New house, new huge gas consumption

Wig

My old house we only had a gas fire and a gas cooker, no boiler.
Old house gas consumption was circa 18,000Kwh a year.

New house 4 bedroom, (originally 2 bed stone terrraced house built circa 1930). With a modern extension and would think and hope, pretty well insulated.

New house has a boiler and GCH, has a gas hob and an electric oven, not something I intend to keep, especially as it appears 1 of the 2 ovens does not work, the main oven. I prefer cooking with gas, on the asumption that it is cheaper than electric, but now, with these new gas consumption figures I am wondering if that is still going to be true.

There is a glow worm combi boiler on the wall of the garage. The garage is within the house.

The boiler has two dials one for central heating and the other for hot water, each dial is like a speedometer, the more you turn it clockwise the stronger the heat output you get from the boiler (?) until they both have a maximum setting.

The boiler dials are confusing me.

What is the purpose of these dials? Surely when you have the heating on you want your boiler to be on maximum until the house is warm and then it will turn off from the thermostat?
Similarly I don't understand the purpose of the hot water dial, unless the purpose is that you when you turn the hot tap on you may not want scolding hot water to come out, you might consider that to be a waste and would be happy with a hot water output. This would make sense. But I don't understand for the central heating.

We have a pre payment card gas meter and I have changed it to Ebico to avoid the standing charge (the new house has been empty these last 4 months).
EBICO Gas is about 5 or 5.2 p Kwh
British Gas was something like 4p Kwh but with a stading charge 19p(?) per day
There is obviously a line in consumption beyond which it would be cheaper to be with British Gas.

I believe I worked out with the old house 18,000 Kwh gas that Ebico was £100 a year more than if I was to change to the cheapest with a standing charge, and it never bothered me enough to want to change supplier.

We spent 1 day in the new house a few weeks ago and the heating on 70% on the boiler, and the thermostat on 20 - 25 degrees. in 24 hours it used £13 of gas. :eek:

We moved in proper, yesterday, and from 8pm last night to 10am this morning the boiler on 70% setting and the thermostat 17 degrees. We have used £5.50 in gas. :eek:
I had also turned the TRVs down to 2 / 5 on the rooms not being used and closed the doors to those rooms. The house was IMHO quite cold in the bedroom overnight. I put this down to the thermostat in the lounge being quite near the main radiator and with the lounge/kitchen door closed I think the lounge warms enough to trigger the thermostat quite quickly, thermostat was at 16 - 17 degrees in the lounge.

Having a cold house overnight is not an issue, although it would be nicer to be warmer. The problem is the cost & amount of gas that I am using here.

What are other MSE consuming in gas at the moment, i.e. in the winter months? and how many bedrooms you have?

I would like to get hold of a thermal image camera, any ideas?


Temperature inside the house when we moved in was 8 C in Kitchen and 10 C in lounge with kitchen door closed.
When I had the heating on the temp in the lounge last night went to 17 C in the evening.
In the bedroom the temp was cold through the night, (don't know but I would think about 12C) eventhough the bedroom radiator was open full and the boiler was controlled by the thermostat all night.

EDIT: The thermostat in lounge is a simple dial for temperature, once the temp is reached it swiches off the boiler.
The boiler has a mecahanical dial on the front to switch it on/off at certain times of day. Like the dial you see on a plug which you use when you go on holiday to turn a lamp on and off. This dial on the boiler is broken and the boiler is on continuously unless turned off by the thermostat in the lounge or by turning down the heating dial on the boiler itself. But with thermostat in lounge only to 16/17 and the TRVs it really should not have been a big problem.

And yes, I know we are heating the house from "frozen" so to speak as this is our first day, and it might mellow out once warmed, but somehow I doubt it will be the case to any significnt amount.

Thanks

victor2

I don't know these boilers and stand to be corrected by someone who does, but my interpretation of the dials would be as follows:
Central heating temperature - this is setting the temperature of the water being fed to the radiators. The higher it is, the hotter the radiators will get and the faster the house will warm up, but it will probably use more gas maintaining higher water temperatures.
Hot Water temperature - that is the temperature the water will be delivered to the taps. You just set it to something suitable for your requirements. Again, the hotter it is, the more gas will be used, but it is the heating you should be looking at.

