Gas central heating question

klytus

We have gas central heating, set on a timer. At the moment we're only using (at most) 3 radiators, with the other ones switched off pretty much all the time. Now this might sound like a daft question, but would having the other ones switched on make much difference to the cost? It feels like we're paying quite a lot for our heating anyway - our combined Gas & Electric bills are currently averaging out at £120 per month.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.


Yes it would make a big difference.


The purpose of radiators is to dissipate heat from the hot water produced by the CH boiler. More hot water will be flowing into the additional radiators, thus the longer the boiler has to keep firing and the more gas it will use.


It is not much different to asking if leaving lights switched on in unused rooms uses more electricity!

Nada666

Try it and see. Read your meter each day for different patterns and see what happens. Of course different ambient temperatures day to day will make this only approximate. It will be more expensive but it may well be a small enough difference to be worthwhile. Although at £120 per month - if that is a winter's usage (rather than a twelfth of your annual usage) it is low so adding more rooms may be significant.

But variables are too large and it is just a case of trying different things out and choosing what you want to pay for.

matelodave

You need to read your meters and work out how much you are using in kwh. Just quoting what you pay is irrelevant as we don't know where you live, who your supplier is, what tariff you are on and whether the bill is guesstimated or based on actual consumption, nor do we know how much is electricity and how much is gas. £120 x 12 = £1800 a year which is quite a bit above average but we don't know what sort of heating you've got or even if you run several plasma TVs every night


Generally if you turn a radiator off then the boiler doesn't have to produce the heat it dissipates and therefore it should use less gas.


Start reading your meter regularly, at least monthly (weekly is better) so you can monitor your consumption and check that both your bills & DDs are correct. Also, by reading your meters you can learn your own energy profile and put some effort into reducing your consumption.

zagfles

Cardew wrote: »

Welcome to the forum.


Yes it would make a big difference.


The purpose of radiators is to dissipate heat from the hot water produced by the CH boiler. More hot water will be flowing into the additional radiators, thus the longer the boiler has to keep firing and the more gas it will use.


It is not much different to asking if leaving lights switched on in unused rooms uses more electricity!

It is different - it depends if the radiators which are switched off are in rooms with closed doors, where the thermostat is etc. It might not make much difference at all.

If the house is uniformly heated to 20 degrees C, it makes no difference how many radiators are doing that heating, the cost will be the same! The more radiators, the quicker the require temperature is reached and so the quicker the themostat turns the boiler off.

klytus

Thanks for the replies!
I think I'll be doing some analysing of meter readings over the next few days...

2013yearofthehouse

matelodave wrote: »

You need to read your meters and work out how much you are using in kwh. Just quoting what you pay is irrelevant as we don't know where you live, who your supplier is, what tariff you are on and whether the bill is guesstimated or based on actual consumption, nor do we know how much is electricity and how much is gas. £120 x 12 = £1800 a year which is quite a bit above average but we don't know what sort of heating you've got or even if you run several plasma TVs every night


Generally if you turn a radiator off then the boiler doesn't have to produce the heat it dissipates and therefore it should use less gas.


Start reading your meter regularly, at least monthly (weekly is better) so you can monitor your consumption and check that both your bills & DDs are correct. Also, by reading your meters you can learn your own energy profile and put some effort into reducing your consumption.

It seems rude to correct you, but I don't mean to be

£120 x 12 = £1440 which isn't quite as bad as £1800