat no real issues. Last December the tenants received a huge 2 monthly bill close to 400 euro. I think the bill was for oct & nov so not the coldest months of last winter. They claimed the heat wasn't being run excessively and were very upset at the cost. They believed they may have an issue with the meter and asked the gas company would they check it which they were told if nothing wrong with it they would be charged 400 euro ! I got an RGI service man to check out everything out and he could not find any issue no leaks boiler performing to its spec. The tenants still insisted something was very wrong and there next bill was big again not sure exactly what the usage was tho. Sorry for rambling on, my questions are the gas meter was changed out as the test point was found to be leaking a couple of years ago, is there any chance the replacement meter is someway giving incorrect readings ? It wasn't replaced with a new one and has Bord Gais written on it which I thought was odd. Is gas supplied from these bulk tanks at a different pressure than what Bord Gais is supplied at and would that make a difference to how accurate the meter works? Is there something else that could cause such a huge gas usage. I cant really afford to replace the boiler this year would a 10 year plus old boiler become this inefficient ? I know the unit cost of gas has gone up alot. But find it difficult to explain this sort of usage. Any ideas ?

The meter I would think should have been calibrated on/for LPG, LPG is almost twice the density of NG so I suppose its possible that someone thought it was a NG fuelled house when they changed the meter.
If you can get a reading for this period it would obviously help greatly. As you state Oct/Nov were relatively mild months, for this period I consumed 2798 KW (Kerosene) which should equate to 108 M3 of LPG. I don't know what the energy portion charge for the LPG was for that period but at just a guess I will use €2.60/M3 so the LPG equivalent cost (for my house) would have been €280. My heating is on 15 hours/day.

hatchman

Thanks John G. How would you know if the gas meter was calibrated for NG instead of LPG. The jump in cost does seems to tie in with the meter replacement. I will contact gas company for exact unit usage as I only have readings from end of Sep 17 and start of April 18. 331.1 m3 were used during that period (well according to meter). I do know that from December on the tenants were using the open fire and electric heaters the majority of the time. For the size of the house it does sound like an excessive amount. Gas price for M3 is 3.09 euro which equates to over 1,000 euro on just the gas in that period which is not including supply charges and carbon tax. looking at a picture I took of the meter readings the meter has written on it "Property of Bord Gais". Is there a regulator I could contact for this as I know gas company want 400 euro to check it and I know that there own people probably wont admit anything even if it is found to out of calibration.

Victor

https://www.cru.ie/

John.G

hatchman wrote: »

Thanks John G. How would you know if the gas meter was calibrated for NG instead of LPG. The jump in cost does seems to tie in with the meter replacement. I will contact gas company for exact unit usage as I only have readings from end of Sep 17 and start of April 18. 331.1 m3 were used during that period (well according to meter). I do know that from December on the tenants were using the open fire and electric heaters the majority of the time. For the size of the house it does sound like an excessive amount. Gas price for M3 is 3.09 euro which equates to over 1,000 euro on just the gas in that period which is not including supply charges and carbon tax. looking at a picture I took of the meter readings the meter has written on it "Property of Bord Gais". Is there a regulator I could contact for this as I know gas company want 400 euro to check it and I know that there own people probably wont admit anything even if it is found to out of calibration.

I don't know how one would know if it was calibrated for NG or LPG, all meters I think are calibrated on Air and then corrected for density, pressure and temperature of the particular application.
Its going to be very difficult to prove the accuracy or not of the meter short of paying to have it done.
You could use a spot check but you will have to know your boiler output and efficiency, (if you can post its make and model, it can be figured out). You then, for the test, ensure its running at full output, (not modulating down) and then take the time with a stopwatch how long it takes to consume 0.1 M3 of LPG, this would entail the boiler running at its full output for say 8 to 15 minutes depending on its output.

John.G

hatchman wrote: »

I have 2 bed terrace house which has Heatline Gas boiler. Gas is supplied from bulk tanks in the back of the estate not sure if I am allowed to say who the gas company on here but guess that's not important. I moved out of house 7 years ago as family got bigger but couldn't afford to sell so became a reluctant landlord. While living there it was cheap house to heat no real issues. Last December the tenants received a huge 2 monthly bill close to 400 euro. I think the bill was for oct & nov so not the coldest months of last winter. They claimed the heat wasn't being run excessively and were very upset at the cost. They believed they may have an issue with the meter and asked the gas company would they check it which they were told if nothing wrong with it they would be charged 400 euro ! I got an RGI service man to check out everything out and he could not find any issue no leaks boiler performing to its spec. The tenants still insisted something was very wrong and there next bill was big again not sure exactly what the usage was tho. Sorry for rambling on, my questions are the gas meter was changed out as the test point was found to be leaking a couple of years ago, is there any chance the replacement meter is someway giving incorrect readings ? It wasn't replaced with a new one and has Bord Gais written on it which I thought was odd. Is gas supplied from these bulk tanks at a different pressure than what Bord Gais is supplied at and would that make a difference to how accurate the meter works? Is there something else that could cause such a huge gas usage. I cant really afford to replace the boiler this year would a 10 year plus old boiler become this inefficient ? I know the unit cost of gas has gone up alot. But find it difficult to explain this sort of usage. Any ideas ?

Just reread your post above and I see that you have a Heatline Boiler. Making a few assumptions here since I dont know your boiler rated output.

A 20 KW non condensing boiler @ 80% effic. running at full output should consume 0.1 M3 of LPG in 6.26 mins (0.96 M3/hr)
A 20 KW condensing boiler @ 95% effic. running at full output should consume 0.1 M3 of LPG in 7.44 mins (0.81 M3/hr)
A 24 KW non condensing boiler @ 80% effic. running at full output should consume 0.1 M3 of LPG in 5.22 mins (1.15 M3/hr)
A 24 KW condensing boiler @ 95% effic. running at full output should consume 0.1 M3 of LPG in 6.2 mins (0.97 M3/hr)

If you can carry out that "0.1 M3" test then it should tell you if the meter is grossly out of calibration, you couldnt use it in a court of law as you dont really know if your boiler is actually running at its rated output or not but it will certainly give you a very good idea, if its within + or - 10% then I would say the meter's calibration is OK.