Heating advice needed please

andreat

Hi all,

I'm a long time lurker but really need some help now please.

I moved into my current property in October of last year. It's a farm steading conversion in West Scotland, converted in 2006. Metre thick walls, double glazing, 2 beds and baths in loft with lounge, kitchen and 3rd bed downstairs along with a very large (too hot/too cold) conservatory. Heating/water is oil fired with underfloor heating down stairs inc. conservatory and rads in all beds and baths, upstairs and down.

The problem I have is that between October and April this year, when I had my last oil delivery, a tank of oil (1200L) was only lasting 6 weeks. This means my oil bill for the last 10 months has been nearly £3000!

Obviously I can't continue at this rate so I'm after some pointers please. I have already updated the thermostats so they now have timers meaning the heating no longer needs to be on 24/7. I don't try and heat the conservatory, I just closed it off in the colder months, and I only heat one bedroom unless I have visitors.

I know that the manifold for the kitchen floor isn't working properly and doesn't control the heat as is should so I plan on getting that fixed in the next few weeks. Is that likely to be the cause of the massive oil usage or will I need to do more?

I've had a quote for air to air heating to be fitted but I'm not sure how economical they are to use and I'm worried I'd just be swapping a big oil bill for a big electric bill!

I know that one of my neighbours have stopped their underfloor and installed radiators instead and that has reduced their oil bill. I could go down this route, I wouldn't miss it in the lounge (wooden flooring) but I love my heated tiles in the kitchen. Could I do half and half?

Apologies for the very long first post but I'm really need some help with this!

Thanks for reading,
Andrea

Cardew

Before you look at other heating systems you need to discover the reason for your huge consumption of oil.

£3,000 of oil in 10 months at 65p/litre is approx 4,615 litres which is around 50,000kWh pa.

A 7 year old conversion will have a reasonably efficient modern boiler. I suggest you need to have that checked for a fault. Also that your delivery man isn't ripping you off or your oil tank has a leak.

Bearing in find that 50,000kWh pa is over 3 times the UK average, if you really need that amount of heat, then nothing will be cheap.

andreat

Thanks Cardew,

Over 3 times the average?!:eek: I didn't think that it could be right! I'm pretty sure the tank doesn't have a leak as the since having the heating off the tank has remained pretty much at 3/4 full.

I've checked the boiler efficiency and although it's not the best it's not the worst at about 85%.

I'm pretty sure, going on the rest of the property, that the previous owners probably haven't serviced it at all so I'll make that my first port of call along with replacing the manifold. Do you think it would help getting the pipes flushed through/cleaned?

HappyMJ

andreat wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm a long time lurker but really need some help now please.

I moved into my current property in October of last year. It's a farm steading conversion in West Scotland, converted in 2006. Metre thick walls, double glazing, 2 beds and baths in loft with lounge, kitchen and 3rd bed downstairs along with a very large (too hot/too cold) conservatory. Heating/water is oil fired with underfloor heating down stairs inc. conservatory and rads in all beds and baths, upstairs and down.

The problem I have is that between October and April this year, when I had my last oil delivery, a tank of oil (1200L) was only lasting 6 weeks. This means my oil bill for the last 10 months has been nearly £3000!

Obviously I can't continue at this rate so I'm after some pointers please. I have already updated the thermostats so they now have timers meaning the heating no longer needs to be on 24/7. I don't try and heat the conservatory, I just closed it off in the colder months, and I only heat one bedroom unless I have visitors.

I know that the manifold for the kitchen floor isn't working properly and doesn't control the heat as is should so I plan on getting that fixed in the next few weeks. Is that likely to be the cause of the massive oil usage or will I need to do more?

I've had a quote for air to air heating to be fitted but I'm not sure how economical they are to use and I'm worried I'd just be swapping a big oil bill for a big electric bill!

I know that one of my neighbours have stopped their underfloor and installed radiators instead and that has reduced their oil bill. I could go down this route, I wouldn't miss it in the lounge (wooden flooring) but I love my heated tiles in the kitchen. Could I do half and half?

Apologies for the very long first post but I'm really need some help with this!

Thanks for reading,
Andrea

Lots of questions...

An air-to-air heat pump won't be very efficient in Scotland especially if there is ice and snow on the ground and the air temperature is below zero. If you do need 50,000kWh of oil then if the COP of air-to-air heat pump ends up at 2.5 for the year then you would need 20,000kWh of electricity input...if your electricity rate is 15p/kWh then that will cost you £3,000.....so you would save ...nothing...

Just how big is this house? It sound quite big. If it's double the average property then you will be needing double the average consumption too....and a bit extra for being in Scotland...so 50,000kWh might be about right even though it's 3 times average.

TiredGeek

As the others have said, a little more info would be good, size of house etc

I'd be guessing that if the conversion was done in 2006, and knowing the Scottish building regs, then you should have pretty good levels of insulation and good double glazing (unless it's listed of course).
It sounds like the heating system isn't working at it's best. I'd have someone check the whole lot out, not just the boiler.

