New house - old oil burning boiler

rosscouk

Hi there,

I have just moved into a new house with a 1993 Stanley superstar 60,00 btu oil burning boiler (oven). This is the only means of heating in our 3 bed end of terrace house (it also heats the water).

The boiler needs a bit of tlc, the baffles inside seem to be warped so I have an engineer coming tomorrow to look at it and maybe replace.

Basically my problem is the fact I am going through oil more quickly than I would like and I need to know what I should do about it. Ideally I would like to put a purpose built oil boiler and buy seperate oven but I don't have the money for it. However, if I am going to end up spending shed loads on pushing oil into the stanley it might be worth going to get a loan and putting some more efficient kit in. Are new boilers likely to be a lot more efficient than the stanley?

In addition to the baffles it is quite a smelly boiler, on occasion I think it smells 'exhausty' and I have pointed this out to the engineer who thinks its to do with the flue and what happens when its windy, however it would be between £400 and £600 to update, so will probably leave for now as ultimately I want to update the whole system.

The boiler also heats a big newish hot water tank upstairs which delivers awesome showers to our main bathroom (we have one ensuite but its electric), however we only seem to use this once a day plus a babys bath and some washin up, so i suspect I am heating the hot water alot more than I need. Do people think I need to heat morning and night and for how long?

I am also struggling with the profile the thermostat is set on. Are there any recommendations for an eco-profile (ie when to have on an off and at what tempreture). The house is mostly empty in the day and I have been slowly reducing the amount of time the boiler is on in addition to lowering the thermostat.

I do currently have a lovely warm house, but I think its coming at a cost. I have a wireless indicator which tells me how full the tank is and it has come down one digit in a week. Although subjective, 1 digit might indicate 100 litres of oil in a week, can that be right? I put 500 litres into a 1000 litre tank that was basically running on empty. For a family of two adults and a baby, what should you realistically be using in a week?

Anyway, as I am sure you can tell I am a bit lost at the moment, so any help or advice on how to save oil but not get too cold would be greatly appreciated.

Johnhowell

It could be that the boiler needs a service. When I had the first service done on our boiler the jet was incorrect and the baffles where absolutely caked in soot. Servicing chap changed the jet, tuned the air intake (I think) and a year later the paltes were only dusted with soot. Even if the baffles are buckled thay may not need changing...

If it is smelly could mean it is clogged up and the flue needs a sweep - we had a chimney sweep come in to do the firepalce and the boiler.

A few years later the burner failed and had it replaced with a new unit ~£400 in total, you may not need to change the whole boiler. The down side was the new unit seems to be noisier on the air intake :-(

If your cylinder stat is set correctly and working the boiler will only run as long as required - our stat has failed open at the moment so the water is very hot! We could change the timer settings for Hot Water to reduce running time.

I suspect your poorly tuned boiler is the cause of oil usage and the watchman systems are not very accurate to calculate consumption. When we move the tank, I had a volume gauge fitting to accurately measure usage. Last winter when snowed in we used about 10 litres a day, but generally winter usage is 5-8 litre/day and summer 1-2 l/day. But our system is heating and hot water only - not oven. Large 4 bedroom bungalow, well insulated, 2 adults. Our hall thermostat is set on 21-22C

Hope this helps,
Good luck
John

rosscouk

Thanks John for the reply.

We asked for a service when we moved, it was serviced about three weeks ago, although from my exceptionally limited experience this seems to have been done very poorly and at the cheapest cost to the sellers of my house.

One of my main challenges is the way you control the boiler. I have the controls on the actual oven/boiler, a drayton wall control in a cupboard in the kitchen and a wireless thermostat in the hall. The problem is some of these seem to duplicate each other. The thermostat has a profile with how long the boiler is on for and at what tempreture and I think the boiler follows that profile however it only seems to do that when the drayton wall control is set to 'timed'. The Drayton also has timings for the heating and hot water. I have got around the problem by syncing the two (drayton and wireless settings for heating). Also the wireless thermostat has a tempreture control and setting (mostly at 21c when on) however the boiler seems to respond to its own control which you adjust manually rather than the wireless setting. Its not a very intuitive system. Does anyone have any thoughts on the profiles or similar systems?

Thanks again for any and all replies.

[Deleted User]

Could you not go down the road of a heat pump instead of throwing more money at oil? Massive long term saving to be made with RHI on the horizon?

smcqis

My boiler is 21 years old and its running at 90% efficicency gross at my last service

agrinnall

I have a Stanley Superstar too. The baffles will almost certainly be knackered, the engineer who services mine says that they were badly designed and warp, meaning that when you switch between heating and cooking you are causing more damage to them - seems like a ploy from Stanley to make you buy replacements more often. I don't cook with mine (I use a freestanding electric cooker instead) so the baffles are left in the same position and after 7 years here they are still hanging on.

Mine doesn't really smell at all so I suspect the flue may be your problem, hopefully it's not the burner running badly, I had to have a new one last month and I'm still waiting for the bill to arrive.

If it's really using 100 liters a week that sounds like a lot, but if you have the house quite warm and are heating quite a lot of water it might be right at this time of year - I live on my own, have the house relatively cool and don't use a lot of hot water (electric shower for me) so I'd guess even when it was -15 outside a couple of years ago I wouldn't have been using much more than 50 litres a week.

Hopefully you will get a good engineer who can help you answer the questions you have and give you some tips to reduce consumption.

rosscouk

Right, had some developments.

