Energy efficient gas fire

1jim

Hi
We have a gas fire that was installed around 12 years ago (maybe a little less than that) it's a valor. Still works well etc, on the tag it says the energy efficiency is class2, I can't see what this means in real terms though. It's open flame type with the loose coals.
Currently thinking about replacing, mostly because the wife fancies silver with pebbles rather than the black with coals we have now. But taking a quick look around on the Internet it seems that there are high energy efficiency models around with glass fronts. I'm guessing that these will me better than my old model but I guess the impossible question is by how much?

I'm sure a lot will depend on usage but is the energy efficiency on the new models so much better to justify cost of replacing a perfectly working model?

macman

Yes, a modern one will certainly be more efficient, but it could still take many years to get back the cost of installing the new one.
You'd need to say what the annual cost of the current one is to run and the cost of buying and installing a new one in order to do the calculation.

1jim

Is there any way of knowing the efficiency of my current fireplace?

It's really hard to work out how much we spend on gas for the fireplace, we use central heating mostly and the gas fire either when it's really cold or when we want to cosy.

Jonesya

Many appliances have a name plate on them somewhere with a figure for the gas input and the heat output eg. Input 5kW Output 3kW - 3/5 *100 = 60% efficient. Failing that its normally in the manual.

1jim

Mine has gross input 6.0 kw/hr
No output listed
Is a valor/wonder fire model 645

Will try and dig out manual to see if anymore details in that
Thanks

Ben84

If your current fake coals are loose and just piled up on the gas burner, then you should be able to buy some gas fire pebbles to replace them. You'll need the special pebbles intended for gas fires as they won't crack or explode under intense heat, but many places sell these so they shouldn't be hard to find.

1jim

Ben84 wrote: »

If your current fake coals are loose and just piled up on the gas burner, then you should be able to buy some gas fire pebbles to replace them. You'll need the special pebbles intended for gas fires as they won't crack or explode under intense heat, but many places sell these so they shouldn't be hard to find.

Is that ok to do? Wasn't sure if you could directly replace pebbles for coals, my coals are loose and arranged on top of the burner but I remember being told they had to stack a certain way for for fire to burn properly? Can you safely swap these over?

yangptangkipperbang

1. The coal and pebbles are interchangeable on Wonder fires - just go to dealer and ask.
2. The coal effect "coals" are black, they get black in use. The pebbles are white/light grey, they also get black in use - don't bother !

1jim

yangptangkipperbang wrote: »

1. The coal and pebbles are interchangeable on Wonder fires - just go to dealer and ask.
2. The coal effect "coals" are black, they get black in use. The pebbles are white/light grey, they also get black in use - don't bother !

Thats a good point, hadn't considered that. Do the pebbles go black on the gas fires that are sealed with glass screen? Why would anyone get a fire that does that?

jellie

I don't know what make my gas fire is, but I have the cream and light grey coals. Some of them do go a bit black when the fire is on, but this seems to disappear when the fire is turned off and the coals go cold. They just go back to their normal colour.

I've had the fire years and none of the coals have stayed black permanently.