Saying that, there's a knack to heating those old places. The walls take a lot to warm through but once warm they retain the heat pretty well. Are you trying to heat the place from cold each time? You may find it cheaper to keep the heating on lower for longer so the fabric of the building has a chance to come up.

There's also an argument to heat the unused rooms to a degree, if left unheated they are essentially sucking the warmth from the rest of the house and therefore trying to keep the occupied rooms comfortable means the heating system has to work harder.
There is some debate over this though, so don't take that as gospel. I find it works for me, for you it might not.
Unheated rooms can also suffer from damp and condensation.
You're doing the right thing with the conservatory though, keep that door shut....

West of Scotland, are you in an exposed area with strong winds or are you in a frost pocket in a valley? Lots of rain will also have a cooling effect on the walls...
It's a big area, narrow it down a bit for me 'cos I know the west pretty well

andreat

So according to the home report it's 110m2. I've no idea if this is big are not! I guess it quite big for just me

Last winter I was having to run the heating constantly as there were no timers at all, the thermostats didn't work particularly well either. They've all been replaced now so hopefully that should help some. This also means I can have a little heating on in the unused rooms as the radiators don't have to be in constantly.

I'm in East Ayrshire, in the middle of nowhere, the nearest town is Kilmarnock. Definitely windy and exposed and of course lots of rain!

Thank you for all the tips so far. I shall get a service and check up sorted and take it from there.

[Deleted User]

Central belt of scotland here with a 100 odd year old station house similar size to yourself and yes your bills are nuts :eek:

You probably have better insulation yet our total electricity bill over the last year was £960 [heating, hotwater, cooking & lighting etc] House maintained between 17c night & 21c day. Topped up with the log burners now and again for cosy nights in winter if the mood fancies...

Hard to say if something is wrong as friends with rayburns etc report alarming oil bills also...

HappyMJ

andreat wrote: »

So according to the home report it's 110m2. I've no idea if this is big are not! I guess it quite big for just me

It's about 50% bigger than average. Average being about 76m2.

Although as you are single your reduced hot water bill should offset the increased cost of heating.

matelodave

Our place is 140m2, so bigger than yours, we are very exposed in a windy part of East Anglia and we've got underfloor heating in all the rooms, but we use an air source heatpump to feed it. We are at home all day. Our total energy bill is around £900.

I'm not suggesting that you change out for a heat pump without a very serious look at your existing system as it sounds like something is wrong, either with the controls, the way you are using it or even the way it was installed in the first place. If the system was under specified then it will run continuously as it won't be able to heat the place what ever you do.

How many thermostats have you got, what type are they, where are they and what do they control. Are they properly interlocked with the boiler. Have the rooms with radiators got thermostatic valves on them. A good look at how the controls are configured might be a good idea.

One thing we found out with our u/f heating is that it's very sluggish in it's response to temperature changes. Our lounge for instance faces SW and gets quite hot on sunny days (even in the winter) which shuts the u'f off. When the sun goes down, the room temperature drops and the heating takes a long time to recover it, so my wife immediately turns the thermostat up to 80 - which I have tried to explain won't heat the room any quicker, it will just eventually get hotter causing the heating system to run a lot longer than it needs to.

It's suggested that instead of trying to use the system in the conventional way (ie 2 hrs in the morning and then 5 hours a night) that you use programmable thermostats to set back the temperature by a few degrees rather than turn it right off, this will avoid the building getting stone cold between heating cycles. It's taken me two winters to get my controls optimised so that we don't get cold and the system is working efficiently

TiredGeek

Well as everyone else is quoting their heating bills I'll chip in with mine
House is 180sqm with calculated 59615kWh requirement (@ 21'c) and for the last 12 months (July to July) the heating system consumed just over £800 in electric.

The kicker is that's essentially just to keep it at 10'c apart from a few weeks holidays here and there
We think that's actually pretty good considering just how big, old and drafty the place is and how far north it is.
We have friends up there in a slightly smaller but very similar house. Their oil bill for the last year has come to almost £4000!

According to my weather station, coldest temp last winter was -19'c, and it stayed at -9'c or colder for 12 days solid Average over the whole winter, November 1st to April 1st, was just 2.6'c.
In the area -25'c is not a rarity, and -27'c has happened a few times, so last winter was mild



I'd say andreat has some problems with the heating system. For that size of property, even considering exposed position etc, I think the bills are twice what they should be, maybe even more.
A thorough service and checking of the system should be the first thing, along with fitting programmable room stats to allow finer control of the heating. Spend a grand this year and see if it makes it significantly cheaper, then consider alternatives.

andreat

Thanks for your suggestions everyone, they've definitely helped focus my mind!

I have a thermostat in the kitchen, hallway, lounge, conservatory and landing. They are programmable to drop the heat back by a few degrees as matelodave suggests and the radiators all have individual valves on as well as being timed by the stat on the landing so I think I'm on the right track with those at least!

Next steps are servicing and checking the whole system and hopefully I'll start seeing some major improvements.

Thanks again for all your help