Firstly, had an engineer out today, who seems like someone who actually knows what they are talking about, but I guess the passage of time will judge that. Anyway, the old baffles, knackered and falling apart, so they were replaced at about £70 a pop. Plus he replaced the rope which basically fits under the hotplat. He tested the carbon monoxide output and he says whilst not unsafe it is higher than he would like. Whilst testing the efficiency my boiler comes out at 62%, where the previous engineer had it over 90%. He says (if you believe him) that even with a brand new Stanley you would struggle to get +90%. He says given its a 19 year boiler 62% is about what he would expect. He says that a 90% reading is for this boiler is just plain wrong and the previous engineer would need his equipment recalibrating (I guess this is hard to verify without doing multiple tests).

The engineer also worked hard to try and eliminate the smell, although he confirmed the flue wasnt blocked but the wind may be a factor in the arrangement in my set-up. It does smell better now but not perfect.

We also discussed whether I am unnecessarily heating water, in the end we have decided to turn off the water heating as when the central heating (CH) is on this should heat the water too. I'll see if it makes a difference. I have also cut down the time the CH is actually on, it comes on now at 6.00am until 7.20am and 17.00 until 22.00. Not too hot, I have it set to 45 on the boiler. So not really an excessive amount.

I also now know about how I control the system. It seems the wireless thermostat controls the pump and the Drayton controls when the Stanley is on and the control on the Stanley controls the tempreture. So the thermostat and the Drayton need to sync for the radiators to heat up. Complicated, but I think I get it now.

Finally, I did do some preliminary reading around a heat pump and it has me interested. I doubt I could do a ground heating pump, due to size of the garden but maybe I could go with a air heat pump. The main problem is I am now out of money, but I could consider a loan. I need to weigh up saving up potentially for a new oil boiler or potentially for a heat pump. Also, I suppose I should consider solar to heat the water. All new to me, so a massive newbie. Any thoughts?

Ben84

rosscouk wrote: »

Right, had some developments.

Firstly, had an engineer out today, who seems like someone who actually knows what they are talking about, but I guess the passage of time will judge that. Anyway, the old baffles, knackered and falling apart, so they were replaced at about £70 a pop. Plus he replaced the rope which basically fits under the hotplat. He tested the carbon monoxide output and he says whilst not unsafe it is higher than he would like. Whilst testing the efficiency my boiler comes out at 62%, where the previous engineer had it over 90%. He says (if you believe him) that even with a brand new Stanley you would struggle to get +90%. He says given its a 19 year boiler 62% is about what he would expect. He says that a 90% reading is for this boiler is just plain wrong and the previous engineer would need his equipment recalibrating (I guess this is hard to verify without doing multiple tests).

The engineer also worked hard to try and eliminate the smell, although he confirmed the flue wasnt blocked but the wind may be a factor in the arrangement in my set-up. It does smell better now but not perfect.

We also discussed whether I am unnecessarily heating water, in the end we have decided to turn off the water heating as when the central heating (CH) is on this should heat the water too. I'll see if it makes a difference. I have also cut down the time the CH is actually on, it comes on now at 6.00am until 7.20am and 17.00 until 22.00. Not too hot, I have it set to 45 on the boiler. So not really an excessive amount.

I also now know about how I control the system. It seems the wireless thermostat controls the pump and the Drayton controls when the Stanley is on and the control on the Stanley controls the tempreture. So the thermostat and the Drayton need to sync for the radiators to heat up. Complicated, but I think I get it now.

Finally, I did do some preliminary reading around a heat pump and it has me interested. I doubt I could do a ground heating pump, due to size of the garden but maybe I could go with a air heat pump. The main problem is I am now out of money, but I could consider a loan. I need to weigh up saving up potentially for a new oil boiler or potentially for a heat pump. Also, I suppose I should consider solar to heat the water. All new to me, so a massive newbie. Any thoughts?

I'd agree that a 19 year old boiler isn't going to be 90% efficient, I don't think they were even coming off the factory production line that efficient in 1993.

As for a new system, if your existing boiler is in decent condition and produces enough heat for your house it may well be sensible to keep it. Less efficient as it is, older boilers also tend to be simpler and more reliable which is a big benefit to some of them.

The main thing I would consider is how well insulated your house is? If the walls and roof are well insulated and you draught seal well, the energy needed to heat your house can be greatly reduced. Also get good thick curtains and use them. Thermostatic radiator valves are also good for rooms that get too hot as they stop you wasting energy on overheating them.

Many old houses with old boilers need an overhaul in how they consume energy more than a new boiler to just pump in more efficient heat that's promptly wasted.

rosscouk

Thanks for the reply Ben84. It seems the majority of my radiators are fitted with thermastatic valves or at least that is what they appear to be. They are all set to their maximum at the moment (8) and no room is over heated in my opinion, the opposite in fact.

I agree with the need to overhaul the house and I am in that process now. I am waiting on the delivery of two new doors (the current exterior doors are old and draughty). However, I have just moved in so I have lots left to do and not much money now. I don't even have curtains in all the rooms, ironically the room without the curtains is quite warm, I might run upstairs now and turn down the valve!!! The loft was insulated the year before last, although I am not sure about walls. I'll see what my survey said about them.

As I sit here I can hear the Stanley going off and coming on, in the last ten minutes it must have been off and on about three times!

I am still mulling over in my mind what to do next. I will make the changes in regard to the insulation but I need to make my mind up about the boiler. If its going to be very expensive to run, I could just get a loan and update the system with an electric range and a new oil boiler. How much more efficient might it be? Is there a good one to go for?

nande2000

How long do the Stanley boilers last on average ? Does it depend on the fuel used (Oil, Gas, SF) ?