Putting a Perspective on Water and Heating Use.

nickpe

I have this afternoon changed the tariff from the standard tariff to the 1 year fixed - im told by the supplier it will save us around £195 per year - so i guess that initself is a good thing.

We are also intending to be alot more mindful of just turning the gas on and having it burning for several hours on a weekend or on a evening - this should also make us use the system more efficiently, which i think has previously been our downfall.
Our system is now set to a timer and we hope that this will make us considerable savings over the year.

I guess like everybody i dont want to be scared of turning the gas on due to the costs when we are cold, but we need to be more respectful when the heating is on and dont want to be wasting that heat by leaving doors open etc.

I know this will sound like another stupid question but i have to ask.....
When we have both the heating and hotwater set to "on" at the same time we have noticed the radiators don't seem to get very hot, so as an example we have the water set to timed at 5am to 6am and the heating set to timed for 6am to 7am - thus using 2 hours worth of gas ...... are we using double the amount of gas as we would if we had both the heating and hot water set to running at the same time ???

Once again thanks to all for the help and im sorry for all the daft questions but i really am learning things from this site.

victor2

Good move. Instant saving for very little effort!
Now you can look at reducing the amount of gas your system is using. Firstly, do you have an (older type) gravity fed hot water tank? If your hot water is always on whenever the central heating is on, then you probably do. If you can run the heating without also heating the hot water tank, then you have a system with more control.
In most central heating systems, you won't get an awful lot of warmth into the house by just running it for one hour.
If you can say what model boiler you have, and what controls it has, and generally describe the heating system and house setup, you may get more meaningful help.

nickpe

Hi there - my boiler is a Baxi Solo 3 PFL 50 (no idea how old it is - weve been in the house 3 years and i think theres a chance this was in when the house was built around 20 years ago, but thats just a guess)
We do have quite a large house - its a 3 bed detached house and has a converted garage and a large extension/conservatory.... (we had cavity wall insulation installed over the summer so hopefully this will start helping).
As for the controls that is in our kitchen, the keypad is a Channel Plus XL Model H21
We have something in the loft which i think is the tank and we have cylinder in a cupboard on the landing upstairs.
When we heat up our heating it doesnt automatically heat up our hot water - this needs to be done seperatly

victor2 wrote: »

Good move. Instant saving for very little effort!
Now you can look at reducing the amount of gas your system is using. Firstly, do you have an (older type) gravity fed hot water tank? If your hot water is always on whenever the central heating is on, then you probably do. If you can run the heating without also heating the hot water tank, then you have a system with more control.
In most central heating systems, you won't get an awful lot of warmth into the house by just running it for one hour.
If you can say what model boiler you have, and what controls it has, and generally describe the heating system and house setup, you may get more meaningful help.

matelodave

Have a look to see if you've got a motorised valve in the system - it might be near the bailer or the hot water tank. It's designed to divert the water from the boiler either to the hot water tank or heating so some sytems won't heat the house at the same time as heating hot water.


We find that an hour or so of heating the tank in the mornings gives us all the hot water that we need for morning showers and for the rest of the day. So try it out, if an hour in the morning isn't enough try another half hour or so.


Once you understand how your heating works you are more able to control it. Also start reading you gas & leccy meters to find out exactly how much you are using - once you monitor it you can control it. It's too late to do much about it if you wait until the bill comes in.

victor2

So you can run your hot water and heating separately. If you find that running the hot water for an hour in the mornings gives you enough for your showers, and you don't need to run it again, then there may be little room for a saving there. It depends on how good your tank insulation is as well. If the cupboard with the hot water tank in it is always nice and warm, then maybe the insulation could be improved. Do you have a tank with an insulation layer moulded around it or does it just have an insulating jacket wrapped round it - or nothing at all? If either of the latter two, you can buy a jacket cheaply from the likes of B&Q, and they make a difference.

As for the heating, I would guess you have the boiler thermostat set pretty high for running it for just an hour does warm the house up. You could try lowering that a bit and see how things go. I don't know that boiler, but it looks like there is just one thermostat on it for the water temperature, so that could affect the temperature of the radiators and the hot water tank as well. I stand to be corrected by someone in the know though.
Do you have thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) on your radiatiors? Older ones had valves which would take a few full rotations to turn the radiator on or off, where TRVs are bulkier, tend to have a numeric scale on them and don't even make a full rotation. TRVs are better and allow you to individually control the radiator in each room. If you don't have them, they are cheap, but unless you are experienced with plumbing and heating systems, better to get a heating engineer (for want of a name) to install them, which will probably cost more than the valves themselves.
You may just have a single thermostat in the house (often in a hallway) for the heating. It needs to be in an area that is heated by a radiator and that radiator should be on in part at least, otherwise the thermostat will not react to the heating system.
Experimentation is the name of the game, along with checking your meter regularly. You need to find a balance between kWh used and comfort. As the weather obviously has a major impact on heating requirements, it can take quite a lot of testing to reach a satisfactory conclusion, but if you're up for it, you could make significant savings...