As it’s now the first of November and heating season has begun, I wanted to do a quick comparison of my gas usage between Oct ’21 and Oct ’22.
In Oct ’21, we used 93.2m3 of gas, which is approximately 1024kWh. We were away for eight day’s that month, so the usage was zero.
Spin ahead to 2022 and for October we’ve used 890kWh of gas. That’s 134kWh less gas used.
Firstly, I stopped using gas to heat my water (for the most part) by switching to the immersion. Looking at Mixergy’s data, they estimate I used about 221kWh of gas to heat my hot water during October. 8 days of the month had no heating.
If I factor in the 221kWh of hot water, we’ve actually used *more* gas this October that we did last October! Of course, that doesn’t consider the 8 days that we were not home. If I guestimate the usage at 3m3 a day, it would add 270kWh.
October ’21 would therefore be about 1300kWh in total. Take away the known hot water usage of 221kWh and the guesstimated hot water usage of 76.8kWh (9kWh a day) and we’re left with 1000kWh of heating. That’s a reduction of 110kWh.
Is that a good reduction?
I’ll be honest and say I hoped the reduction in usage would be much higher. It’s been very mild this October, with average temperatures breaking records across Europe, so the fact that my heating used almost 900kWh is disappointing. In addition to the warm weather, I’ve lowered my boiler’s flow temperature and I’ve had Thermabead cavity wall insulation installed.
Admittedly, we’re doing an extension, so the back of our house has been opened up (with an OSB false wall), but even with that, I can’t say I’m not disappointed.
That said, this is a marathon, not a sprint. The weather will be turning colder as we head into November. Last November we used 3280kWh gas with about 3000kWh used for heating. I’m hoping to see a 10 to 15% reduction in this.
Tomas McGuinness 