Why does my TM/TC back up so much?

Before I refer this to AppleCare, I wonder if anyone on this forum can help?
I am waiting for AppleCare to call me back on another matter, but my excellent Level 2 geek is on hoiday so it may be a while before he comes back to me.
The reasons I am dealing with AppleCare, in case they are relevent to this current problem, are: replaced optical drive, replaced video card, replaced LCD - all at 30 months old and all in the past 6 weeks! Also, duplicated iCal/Calendar events and non-sync'd events between my iPad and iMac (now resolved, a corrupt version of iTunes) and more latterly a suspected corrupt partition map on the iMac as I cannot create a new partition.
But, on the assumption that those do not affect my Time Machine to Time Capsule transfers, here is my current problem ...
I run a 27" i7 1TB iMac with 16GB of RAM under MacOSX.6.8 and I have recently acquired at 2TB Time Capsule, to which I backed up my 669.45GB full HD via Ethernet. I am now backing up the iMac wirlessly.
I have a G4 Tower and a G4 eMac, both running under MacOSX.4.11, on my network and they appear on my iMac's Desktop as networked devices. I have an Alias to my HP DeskJet 840C printer which is connected to the eMac by wire and I have Chicken of the VNC as an Alias so that I can lazily control the two G4s from the comfort of my lounge should the rare need arise!
I run Stanford University's Folding@Home v7.1.52 24/7 and that is the only User process which, to the best of my knowledge, runs when the iMac is unattended.
I back up a 64GB iPad [3] via iTunes to the iMac from time to time, but there shouldn't be massive changes in that.
So why are my backups seemingly so large?
So large, in fact, that several take over an hour so that the default hourly backups are "late" and the iMac seems to be backing uop non-stop!
I have, in an attempt to stop cache files, etc, excluded from backing up (in case they changed so often that they might account for the number of files allegedly copied, if not the size) the following ...
/Library/Caches
~/Library/Caches
~/Documents/Parallels
~/Library/Appliction Support/TechTool Protection
I have seen posts on this forum that advise excluding the Time Machine file and network disks from backing up, but when I go to TC Preferences, I cannot find them shown so I cannot exclude them.
Each back-up appears to be in two parts, as demonstrated by the following most recent log ...
Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/Data
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://[email protected]/Data
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/Data/Roy’s iMac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 12.91 GB requested (including padding), 738.07 GB available
Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
Copied 44382 files (8.5 GB) from volume Grumpy.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 3.46 GB requested (including padding), 738.00 GB available
Copied 34176 files (613.5 MB) from volume Grumpy.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Roy’s iMac/2012-07-27-162213: 737.39 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Ejected Time Machine network volume.
... first it asked for 12.91GB and then 3.48GB - massively larger than i would expect for a machine left unattended all day. It backed up less, but that's what it asked for.
And 44,382 and 34,176 files respectively? Where on earth did they come from. I'm aware, or think I am aware, that many seemingly single files are in fact a number os smaller files - but even so!
Recent sizes backed up, for which logs are still available, are (in GBs) ...
96.55 + 4.62
12.76 + 12.76
2.79 + 4.03
3.50 + 2.76
3.34 + 2.79
2.79 + 14.02
3.43 + 12.80
96.67 + 12.86
12.97 + 2.87
3.48 + 2.87
12.88 + 3.40
3.44 + 2.84
3.44 + 2.87
2.88 + 12.85
3.44 + 2.87
3.44 + 2.84
Note the two of them at over 90GB! What on earth are those?
I'm pretty sure that TC is an incremental back-up so I would have expected much much smaller files!
Anyone help whilst my excellent AppleCare contact is away will be very much appreciated!
Thanks.
Message was edited by: iBozz to correct sloppy typos

Thanks, Pondini, much food for thought on there and I will read it all in more detail later.
And what a veritable gem BackupLoupe is, Bob, and I am grateful for you pointing me toward it. It has already given me some pointers and looks to be £3.29 very well spent. I mention those pointers below.
I had, before seeing Pondini's post, looked at the BackupLoupe indeces on the very large 90+GB back-up and identified a Sparse Disk Image file of around 75GB as being the major component. Quite why that changed I do not know as I cannot recall modifying the contents (I may have done, it is an archive file to which I add data from time to time, I just can't recall so doing in the last couple of days), but I have nevertheless now excluded it (and a few other unimportant dmg archive files) from future back-ups and I shall see if that helps.
I also have another sparse image file which contains approximately 35,000 jpg files amounting to 8.45GB. This is currently "open" and mounted on the Desktop and is being accessed by the application Change Desktop (http://www.bergstrand.org/brian/software/ChangeDesktop/) which changes the desktop picture every "n" minutes using pictures from the mounted disk image.
I have not added or deleted any jpgs to or from that dmg for at least ten days, but it seems to be registering as changed from time to time and this, after reading Pondini's link, seems to account for the periodic "larger than usual" backups. I wonder whether Change Desktop works in such a way that the content appears to be changing to TM? I can't see how, as it merely reads files into RAM (I am assuming, I have no real idea of how it works) but it is an academic question, really, as that dmg is also now excluded.
All this is unproven theory so far, but there seems to be enough circumstantial evidence to at least point the finger of suspicion at these dmgs. There are seven of them in total, amounting to 147.93GB, all in one archive folder in Documents and I have now excluded them all.
It seems to be working as the only TM/TC back-up to have executed since that exclusion runs as follows ...
Starting standard backup
Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://Roy@Sue._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Data
Mounted network destination using URL: afp://Roy@Sue._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Data
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
Disk image /Volumes/Data-1/Roy’s iMac.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
No pre-backup thinning needed: 3.63 GB requested (including padding), 737.39 GB available
Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
Copied 44373 files (698.8 MB) from volume Grumpy.
No pre-backup thinning needed: 2.91 GB requested (including padding), 737.39 GB available
Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
Copied 34139 files (142.2 MB) from volume Grumpy.
Backup deletion was canceled by user
Starting post-backup thinning
Backup completed successfully.
Ejected Time Machine disk image.
Ejected Time Machine network volume.
The reason I cancelled the deletion, see the log, was because it seemd to be taking an absolute age to "finish up" and I was worried it might be hanging and I wanted to get this post done before calling it a day and retiring to bed.
Thanks for excellent advice, Bob and Pondini. I shall investigate Pondini's link, etc. in due course as thre seems some excellent information there and I shall also look around BackupLoupe to see what other facilities it provides.
I shall report back when I have sufficient evidence to be sure my overly large back-ups are a thing of the past -but it's looking good right now!
Very many thanks for the most excellent advice, Guys.

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