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Help reading your meter

Meters for gas and electricity come in many shapes and sizes but here are a few hints to help you take your own readings.

First you need to know where your meters are. This can vary tremendously with the age of the property. They may be in a box with external access so that the people from the energy supplier can take readings without disturbing you, or they may be in your garage or some other difficult to access spot in your house! One way to find out is wait until someone from the energy supplier comes to take a reading. They do this for a living and are doubtless familiar with the properties in your area so may well know where at least one of the meters is.

Then there are different types of meter, from modern digital ones through older mechanical ones with digits displayed to even older mechanical ones with dials to read. You may have ones which give multiple readings (especially for electricity) for different tariffs if you are on something like economy7 electricity. Below are a few examples of popular meters and how to read them.

This is a typical gas meter. To take a reading, ignore the dial with the red hand and the two numbers shown in red. Reading the white figures only gives you 6305.
This is a typical electricity meter. Ignore the two red dials and only read the white digits to get a reading of 8166.
If your meter has dials similar to the diagram opposite, then again ignore anything red. The arrows show the direction of the rotation of each dial. If the pointer is between two numbers look back in the opposite direction of rotation to the number the pointer has passed, which is usually the lower of the two numbers it is near. For example, on the fifth dial in the diagram, which is labelled as 1kWh, the needle is closer to the 9 but you would look back to the number it had just passed to read it as 8. The two 9's in the diagram also illustrate how needles moving in different directions would be read.

 

Click on this link or copy the address into your web browser for more information on gas meters http://www.gas-guide.org.uk/meters.html

Click on this link or copy the address into your web browser for more information http://www.electricity-guide.org.uk/meters.html