High electric bill

[85mick85]

Hi i got sent to a house the other day because the guy was getting high electric bills, his bill was £1500 the first quater, he phoned the electric board and they cam out and change the meter for a ???? do you no the old type with the wheel to a new digital meter? well the next quater he got another big bill and asked for our help, the first thing i checked was that his reading on the meter matched the read on the elec bill, it was ok, i then put my tong tester on to see what it was pulling, there was no one in the house and it was pulling in around 3-7 amps with a few lights on, i put my tong tester around the live nutral earth to check for earth leakage, but was none well 0.01 of an amp, i was confused in what to do next, is i went through every circuit and done an instalition test on the nutral to earth, circuit came up a dead short on the outside lights, would this was use electric even tho they arnt switched on? i went back up a few days later when the owner was there, i got him to turn everything on as he would normally have on, i tonged that and it cam in about 20 amps he said he would use this for 6 till about 12 at the latest,and he would have a cleaner in for 4hours for 3 days every week i calculated that using this he should be paying around £650 a quater thats added a few amps on, he has no electric heaters or electric shower or anything like that, its a tt system, i left him my tong meter and told him to record what he is using every hour and to write down his meter readings, so we are waiting on feed back from that,........has anyone had similar problems? or can anyone thing of anything elese to try?.....the electris boared told him to cut the seal on the main fuse and check if the neigbhbours lights went out? <<<<i thought that was a bit silly asking him to do that,

 

[bugsy]

I would suggest attaching a Micro vip or simular ( if your local i've got one you can borrow ) ( but look after it their expensive)
This wil record and print out info required.
more info on request

 

[rocker]

Probably going to get corrected on this but.....

A tungsten lightbulb is essentially a high resistance bit of wire that connects line to neutral.

Line/neutral wires that are cut off and taped up instead of isolated properly, that are badly terminated and floating about in the back of switches, and all this other rubbish that we see every day, i.e. wires that are *just about* touching each other are doing essentially the same thing.

If you megger a circuit and you're getting low resistance, but not low enough resistance to trip your breaker, the electricity is flowing from A to B, with a resistive section in between (a hundredth of a mil of air or whatever), and that will be costing you money.

After I got my first tester I tested my house, got lots of bad readings, then went round fault finding, ripping out old 'cut-off-and-left-live-with-a-bit-of-sellotape-on-the-end' cable, and generally tightening up every single termination. My leccy bill went down by a fifth. This may not be the fellas main problem (have been in a house with an emersion heater on constantly in the attic - the owner didn't even know it was there, he had a combi boiler!!) but I would wager it is contributing.

EDIT: I think the less said about the electricity board, the better. Asses and elbows spring to mind.

 

[uksel]

i wouldn't mind knowing how you get on with this.

when everything is switched on, don't suppose you're getting an electrical buzzing from the CU's busbar? that can be a sign of electrical loading. perhaps if you're client is using a couple of amps all the time, maybe switch off all the circuits and see if you have a single problem circuit which could be contributing.

not really the same, but my mother in law has a second home in northern ireland, last time she came home from there she forgot she'd left the iron on - she got her quartlerly bill through and it was a fortune, she thought there were squatters in at first.

she had to go all the way back over to turn it off! can't see her making that mistake again lol

 

[m4tty]

^^^^^^^^^ lucky no fire mate lol

 

[rocker]

Yea that's gotta be the best monther-in-law story I've heard for a bit.

 

[GT1]

Not particularly "techy" but something like this..?
PlugIn Electricity Consumption Monitor from HomeEnergySaving.co.uk

If he uses one of these and sees how it compares to his bills..

Then perhaps next time your there, you pull the company fuse and see if next doors lights go out..?
You never know..!

 

[Jason Smith]

Just thinking off a job I was reading about, a paricular house had an earth fault but no devices operated, there was literaly money flowing to ground down the earth rod. I will find the article I was reading, its somewhere about !!