I just had my water bill Monthly D/D put up from £9/ month to £32. Nothing had changed in my consumption but I checked the meter had been misread by 30 cu/mtrs which is a year's consumption for. Sorted with a phone call. A near neighbour has had her monthly debit put from £17 to £25 becuase, at the end of 6 months she owed them under £6! We have to watch this lot like hawks!
RR - I think you may to turn off everything in the house and then switch things on one at time and with the hamster wheel! Has an immersion heater been inadvetently put onto a 24 hour/continuous setting? That would murder your bill!
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gone from using 15 units per day to 30! >>
That is equivalent to additionally using a 1kW heater for 15 hours each day.
Culprits could be that during the cold snap in the Jan to March period, your home had :
1. fan heater(s) in use
2. been electrically heating the very cold water in your hot-water cylinder
3. lots of cycles of heating up of cold water in your washing machine
4. been using electrical heated ovens or hobs a lot more than you normally do
or
5. you have a "leakage" somewhere which is not tripping your fuses or circuit breakers
6. ?
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Read your meter every day for the next week to see what your average is now.
This will determine if you are back to "normalish" useage.
If things are back to normal then it was probably the extra cold period useage as jbif implies.
Is your freezer still showing the correct temperature and is the compressor running longer or more frequently that previously?
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SQ
5. you have a "leakage" somewhere which is not tripping your fuses or circuit breakers 6. ?
6. Using tumble dryer instead of drying on washing line.
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 06/05/2009 at 11:27
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Has an immersion heater (if you have one) been put on 24 hour mode? That would use a lot of wiggly amps! Try turning off your appliances and then put them back on one at a time and check the hamster wheel with each one.
Edited by Armitage Shanks {p} on 05/05/2009 at 17:26
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No immersion heaters, all heating and water is gas apart from two wall mounted 1kw heaters which are rarely if ever used. According to SWALEC the jump in usage has been constant over six months, which would seem to rule out any device which is cold weather specific.
Could a faulty freezer actually consume that much extra power? It doesn't run hot and I thought they were low wattage anyway. Dodgy Sky box maybe? that seems rather warm to touch.
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An easy way to see if it is the freezer is to turn it off. A chest freezer should be fine turned off for 12 hours or so. This should give you an idea if it is the freezer or something else.
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Could a faulty freezer actually consume that much extra power? It doesn't run hot
Pretty much all the electrical energy is being converted into heat coming out the back of the freezer, which you would presumably notice if it was just that device. Assuming jbf is correct, that's over 1/2kW if it's doing it all the time.
EDIT: and the room would be noticeable warmer, unless it's in the garage.
Edited by Focus {P} on 05/05/2009 at 18:18
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I think a medium sized freezer is rated at around 200W, presumably with the compressor running, so even if it was running 24/7 ( i.e. thermostat faulty and always on) that wouldn't explain the jump, unless it has some really weird fault mode. Digiboxes are around 15 watts and are normally warm to teh touch, certainly not normal for it to be too hot to touch, so again very unlikely.
Like jbif says we're looking for a big power consumer here.
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According to SWALEC the jump in usage has been constant over six months >>
Can't see how they'd know that. A meter just records the total used between two figures when the readings are taken. Not every day, week or whatever.
So I don't think what OP has been told makes any sense.
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Look carefully at your meter. Near the wheel, there'll be some writing that says "133 revolutions per KW/Hr" or something like that.
Switch everything you can off for a few minutes, especially things that come on/off automatically.
Count the RPM of the wheel in your meter.
Switch on your freezer, and count the RPM again.
You can thus work out, accurately, how many "units" are being used by the freezer.
If you have a accurately-known load available, you can also easily work out whether your meter's OK.
Edited by FotheringtonThomas on 05/05/2009 at 18:49
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You can buy plug in elecricity consumption monitors to check the usage of indiviual devices.
Edited by Old Navy on 05/05/2009 at 18:59
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You can. I don't know how accurate they are, although I'd be extremely surprised if they were far enough off not to pick up RR's faulty thing.
It might be worth switching off particular circuits - there's always the possibility of a leak (damaged conductor) - depends on the set-up, and whether anyone's been banging nails in, I suppose.
Measuring at the meter has the advantage of measuring what the meter's measuring, too, if youi see what I mean.
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You can buy plug in elecricity consumption monitors to check the usage of indiviual devices.
>>
An example of one that monitors the total useage £40
www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=225407&sourc...1
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I had something like this in mind.
www.ecofreak.co.uk/products/0/113/Plug-in-Electric...l
Edited by Old Navy on 05/05/2009 at 19:42
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Fridges and freezers come on and off - so if monitoring one of them you need to do it over a reasonable period of time, not just 5 minutes.
