@jtt We moved in July 2022, it's flooded atleast 3times a week since, maybe a bit less in the summer time. Complete BS on the form that it flooded once 10 years ago
@hef They told me they only cover the cost of going to court if the claim is approved. The guy recommended I get a few quotes to fix it, get a survey done to find the exact problem, and ask my solicitor to write a complaint letter for misrepresentation to them. If they don't cooperate we can take them to court which HastingsDirect will cover if approved
@little_sparrow Your screenshot of usage bar chart is a bit hard to decipher. What time period does each bar represent? Doesn't look like monthly usage? Are you submitting readings every month?
1195kWh is a crazy amount in a month (if that's correct) for a gas heated home. Common root causes:
Immersion heater (in hot water tank) constantly running - heating is usually the highest power consumption in a residential property, whether it is space heating or water heating. If you have a hot water tank, check if you have an immersion heater and whether it is on.
Occupiers not submitting readings regularly or incorrect meter readings
(Very rarely) power being stolen by neighbour
You mentioned the pump which you have to use for a few hours daily. Do you know what the pump power rating is? Quick Google suggest a sump pump is around 400 to 800W depending on the max flow rate and head, so running something like that constantly for 3 hours would be less than 3kWh per day (x 30 days) = 90kWh per month. Unless you have a monster pump I doubt it's that.
Immersion heater (in hot water tank) constantly running - heating is usually the highest power consumption in a residential property, whether it is space heating or water heating. If you have a hot water tank, check if you have an immersion heater and whether it is on.
@little_sparrow 1195kWh over 57 days = an average of 21kWh per day.
That is high for a home that's gas heated. Did you confirm whether you have an immersion heater? If you do have a hot water tank, this is very likely the culprit.
Your 500W pump basically uses 500W per hour of usage so even if you ran it 24 hours a day, it would only consume 12kWh per day and you are obviously not. It probably accounts for 2-3 kWh of your daily usage at most.
Are you running some serious IT hardware? Or have a large TV on all day?
@ghaynes I requested a smart meter from octopus this morning and they told me it could be anywhere from 4-8 weeks at least which is okay. I have a pretty "normal" desktop PC with two monitors that runs for maybe 8 hours a day at most, it has a 450W power supply but I doubt i'm using nearly that, most of the time it's running i'm using "light" apps like Chrome, VSCode, and only spin up the GPU when I need to do some work with image AI models which is pretty rare
We have an immersion heater that turns itself on for 1 hour each morning and i've verified that it only does for 1 hour multiple times, we have an electric shower and a 60" TV that's used between 6-11pm
@little_sparrow Had similar readings at my mum's property... Turned out the meter was faulty and reading more than the actual usage. This is much more common than you would think.
British Gas were a nightmare to deal with and it took months to resolve.
Easy way is to get an electrician to check the actual electric usage. Everything on, clamp meter just after the meter. Everything off with the clamp meter as well. Compare the readings with what your electric meter says.
The supplier can also check for you, but ask them to check in situ, i.e. don't let them take the meter away as you can't prove it was faulty then.
If it does turn out to be faulty, as was my mum's, then you can try claiming a refund.
Could also be a fault to ground draining power, but that's unlikely I think, but either way call a sparky out.
@little_sparrow During winter 5 bed house with underfloor heating downstairs and hybrid car we top out around 900kwh for 2-3 months rest of the year around 400-500kwh. On octopus tracker has saved me hundreds of pounds a year. I would definitely recommend requesting a smart meter and making the most of smart tariffs
@millard52english Either Agile or Tracker. Agile will make most savings if you can load shift to the cheap slots, such as running the basement pump periodically, automating the run time to coincide with the lower cost energy. Tracker if you want to carry on as you are and just pay less.
Get your gas on the octopus tracker tariff is also a no brainer.
@little_sparrow We're a household of 3 adults, 3 primary age kids. Every day at least one adult is WFH. Heating is gas. I just checked our app (smart meter) for 1st Jan to 27th Feb and we used 848kwh electricity in that period so I wouldn't say your usage is "insane", especially if your kids are teens who are awake more hours and doing any gaming etc. Pump will add a bit, maybe 100kwh a month as others have said so ~200kwh in the period you're looking at. I mean there's always scope to cut down but now the days are getting longer I'd think it'll reduce naturally. If not or it increases more, then maybe that's time to drill down further.
@sethfulford This seems high to me. Sure your immersion heater is not running?
This Christmas we were home for a week. 4adults + 2 small children, hot water, heating and cooking gas, rest electricity. We used the washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher daily. We also used the oven a couple of times. In the end we used 100kWh in 7 days. Yours would be roughly double.
I struggle to think of what we would have to do to double our usage.
