New central heating system costing double!!!

celiar

I've been in my small two bedroomed cottage (loft insulated, double glazing etc.) in the West Midlands for the past 20 years. I inherited a fairly old central heating system even then. It was a Baxi back boiler and the amount of heat that came out of the radiators was absolutely minimal. I could always hear the boiler cutting in and out with frightening regularity, but the house never even managed to reach the set temperature on the room thermostat in the kitchen. In the winter the house was always so cold that I often had to have the gas fire in my lounge on to boost the temperature there but the bedrooms were always very cold. I often used to put the cooker on to warm the kitchen too!

I was told by several people that the problem was that the radiators were probably clogged, especially so as a result of it being microbore piping to all the radiators. It is a fact that when I had a central heating engineer in to try to get some heat out of the lounge radiator, he disconnected it, took it outside, and the most obnoxious black thick treacly stuff came out of it. Having reconnected it, it didn't work any better.

Anyway, last year, having saved enough money, I decided to have a completely new central heating system fitted, new boiler, new rads with thermostats on each one (a luxury I had never had before) and all new pipework, so that it's all now 1/4 inch instead of the microbore I had before. Every man I know told me to sit back and watch my gas bill go down. Yeah right!!!! How about doubled instead!!!

I had the gas fire disconnected in June last year too, so the only gas I use is for heating and water. My cooking is done by electricity.

I'm not a cold person, quite the opposite. In fact most people's houses that I go into have far too much heat for me. My heating has been OFF for the past four weeks. All the rads upstairs and downstairs, with the exception of the lounge, had their thermostats set at 2 or 3 when the heating has been on through the last winter. Rarely have I had to turn the lounge radiator up to max.

Now then, my gas usage is shown on my bills as kWh (converted from hcf's, whatever they are).

In December 2004 I had a quarterly bill which showed I had used 2020 kWh (with the old central heating system and the gas fire). In March 2005 I had another quarterly bill showing I had used 6567 kWh (again with the old central heating system and the gas fire).

By comparison my December 2005 bill (6 months after the new central heating system was fitted and the gas fire disconneted) showed gas usage of 4020 kWh (double the previous year) and the March 2006 bill showed gas usage of 9155 kWh (as opposed to 6567 the year before)!!!!!

The boiler I had fitted is a Vaillant combi, and as I said I had all new pipework and all new radiators with thermostats.

Can anyone explain to me why my gas usage has so dramatically increased instead of decreased as I had expected?

matto

It costs more to heat a house properly than to heat it to the bear minimum.

celiar

I would agree, except that it wasn't for the want of trying that my old central heating system couldn't heat the house sufficiently. It was forever working overtime trying to meet the demands put upon it. I used to hear the boiler cutting in and out and then in again immediately, using gas all day long and never reaching the temperature required of it. The new system isn't having to work half so hard.

matto

I imagine the BTU rating of your new boiler is ten times that of your old one. That means it could use ten times as much gas per second. That's why it doesn't seem to be working so hard.

Xbigman

If the old boiler was cutting in and out it was probably only heating a very small amount of water in the clogged pipes. In any event, 6500 Kwh for the winter quarter is quite reasonable usage.
Regards



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