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Fridges and freezers come on and off - so if monitoring one of them you need to do it over a reasonable period of time not just 5 minutes.
Not if you're just checking whether the freezer is running at >500W :-)
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Thanks for your suggestions, I am going to monitor the meter reading over the next five days and see what my daily consumption is. I will also shut the chest freezer down for 12 hours near after a few days and see if that makes a difference.
One other thing someone might be able to help with, about six months ago my bathroom fan (situated in the loft) packed up. It is only over the weekend that I turned the power to it off and disconected it. Is it possible there was some sort of fault in that that drained the power even though it wasn't running, or is the timing just a coincidence?
As you can probably see, electricity ain't my thing so if anyone has anymore suggestions please feel free to add.
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I turned the power to it (a fan) off and disconected it. Is it possible there was some sort of fault in that that drained the power even though it wasn't running
Not unless you did something ghastly when disconnecting it.
As an example of reading power consumption at the meter:
My meter's wheel has a black mark on it. This passes a line every revolution.
Standing on a stool with wall clock in hand, I measured 2 mins. 5 seconds for 1 revolution.
The meter rotates 166 2/3 times per kWh - written on the meter (also, the meter uses 2W, it says!).
So, at that rate, it would take 166 2/3 times 2 mins 5 seconds to use 1kWh (one "unit").
So, when I measured, it would take 125(seconds) x 166 2/3(rpm/kWh) divided by 60(seconds in a minute) divided by 60(minutes in an hour) hours to use 1 unit, i.e. 5hours 47 minutes 13 1/3 seconds to use 1 unit.
Things possibly "on":
The meter (2W). The 'fridge, maybe. The freezer, maybe. This PC & ancilliaries. A charging toothbrush (2w-ish). A PVR, recording Dr. Who (25W-ish). The CH pump (40W-ish). It would seem about 173W is being used so this PC & ancilliaries is about 100W.
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In order to consume the amount of power you are looking for - roughly 600W continuous - then the fan would be getting flipping hot .So unless it was very hot to the touch when you went to disconnect it I'd say not.
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If you are going to turn your chest freezer off for 12 hours, then may I suggest that you make sure it is 'full' before doing this. Easiest way is to fill the space at the top with a duvet or two, or perhaps some pillows - placed in the day before you turn it off. This will ensure the food does stay frozen and will have the added bonus of killing off dust mites!
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Easist way to check i find, is to use the "stopwatch function" on mobile phone instead of cumbersome wall-clock. Remove all fuses from consumer unit, check wheel stops, put fuses back in one at a time, with everything on that circuit turned off, eg lighting circuit first, if wheel starts moving, you know there is something on that circuit using juice! or shorting - investigate! eg, is the light in the fridge actually going off when the door is closed etc? (yes i know this is actually on the power circuit! - used as example only! ;-) ) turn each item in that circuit back on one by one, and make sure nothing is causing wheel to whizz round, if it does, that is the cause. Then turn off all power-sockets - don't forget the "hidden" ones for Washer/freezer etc, that may be hidden in kitchen cupboards/ understairs, and repeat the procedure, time consuming, but may save you £'s, also easiest with two people! one monotoring the behavior of the meter, (you) whilst somebody (her!) runs about turning switches on and off, especially upstairs!.
Edited by billy25 on 06/05/2009 at 03:00
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You need one of these ..........
www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=38343
Edited by L'escargot on 06/05/2009 at 08:26
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A colleague had a similar problem. An electric fire had been left on in the loft for much of the winter - teenage children!
He had noticed his was the only roof without frost on cold mornings, but thought no more about it.
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You need one of these ......>> www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=38343
>>
Only useful for plug in appliances hence my earlier suggestion.
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Only useful for plug in appliances ........
I wondered why mine has got 13 amp pins at the back and a 13 amp socket at the front!
;-)
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Without knowing what type of property you live in, is it possible that a neighbour has tapped into your electricity supply downstream of the meter and that you're paying for his electricity consumption?
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Was your last bill an estimate, RR? And if so did you check your meter readings?
The power companies are not very good at increasing your direct debit when they put their prices up. Mine tried to refund me £220 last year just after increasing prices by 50% - I said no thanks you'd better hang on to it.
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No, all the meter readings were actual figures.
I have been monitoring usage since Tuesday and we are clocking up about 13 units per day. The usage for the bill in question was almost 30 a day over six months, so there seems to have been a severe spike somewhere in that period. I have got to contact them on Saturday with the daily readings and they are going to send someone down to check.
Thanks to everyone who replied.
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