Using over 28000kwh a year, how to reduce and energy cost anxiety

BUFF

BoyMumItalia said:

Our boiler is a Worcester Greenstar ri and we have TRVs on our radiators. We don't have a thermostat in the hallway, it's in the main living room. It is a Drayton. That's all it says haha. This room get warm in the winter very quickly while the other rooms are still heating up. I am not sure how that can be fixed though.

Assuming that the radiator sizing was done properly, has the system been balanced?

BoyMumItalia

Alnat1 said:

Sounds like your living room has the first radiator on the system. This could be adjusted by having the thermostat in another room (probably set at a lower temperature) and adjusting the living room TVR so it doesn't get overly warm. 

Does this mean getting a gas/boiler person in or can We do this ourselves?  I guess this is an idea Thanks

BUFF said:

BoyMumItalia said:

Our boiler is a Worcester Greenstar ri and we have TRVs on our radiators. We don't have a thermostat in the hallway, it's in the main living room. It is a Drayton. That's all it says haha. This room get warm in the winter very quickly while the other rooms are still heating up. I am not sure how that can be fixed though.

Assuming that the radiator sizing was done properly, has the system been balanced?

Aha! This is beyond my pay grade haha. I don't know what that means. We try and adjust radiators up and down but I have no way of telling if it means it's balanced. Is this something we can do ourselves? Thank you

BUFF

BoyMumItalia said:

Alnat1 said:

Sounds like your living room has the first radiator on the system. This could be adjusted by having the thermostat in another room (probably set at a lower temperature) and adjusting the living room TVR so it doesn't get overly warm. 

Does this mean getting a gas/boiler person in or can We do this ourselves?  I guess this is an idea Thanks

BUFF said:

BoyMumItalia said:

Our boiler is a Worcester Greenstar ri and we have TRVs on our radiators. We don't have a thermostat in the hallway, it's in the main living room. It is a Drayton. That's all it says haha. This room get warm in the winter very quickly while the other rooms are still heating up. I am not sure how that can be fixed though.

Assuming that the radiator sizing was done properly, has the system been balanced?

Aha! This is beyond my pay grade haha. I don't know what that means. We try and adjust radiators up and down but I have no way of telling if it means it's balanced. Is this something we can do ourselves? Thank you

From your replies so far I think sadly not (or at least not easily for you).
When the system was designed the radiator outputs/sizes should have been chosen such that they would all heat their respective rooms at roughly the same speed. That can be further tuned by adjusting how much hot water actually flows through individual radiators by adjusting the "lockshield" valves  as radiators further away from the boiler are probably dealing with slightly cooler water (as some heat has already been lost before it gets to them) than those close -- this is called "balancing" .

Potentially what could be happening at the moment (or come Winter) is that (depending upon your room stat & TRV settings) the room 'stat may be shutting the boiler off (because that room has reached set temp) before the other rooms have reached the temperatures where their respective TRVs would shut off those radiators individually. Especially if e.g. you were setting your main living room 'stat for e.g. 20C but your TRVs in other rooms to 24C ...

Alnat1

I hope Buff meant to say 18C for the living room and 16C or less for other rooms in their example 

BUFF

Alnat1 said:

I hope Buff meant to say 18C for the living room and 16C or less for other rooms in their example 

I get where you are coming from in that turning the temperature down & wearing extra layers is one of the simplest, effective & cheap energy saving changes to make.
(you may or may not know that I actually run my house during winter at 16C throughout during the day & less overnight which many people on here consider a step too far ...)

However, I meant what I wrote as it was deliberately configured to show why such a setup would result in the other rooms not achieving the set temp ...

We have seen people on here previously saying that they had their rooms at 24C ... 

Alnat1

I know, I was making sure that others reading it didn't think they were temperatures to aim for. 

theoretica

BoyMumItalia said:

theoretica said:

You say the thermostat is at around 20 - is that constant?  Turning it considerably lower overnight can be a big saving, and turning it down when you are all out.

Do you have a bath?  Usually, showers are advocated as being more money saving than baths, but in the case of 40 minute ones...

What order do you use hot water in?  If you cut down the length of time the hot water was heating would it be your husband who ran out of hot water or the rest of the family?

I have a shower, not a fan of baths only on the odd occasion. About bath order sadly my husband is an early bird lol. 

I wasn't thinking of a bath for you - but maybe for your husband as he might get the same peaceful warm water, but actually use less water than such a long shower.

markin said:

A low flow shower head would be 9 lpm so 360l for 40min

That is a very good point.  There are shower heads which are designed to add more air so give the feeling of a good shower, while using less water.  I think you would need to also reduce the flow to the shower a to make sure hot water use went down.

CasualMFW

BoyMumItalia said:

Do you think I can get away with heating the hot water every other day? 

Absolutely,  in my house the water is heated every other day. We never run out, but nor am we taking 40 minute showers daily.