Gas boiler pilot lights using ~550W!

esuhl

I checked the gas meter, and by my calculations, the boiler is burning through about 550W of power, yet it's just idling with the pilot lights on.

Does anyone know if this is normal? 550W is about 4745kWh/yr -- that seems rather a lot!

I only checked because, after two weeks of not using the boiler at all, I still have a seemingly endless supply of hot water!

Cardew

4575kWh/year is 12.5kWh a day; so I assume you are stating the pilot light is using 0.55kWh every hour?


There are several threads on pilot light consumption if you do a search and some of the figures are very high - but iirc none as high as 12.5 kWh a day

Owain_Moneysaver

Something must be heating the hot water ... electric immersion?

penrhyn

Perhaps a check on the Electric meter readings is in order here?

Robin9

And the gas readings - if the boiler is only producing hot water and no central heating at this time of year consumption should be quite low.

brewerdave

Suggestion -have you got a frost stat on your boiler? If so, it might be faulty so that the boiler is actually cutting in and heating water when you think its off.
I'm using less gas than you at the moment -and I'm heating water AND cooking on a gas hob!!!

macman

A frost 'stat will raise the temp of the CH flow pipe, not the hot water cylinder?
OP, turn the boiler off and power it down from the mains switch. If the hot water is still heating back up after you run some off, then clearly you have a back-up system (immersion heater) that is permanently on-that is what running up your kWh's, not the boiler electronics or pilot light in standby.
You'd surely know anyway if your boiler was firing to heat the hot tank when it's supposedly 'off'?

retiredin2011

My gas water heater pilot light uses 1095 kWh of gas a year and the separate warm air heating pilot light uses 5 kWh a day, currently switched off.

I am waiting for the day when my 24 year old warm air heating unit is no more economically viable to repair then I shall install radiators, :rotfl::rotfl: unless modern gas boilers use pilot lights.:eek:

And before someone says replace the warm air with a new unit I would do that if it wasn't for the fact that a new warm air unit cannot be placed where the old one is, according to SG:cool:

penrhyn

They haven't used pilot lights for at least 15 years.

retiredin2011

Also I use approx 15 kWh of gas a day for hot water and cooking

Cardew

macman wrote: »

OP, turn the boiler off and power it down from the mains switch. If the hot water is still heating back up after you run some off, then clearly you have a back-up system (immersion heater) that is permanently on-that is what running up your kWh's, not the boiler electronics or pilot light in standby.
You'd surely know anyway if your boiler was firing to heat the hot tank when it's supposedly 'off'?

My understanding from the OP's post is that the 4,745kWh per year is referring to Gas kWh consumed by the pilot light - not electricity kWh.


This thread was published 7 years ago:


https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/6378117#Comment_6378117


You will see in post #13 that my pilot light was using 9.5kWh a day - about 3,500kWh a year.


Of course for much of the year that heat from the pilot light is not wasted.