Gas efficiency Tips, Condensing Boiler

T4i

Recently moved house from a 2 bedroom to a 3 bedroom. We are lovin the new house as its huge compared with our old house but that comes at a price!

Our heating bills are alot higher now and I was wondering if we are not running the Baxi boiler to its full potential.

We have a Baxi boiler in the cellar, with a Drayton Digistat RF3. We have 8 radiators (all brand new single convector) all with 'thermostat valves'?

2 of the radiators can be switched off as one is in the cellar and the other is by the front door. These two radiators are turned off with the radiator thermostat.

We have the boiler on a 'timed' setting:-

1) 07:30 - 09:00 (1.5hrs)
2) 12:30 - 14:30 (2.0hrs)
3) 16:00 - 19:00 (3.0hrs)

So 6.5 hours a day for heating, our oven is electric so thats not a problem and we have showers so saving on filling the bath every night.

We seem to be spending near £4 a day on gas, we have a pre-payment meter with Gritish Bas. We have always found pre-payment to be fine for our needs previously but as our old house was tiny we only needed to put £10 a week onto the PPM.

So.......any tips on reducing my gas bill? I've worked out that we spend between £112 and £140/month on gas (worst case senario in Winter) would I be better not on PPM? Are there tariffs that would suit me better?

Also, should I have the thermostats on the radiators opened fully? Or should I be concentrating on the temp control on the Baxi boiler? I've noticed the radiators get so hot they are too hot to touch, but if I turn the radiator thermostat down the radiators only just get warm, don't heat the house.

At about 20:30hrs the front room (where we sit) starts getting cold, the fire in the room says 6.7kW and only has 2 settings (high/low). The difference between high and low seems to be minimal, high seems to make the flames half inch higher. What does 6.7kW mean? Would we be better turning the central heating on instead of using the fire?

ooooops, I've wrote too much. Must stop now.
Thx

Ken68

Hi T....6.7kwh at Ebico rates is just over 17pence an hour.My rad thermos are set at 3 and some are on frost free. The boiler is set at the high numbers.
If there is no one about during the day, cut out the mid times and add to the evening.
You havn't mentioned insulation !! most important.