Living gas fires - are these expensive to run?

Cardew

aarjay777 wrote:

I have just phoned Scottish Gas and they have confirmed that it is a Gas Imperial Meter that I have.

Taking this on board am I right to be concerned?

That means they are charging you you for an Imperial meter!

Have you physically looked at it? it will normally have 'cu ft' if Imperial.

As for being concerned - You haven't said how big the house is, but approx £75 in 2 weeks is pretty high(assuming Imperial) but in mid-winter for an old house(assuming poorer insulation) not excessively so. I can have bills of well over £100 a month in the winter and yet the yearly average is around £60.

aarjay777

Cardew wrote:

That means they are charging you you for an Imperial meter!

Have you physically looked at it? it will normally have 'cu ft' if Imperial.

As for being concerned - You haven't said how big the house is, but approx £75 in 2 weeks is pretty high(assuming Imperial) but in mid-winter for an old house(assuming poorer insulation) not excessively so. I can have bills of well over £100 a month in the winter and yet the yearly average is around £60.

I have just looked at and it states 1 pulse = 1FT3

It doesnt make any reference to cu ft

Does this answer your question?

Cardew

aarjay777 wrote:

I have just looked at and it states 1 pulse = 1FT3

It doesnt make any reference to cu ft

Does this answer your question?

I think you will find that the 1FT3 means 1 Cubic Foot(Ft with a small '3' above the 't' is the way cubic feet are denoted)

Therefore that means you have an Imperial meter and have heavy consumption.

aarjay777

Thanks for taking the time to give me your feedback on this post.

---lee---

For info, our living flame type gas fire thing is only 2 years old and it’s only about 50%-60% efficient. i.e. at any one time, half the heat goes straight out to the atmosphere. The only time we use it is for the odd half hour here and there to warm the room up whilst the central heating is warming up.

At the time when I bought this one, you could get balanced flue fires which were 80% + efficient but my wife did not like the look of them – women

If you can get the gas number of the appliance, you might be able to find some manuals online.

fad1211

I had a living gas fire installed as its more modern than my old one, which was economical although not much to look at. However, last winter my gas bill for 3 months was £300, twice the amount I paid. I found it was due to the living gas fire which doubled my gas bill, and has since stopped using it. Central heating is much cheaper.

gotnobread

Hi,

I used to work for a major energy supplier. One of the things we used to ask people when they received bills higher than anticipated was "have you got a living flame fire?" ... if the customer said "yes", it was 90% certain that the living flame was responsible for the high bills - most of these kinds of fires are very (very) inefficient.

Suggest an alternative heat source - just use the fire when you want the effect of the flame (and don't mind paying for it!).

Cheers,
Gotnobread

Poppycat

I got mine last Feburary although its not as powerful as my old living flame fire that wasnt built into the chimney, its still gives off a far amount of heat, and it has a builtin convertor heator that pushes the heat from the flames backinto the room so is more efficent that some.

I got mine from here
http://www.internetfiresdirect.co.uk/