Is there a timer for the central heating? If so, have it on only when it suits you. No need to have the heating on overnight after you are in bed. Experiment with the thermostat and TRVs to get a comfortable setting. Once the thermostat reaches the level set in the room it is in, the heating for the rest of the house will shut off. The radiator nearest the thermostat does not want to have a TRV on it, as it could prevent the target temperature being reached.
16-17 is fairly cool for a living room IMO, and could indeed be preventing the rest of the house warming up when the thermostat is there.
So far this month, our 4 bedroom detached house, with two people living in it has used an average of 90kWh of gas per day, with the heating on first thing in the morning for 1 1/2 hours and every evening for 4 hours, but it has been pretty mild.

Our annual usage of gas, with a very old (i.e. inefficient) boiler for hot water and heating, plus a gas hob, is just over 19,000 kWh. We average about 10kWh of gas per day in the summer.

Wig

Hi Thank you Victor,
Yeah I know 16 - 17 is cold, but after experiencing £13 the last time we slept here overnight with the thermo at 20 - 25. I decided to to turn it down to reduce the cost this time. but there appears to have been not much difference.

The boiler timer is broken, it is controlled by the thermostat in lounge unless you switch off the heating on the booiler.

kazwookie

When was it al last serviced?

It may be well worth getting in some one who knows about this type of boiler etc and getting it checked over, that person can also tell you howbest to use it.

As the heating has also been off for some time may be a dehumidifier to help remove any damp any help.

Alter_ego

Wig wrote: »

Hi Thank you Victor,
Yeah I know 16 - 17 is cold, but after experiencing £13 the last time we slept here overnight with the thermo at 20 - 25. I decided to to turn it down to reduce the cost this time. but there appears to have been not much difference.

The boiler timer is broken, it is controlled by the thermostat in lounge unless you switch off the heating on the booiler.

You could replace the room thermostat using one with built in timer. They are very flexible and allow different temps at different times. Reasonably cheap too!
Beware of people (esp British gas) telling you the answer is a new boiler.

Wig

The good news is, having just returned home to the new house, and back here (old house) again.... Internet and phone only at old house.

I checked the gas and no more has been used today.

The temp in the lounge is 14 C
The thermostat has been on 14 all day, I don't know if it was turned down this morning or if I turned it down last night shortly before bed time... which would explain why the bedroom was so cold in the night.

So that makes the last 24 hours at £5.50 with the thermostat at 16 - 17 C yesterday evening and then turned down to 14 C.
With the result, a not very warm house.


Alter ego,
Yes I was hoping that to be the case, a digital electronic timer unit which will be a simple swap for the current old style room thermostat.

I was going to ask on DIY board about that having seen some in Screwfix catalogue.

Kaz,
Serviced probably a very long time ago. The boiler is at least in the garage, so any carbon monoxide present will not be a problem. I will look into it.

Nebulous2

You really need to run it a while without messing with it before being able to judge. If we've been on holiday heating our house from cold takes a few hours and I assume more gas than usual. You also cannot compare a house without a boiler with one which has one. Generally old stone houses are a beggar to heat. The extension may be well insulated, I doubt if the rest will be.

You've also hit pretty much the most expensive time of year for heating your house. Normally on a monthly DD you overpay in the summer and underpay in the winter so it evens itself out. This cushions the expense of heating in the coldest weather.

At a minimum I'd get a service and a working timer of some sort. Boilers, particularly condensing boilers are more efficient at lower output temperatures or more specifically at lower return temperatures (temperature water comes back to the boiler)

A 1-5 scale on a TRV equates to 16-24 in 2degree increments, so 2 should be around 18. Warm enough for bedrooms in my view.

firefox1956

Wig........are you sure that you are calculating the cost of your gas usage correctly ??
Is your gas meter imperial or metric ??
Are you using the correct multiplyer etc from you gas bill ??
Your calculated usage of £13.00 in 24 hours & also of £5.50 in 24 hours
seems way off to me.
HTH

Wig

It is a credit meter, I press a button and it tells me how much credit is left, currently £38.44 left,

It shows consumption in cubic meters aswell
as I say, it should be about 5p or 5.2p per Kwh

I might take some readings to compare the m^3 with the credit taken to make sure it is doing 5p Kwh.

Alter_ego

Is there a possibility you're paying previous owner's debt?

Wig

No, that was all sorted out, the meter was zero'd.
I did build up £5.50 of my own debt to British Gas which was standing charge for about 4 weeks before I could get Ebico to take over.
This was paid off when I credited the meter with the first £20.
I have since topped up again with £50

I will get some more readings, with m^3 Vs Credit taken so we can be sure.