Gas usage 16 March at 2:38PM edited 17 March at 11:16AM in Energy 5 replies 289 views

AbiAl

Hi all

This is my second post. I was fortunate to get so much assistance the first time around so I hope someone might be able to help me.

On the 24th of Feb my boiler gave an F28 error message. It is a 5 year old boiler still under warranty so I reset it and the manufacturer came and had a look and the engineer did some things and said it should be fine. Since the day I had the error I noticed that the boiler seems to be using a lot more gas. My readings have shot up and then I realized that it is taking a lot longer for the boiler to heat up one degree so if it comes on at 11am at 14 degrees it will sometimes not switch off until 6 to get to 18 degrees where it normally would have hit 18 degrees at 3pm.

I explained all this to the engineer and I don't know what else could be the problem. It was set to come on at 12 noon and off at 10pm yesterday. I noticed the boiler was on until past 6 before it reached 18 degrees so my use for the day was 88kwh which is quite high as a similar day would be in the 60s even if it is cold.

Does anyone have any advice? I know something is wrong just not what.

Abi

thrope

They may have turned down the flow temperature, which is the temperature of the water going to the radiators. It's recommended that turning this down should improve efficiency, but if your radiators are undersized it could result in taking much longer to get the room space up to temp.

You could check what it is at the moment and maybe try increasing it by 5 degrees each day until you get a heating peftor you are happy with. You can always turn it down a bit more in warmer weather. For a condensing boiler below 65 is recommended, but I think it's like 10% efficiency, so up to you for the trade off between efficiency and comfort.

Reed_Richards

If the flow temperature has been turned down that would cause your radiators to run colder which would cause your house to heat up more slowly.  But it should cause you to use less gas.  The only thing I can think of that would cause you to use more gas is if the gas/air mixture was set badly wrong so the gas isn't burning as hot as it should.  

Mstty

Reed_Richards said:

If the flow temperature has been turned down that would cause your radiators to run colder which would cause your house to heat up more slowly.  But it should cause you to use less gas.  The only thing I can think of that would cause you to use more gas is if the gas/air mixture was set badly wrong so the gas isn't burning as hot as it should.  

And the two week cold start to March using more gas for every degree of heat registering on the OP's thermostat.

molerat

Mstty said:

Reed_Richards said:

If the flow temperature has been turned down that would cause your radiators to run colder which would cause your house to heat up more slowly.  But it should cause you to use less gas.  The only thing I can think of that would cause you to use more gas is if the gas/air mixture was set badly wrong so the gas isn't burning as hot as it should.  

And the two week cold start to March using more gas for every degree of heat registering on the OP's thermostat.

For the past couple of weeks I have been using about 25% more gas than the previous period.  Also the gas quality could have been lower meaning a slightly higher volume used (although for my region the quality has been higher). On a positive not most of my rads seem to have shut themselves down this morning

AbiAl

Thank you all for your kind comments. I did reset my water pressure so it sits between 1.1 and 2 when off and off. I went without heating for a day to see if the gas use was still high. It was a bit in comparison to summer but I figure that can be explained by the fact the hot water is set higher than what it was in summer. I might just be obsessing. I will take a look when the temp for hot water is turned down in summer and I am not using any heating. 

It just feels like my heating is kicking less but more gas is being used in comparison to similar day when it kicked in less. I even did a creep test on my gas meter which seems to be fine. Thankfully the sun is on the way and I can leave the obsession until I have my annual boiler check later in the year.