Surprise after calculating gas use each day

doodling

Hi,

RelievedSheff said:

[Deleted User] said:

chris_n said:

dedward67 said:

Sadly, I don't think this is far off.  I live in a four bed detached and have the heating on around 3 hours in the morning and 5 hours at night, condensor boiler set to 60 degrees and thermostat on 20 degrees and generally £5.50 to £6 a day.  In the daytime when others are at work (I work from home), just using a 500 watt oil filled radiator to maintain heat which is reasonably effective and with the thermostat halfway costs around 10/11p on hour in electric.  Over Christmas though, I guess will be talking £8 or so a day for all day central heating.  I would add, we only have a 13Kw boiler (which had been recently installed when we moved in 5 years ago), and does the job OK but been told it's really too small for the house. 

If it really is too small it isn't that it is too small for the house, it's more it is too small for the heat loss so do something about that rather than fitting a bigger boiler. Your figures suggest you are using about 55kWh per day so with 8 hours use that gives a heat demand  of near enough 6.5kW so well within what your boiler will do.

It's amazing how often you hear "boiler too small" - when actually many domestic boilers are probably too big.

Ours is massively over sized. 35kW for a modest sized 3 bed detached new build.

Not sure what the developers were thinking when they installed it!

If we're playing the most oversized boiler game then I'll throw my hat into the ring at 60kW.  Yes, it is a large house but it is not that large.

Note that 60kW is the maximum a domestic gas supply is rated to deliver which is unfortunate as there is also a range cooker at 12kW if we were mad enough to use all of it at once.

The boiler is delivering satisfactory heating running limited to 20kW.  If it ever falls to -20 then I know I won't be cold (but the speed at which the gas meter clocks up units at full power is scary).

wild666

From Feb 22 to the last week in Nov 22 my gas usage was 2.7 kWh per week. The last week of Nov it was £11.28, £1.62 per day, heating on for 7 hours at 16 degrees. 

BUFF

RelievedSheff said:

[Deleted User] said:

chris_n said:

dedward67 said:

Sadly, I don't think this is far off.  I live in a four bed detached and have the heating on around 3 hours in the morning and 5 hours at night, condensor boiler set to 60 degrees and thermostat on 20 degrees and generally £5.50 to £6 a day.  In the daytime when others are at work (I work from home), just using a 500 watt oil filled radiator to maintain heat which is reasonably effective and with the thermostat halfway costs around 10/11p on hour in electric.  Over Christmas though, I guess will be talking £8 or so a day for all day central heating.  I would add, we only have a 13Kw boiler (which had been recently installed when we moved in 5 years ago), and does the job OK but been told it's really too small for the house. 

If it really is too small it isn't that it is too small for the house, it's more it is too small for the heat loss so do something about that rather than fitting a bigger boiler. Your figures suggest you are using about 55kWh per day so with 8 hours use that gives a heat demand  of near enough 6.5kW so well within what your boiler will do.

It's amazing how often you hear "boiler too small" - when actually many domestic boilers are probably too big.

Ours is massively over sized. 35kW for a modest sized 3 bed detached new build.

Not sure what the developers were thinking when they installed it!

If it is a combi then domestic hot water demand. If it's a conventional/system boiler, dunno ...  

Ally_E.

No, I don't think it's high. It's all relevant to the size of your property and how well insulated it is. Our cost currently is around £9.30 a day heating on 7.30am-10pm on 18C. 3 bed detached house in South East. 

SJMALBA

Brassneck28 said:

I have been taking meter readings each day and calculating my gas usage now the heating is on. What has worried and surprised me is it works out to about £8 per day! We have the heating set to 19 degrees first thing in the morning and after 3:30pm, heat the water once in the morning and use a gas oven for the evening meal.

Does anyone else think this is high?

If you're on EPG SVT, it seems a bit high to me - our heating is on 'High' for 15 hours a day, with a desired room temp of 20c; based upon our average daily usage across November, at EPG SVT URs & SC, it would cost a little under £6/day (not particulalrly well insulated, 3 bedroom, detached bungalow). Then again, we don't have a gas oven, so I don't know how much that would increase usage by?

Brassneck28

Thanks for all your comments. It’s a 3 bed detached with a 20KW Potterton Precision condensing boiler fitted in 2014.

ariarnia

maybe look at it this way. if you pay £8 per day now then times 30 times 3 then that's about £720 for winter and maybe only about 900 for the hole year (if you turn your heating off in feb like we normally do). that averages out at about £75 per month annually. 

matelodave

Combi boilers are sized to provide hot water at a decent temperature and flow rate and so need to be rated at about 25-30kwh unless you want a lukewarm dribble from the hot tap.

However most houses don't need much more than 10-15kwh (sometimes a lot less if it's well insulated) and the boiler will modulate down and will only provide as much heat as the radiators will deliver.

If you've only got 10kw of radiators then the boiler wont deliver much more than that but bear in mind that the boiler blasting out first thing in the morning and when you get home from work will try and go flat out to reheat the place until it's up to temperature.

Combis are also pretty inefficient for short draw off of hot water -  rinsing your hands or just filling a bowl with hot water to do the washing up causes the boiler to flog away for a very short time sending loads of heat up the flue, so it probably never gets into condensing mode.  Whereas having a longer shower or filling a bath allows the boiler to settle down

JGB1955

Unless you can tell us how many kWh you are using per month it's all meaningless.  I used 24.9 kWh of gas daily for the month up until 21 November.  Add my electricity usage and it's 32.8.  I'm paying less than 4p per kWh for gas - so it's likely to be a lot less than your bill!  You can't compare price... only usage.