Central heating v gas fire costs - the answer?!

mikefarnham

Have been looking at this for some time today reading posts from over the years. Here is my best answer, based upon, I must admit, the best sample figures from bills I could glean. Look at your own and try and find one where you know the heating will have been on or off for the whole period!!


We live in a four bedroom detached house, built in Surrey in 1986 with just loft insulation. No double glazing.


The figures are as follows, as best as I can understand them:


Summer - water heating only via boiler - 10.25 kw/h per day
(35.59361)kw/h = 1 unit approx. as far as I (eye?!) can see.
Winter - heating and water via boiler - 176 kw/h or 5.5 units approx. This is 11kw/h PER HOUR for heating assuming it was on 15 hours daily approx. - best estimate.


Gas fire (Baxi/Valor Wonderfire AC 18 XL coal effect open fire with flames and lots of heat going up the chimney) - using manufacturer's figures - 10.5 kw/h high and about half that low.




Conclusions:
1. The gas fire costs almost the same to run on high for one room as the central heating for the whole of the house and about half that on low.


2. Our lounge the fire is in is the coldest in the house since, although it has two double radiators, it is at the end of the run and warms up last and the water is at its coldest (yes I have cleaned the system and put in a stronger pump to ensure it is at its best!) We would need to be highly judicious if considering switching the central heating off early and just running the fire. Perhaps doing so two hours before bedtime might be a consideration.


We have not yet had our walls cavities filled since I am concerned about ugly filled drill holes on the brick and render and not keen on having clumsies in the loft. Has anyone taken the rolls of insulation and self installed them?


For the record the heating is now switched off promptly in the morning as soon as the chill is off the house (yes I do put a jacket on - (easier than a jumper) and in the evening as bedtime approaches! My computers nearly all hibernate after 5 minutes but they are left connected to the mains as they are mostly programmed to back up automatically. Noone is unplugging my Sky boxes as they will miss recording something (though I would avoid some auto updates and the joys of getting them to turn on properly afterwards!). All sockets in the music room are now remote controlled off upon my exit.


Hope the figures above help you and save you some time. May be forced to take further undesired measures in future not so much due to poverty but the refusal to be totally screwed by greedy providers one of whom dared to change the colour of our flag, doubtless for their own benefit, during The Olympics.
I can imagine what would have happened if we British has compromised their Tricolore.


Best wishes,


Grumpy Old Man Mike.

smjxm09

Our lounge the fire is in is the coldest in the house since, although it has two double radiators, it is at the end of the run and warms up last and the water is at its coldest (yes I have cleaned the system and put in a stronger pump to ensure it is at its best!)

I had the same problem but all you need to do is balance the radiators. You do this by removing the plastic cap on the feeds to the radiators that heat up first and almost close them down with a pair of grips to reduce the flow of water. This forces more hot water to the distant radiators. Just Google how the balance central heating radiators for details.

I lived with this problem for 15 years until I fixed it 2 years ago. Now all my radiators heat up at the same time.

Also an open gas fire is only around 40% efficient while a combi boiler is around 95% efficient

oldskoo1

Balancing can make a huge difference.

When i moved into my latest house the radiators were all fully open, god knows why the previous owners did this!

It took me quite some time but now i have wonderful even heat across the entire house. The 20 radiators now work equally and the effect is even greater when the upper rooms are semi restricted at the start of the heating cycle by TRV's that are partially closed because the upper rooms are warmer.

Before our sitting room barely got any heat and it has 1 radiator which is slightly under specced. Now it gets boiling hot within 5 or 10 mins, i closed the 2 large rads down in our living room and the two rooms now heat equally. So yes, highly recommend you balance.

closed

heating a whole house is going to cost more than heating one room, on full the room with the fire should get warm pretty quickly enabling it to be turned low (3.1kw) or off. Easy to test, take a reading for a couple of hours/ or a day with CH on, then compare with fire. my gas fire costs about 9p/hr on medium, ch is many times that.

If you haven't already done it switch to led bulbs (asda have some 3 for £15 offers on) and check the fridge/freezer thermostat is set correctly to reduce electricity bills, as well as turning things like tv's off when not in use, and reducing time spent in electric showers

loft insulation is an obvious thing to look at, you would expect people who do it all day long to be reasonable at their job, or diy it.

WestonDave

Re the insulation - doing the loft insulation is perfectly possible as a DIY job - I've done this house and our last house. My advise would be to do it at this time of year because you can then wear thick old clothes (probably best to bin them afterwards) to avoid the fibres irritating your skin. Did the first one at the height of summer and didn't stop itching for a week! You can get the foil wrapped stuff which is nicer to handle but more expensive. All you need is a sharp stanley knife to cut it to length. Best to put it between the rafters as one layer and then across as a second layer to make up the required depth.

If you want to use the loft for storage you can either use extenders to allow the floor to be higher or get boards with solid insulation fixed to the underside.

Wall cavities does leave evidence of the drilling but it depends on what you have on your wall - if its plain render then its harder to match the colour - painted render can quickly be resolved with a coat of paint.

reeac

mikefarnham wrote: »

We live in a four bedroom detached house, built in Surrey in 1996 with just loft insulation. No double glazing.






Grumpy Old Man Mike.

Are you sure? Our bungalow was built in 1996 to then current building regs. and has double glazing, 150 mm. loft insulation and cavity wall insulation [plus underfloor insulation although that wasn't mandatory until 1997.

Cardew

reeac wrote: »

Are you sure? Our bungalow was built in 1996 to then current building regs. and has double glazing, 150 mm. loft insulation and cavity wall insulation [plus underfloor insulation although that wasn't mandatory until 1997.

That is the first thing I thought as well; so did a Google!

From what I can see the proposal to make double glazing mandatory for new builds was proposed by the Government in January 1993.

However other Googled sources indicate it wasn't made mandatory until the turn of the century!

However I am very surprised that a 4 bed detached in Surrey didn't have DG.

mikefarnham

Eagle eyed lot you all are. Yes, you are quite correct; I have amended the build date to 1986. Sorry about that. Did balance the rads a few years ago. Changed it again though due refilling after cleaning and other problems at end of run followed by installation of a new pump. Time to have another look at balancing. Seem to remember marking the in and out valves on each rad. Thanks for all your helpful remarks.
Mike.