Should I turn the power to my combi boiler off? (Have searched)

mjmal51 wrote: »

Something wrong there? Are you measuring the electricity used in winter and therefore the power consumed by the pump for central heating?
When in hot water only mode the only power is to keep the boiler in standby - negligible. Won't matter if a single person or 10 people in the house.

I'm pretty sure the boiler uses that. It's an ancient Ferroli Optima 800. On hot water only left on 24 hours a day I end up using an extra six or seven kWh per week. Is this a fault? On reflection 35 W on average does seem very high - a laptop can almost run on that so 35 W should really be its peak, not average, wattage.

(Could it be just the circuit boards? - cf ridiculous battery consumption of digital radios compared to analogue)

Wywth wrote: »

What type of power meter did you use to get that result in 3 minutes?

Boilers are normally hard wired i.e. not plugged in via a 13A socket.
I've just looked at my boiler (which is not a combi boiler) and there is no access to the power cable at all (without removing any covers)
There's an on/off switch on the wall, and presumably the cable travels from that, behind the wall, to the back of the boiler.

Yeah mine is just in a normal 13 A socket so I used my free plug power checker thingy that I got via MSE ages ago . It was a constant 4.6 W for about a minute so I'm sure it's accurate for idle. Obviously when heating water it'll change.

It's also brand new so I'm not surprised it has low idle power usage. Probably only worth turning it off if I'm away for a few days (or longer) during the summer.

Nada666 wrote: »

Well done. Shrug. Your boiler (claims) to only use 0.77 kWh per week. My one uses more than 6 kWh. Either I have a carp boiler or your instaneous reading is misleading. Even if your reading is reliable not everyone will have a boiler that efficient. As I said it is only significant for single people - more than one person using hot water (and paying the bill) it makes little sense to switch it off. But more than 300 kWh per year is easily one third or one quarter of an annual bill for a single person.

Well I didn't just plug it in a read off the number, I left it for a minute or so and it was constant. How old is your boiler?

I've actually been checking my appliances that are on all day to find out where the power is going (since I'm using ~150 W when not at home). So far I've accounted for 75 W and the only things I haven't checked are my server (have to wait until for a convenient time since I'll have to turn it off to plug it into the power checker) and the washing machine (can't see where it's plugged in so can't check it).

Sadly, I can't really economise on most of that 150 W. I can reduce it by about 5 W but that's about it. It means that all of my "expensive kWh" are taken up by my constantly-on items.

So far I've accounted for 75 W and the only things I haven't checked are my server (have to wait until for a convenient time since I'll have to turn it off to plug it into the power checker) and the washing machine (can't see where it's plugged in so can't check it).

Sadly, I can't really economise on most of that 150 W. I can reduce it by about 5 W but that's about it. It means that all of my "expensive kWh" are taken up by my constantly-on items.

The server could be taking up a significant chunk of that 75w, depending on what you've got running. I seen people quote around 50w idle for a HP micro server with 4 disks, and even my ARM based qnap NAS pulls 25-30w when idle.

ahar wrote: »

The server could be taking up a significant chunk of that 75w, depending on what you've got running. I seen people quote around 50w idle for a HP micro server with 4 disks, and even my ARM based qnap NAS pulls 25-30w when idle.

Yes, I fully expect it to. It used to run at 39 W when idle with an AMD E-350 setup but since then I have upgraded the hardware to be more capable so the idle power usage should be higher. It has 8 HDDs and an SSD but the HDDs are spun down unless needed and so use minimal power.

I doubt the washing machine uses much, considering that's brand new too.

southcoastrgi wrote: »

because your figures are way out, the boiler will use hardly any electric & the pump around 50w, so all told about the same as a light bulb so hardly a 3rd of your total electric bill

50W is four to six light bulbs, not one.

I have checked over the years for other daemons and really have not identified any. I switch everything off except the boiler and leave for a few days - meter increments by less than a kWh per day. Switch the boiler off too - no change.

As far as I can see there are boilers today rated at 14W standby - an A rating seems to be 10W and less (may be wrong there) (though most achieve 5W or less). If boilers sold today use 14W it doesn't seem impossible that a boiler made seventeen years ago would use 35W. Electricity was a lot cheaper then.

6 or 7 kWh is a third or more of my electricity useage - I only use 14 to 18 kWh per week excluding that.