Investigation on massive electricity bills

[sparky1508]

Hi all,
This morning I visited a new client who needs me to find out why there bills are so high.
At the moment I can only give a quick rundown of the installation as it was just a general chit chat about the issue. I will be going back to do some proper investigation in a week or so.
This is an old manor farm with the main house having been extended along with an attached barn conversion which is their main living space. 3 story's including the loft conversion so quite a considerable space. They have a 3 bed cottage ( Detached )on the land along with stables a plant room and a wooden barn converted for parties in an L shape. So they called me because they are getting extremely high bills. The 2 that I saw was 1 for last 3 months and 1 for the previous 3 months. The latter was for £4100 and the other was £2700. I did get a quick look at a couple others and they were similar costs ranging anywhere in between.
Firstly can anyone say whether this is normal for a house of this size when they have assured me that they don't use the emersion heaters as they have 2 big oil boilers in the plant room.
Wet underfloor in the new half and the barn end and radiators in the old part of the house.
Also my first thoughts are that I need to familiarise myself with the wiring of the entire installation so I can eliminate circuits one by one. Any advice is welcome as always.

 

[sparky1508]

may be the electricity company they get
the supply from need to be involved and ask them.

Thought about involving DNO but they will say they are only responsible for the installation up to the meter so don't really know what they could do other than charge a fortune to do what I intend to do.

 

[Lucien Nunes]

Let's see what kind of load you need to rack up those bills.
Typical leccy price 12p/kWh
Total consumption over 6 months (4100+2700)/0.12=57MWh
6 months = 24*365/2=4380 hours.
Average continuous load 56666/4380=12.9kW.

Whatever you use electricity for, by the time the energy leaves your house it's almost entirely converted into heat (unless you live in a pumping station or mine headworks). Therefore if this consumption is real, there must be the equivalent of 6 1/2 2-bar fires of heat being pumped into the house all the time. Unless some of the long-hour load is aircon of course. If you were supposing half of the consumption were due to a fault, whatever makes up the resistance of the fault (earth rod, someone suggested) would be getting as hot as two immersion heaters on full whack could make it (i.e. not cycling on their thermostats, elements on full all the time).

It seems unlikely that so much energy could be dissipated unseen in a domestic environment, so either they have a generally high load (e.g. sneaky extra electric heaters and/or aircon and poor thermal insulation, lots of inefficient decorative tungsten lighting on 24/7, all their considerable space in use much of the time) or the readings are out. Unless, of course, someone has set up a hydroponic cultivation department.

 

[buzzlightyear]

someone has set up a hydroponic cultivation department.

note post 14

 

[sparky1508]

note post 14

An initial thought of mine was because the plant room is in an outbuilding it wouldn't be difficult for someone to tap in and leech off it. My clients wouldn't even know as they spend a lot of time away working.

 

[buzzlightyear]

may be you need this guy!

 

[Octopus]

Get the home owner to take weekly readings for a few weeks.

That said £4100 for a quarter is a joke.

 

[sparky1508]

I will be doing as advised earlier and fitting an energy monitor. Might do a week on the main DB and then a week on each sub mains DB. Not even sure if the other 3 subs come from the main DB as the cottage is close to the main house so may be fed from there. Will know more after my initial investigations.

 

[ruston]

are producing & they selling bob hope !

Or someone might be without their knowledge.
Do they have a swimming pool by any chance?

 

[sparky1508]

Or someone might be without their knowledge.
Do they have a swiming pool by any chance?

No swimming pool that I am aware of and I'm pretty sure it would have been spoken about today if they had.

 

[sparky1508]

Or someone might be without their knowledge.
Do they have a swiming pool by any chance?

There is also a couple that live in the cottage.

 

[ruston]

There is also a couple that live in the cottage.

Maybe the place to start then.

 

[sparky1508]

Thinking may get away with a clamp meter as I've just seen the price of these machines. Just check current flows to each DB and see which one has got an unusually high current flow.

 

[buzzlightyear]

now your thinking!

 

[freddo]

We've recently been using Inlec to hire some data loggers, their service is top notch, would highly recommend.

 

[westward10]

Meter readings are rarely incorrect unless smart meters are involved. Even estimated readings are based on past consumption so I would guess somewhere along the line this power is being consumed.