Energy & Gas Consumpion on a Semi Detached house

Haydenlm1

MattMattMattUK said:

Haydenlm1 said:

Alnat1 said:

Get an energy monitoring plug, usually the Tapo P110 is recommended on this forum, cost around £10. You can stick it in the socket and plug appliances into it and find out how much energy they are using. 

Hi ,
Could you please link me to one to buy? There are many out there , unsure which one is the recommended if you dont mind please?
Thank you

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-Tapo-Monitoring-Required-Tapo-P110/dp/B0B82ZQZS8/?th=1

These are the ones, just make sure it is the P110, you often see the P100 a lot cheaper, but that one does not have energy monitoring. Lots of us on here use or have used them, they are well worth the money. 

Thanks so much, I ordered it!

Robin9 said:

Some pictures will help -  you say you are using hardly any gas but the reality is you are.  Pictures of the front panel of you boiler - there will be some dials and displays ; of your programmer ;   of your thermostat

Like the electric meter - read your meter every day.

I will post pictures when I am home later on, im dying to see if you guys can identify something im completely missing out on.

badmemory said:

I am very much the amateur here but my thoughts....   Is your boiler also old like your radiators, my new one uses a lot less than my old one & that one used a lot less than my much older one did (that one had a pilot light!).  Are your radiators full of gunk & you need a power flush. 

Old electrical appliances also use a lot more than the newer ones do.  Each time I've replaced mine my usage goes down.  I've only got the fridge & the freezer to go & the ones I have now are using almost 3 times what they say new ones should, realistically I'm hoping to halve.

The boiler is about 6 years old i would say..the radiators are indeed very old and might need a power flush etc..
We have some new and some older appliances..Our fridge freezer is quite new, we do have a big dead body freezer as well which is older.

FreeBear

Haydenlm1 said: The boiler is about 6 years old i would say..the radiators are indeed very old and might need a power flush etc..

So a fairly modern condensing boiler..

How old is the house ?

It would pay to look at plugging draughts (cheap to do in the most part), checking the levels of insulation in the loft (again, cheap to add more). Replacing doors & windows is expensive, but worth doing if the current ones are single glazed. Wall insulation, again, expensive and disruptive, but helps to retain the heat.

As for the radiators, use this calculator to see what it suggests for each room - https://www.stelrad.com/basic-heat-loss-calculator/

Compare the numbers to the radiators you currently have fitted - It may be, that some of them are under-sized. Fitting larger radiators across the board would help to heat the rooms up faster and allow you to run at a lower flow temperature (that would improve the boiler efficiency slightly).

badmemory

What Free Bear said about radiators reminded me of a somewhat heated conversation with a central heating salesman a long time ago.  My side of the conversation being, why would I want the one room where I have no clothes on and am also wet to be the coldest room in the house.  Is it possible someone is using a heater to heat the bathroom before they use it?

TheElectricCow

With five people in the house everyone’s bathing habits could play a significant factor here. How many baths/shower are happening each day. For a shower what is the approximate duration and for baths how full is the tub? 

Potentially more to the point, is there an electric shower in use or is it fed from the hot water system?

The energy must be going somewhere so to find out where it might help to consider activities that people typically just do as part of their daily lives (e.g. taking a shower) without much thought which might be causing higher use.

Haydenlm1

TheElectricCow said:

With five people in the house everyone’s bathing habits could play a significant factor here. How many baths/shower are happening each day. For a shower what is the approximate duration and for baths how full is the tub? 

Potentially more to the point, is there an electric shower in use or is it fed from the hot water system?

The energy must be going somewhere so to find out where it might help to consider activities that people typically just do as part of their daily lives (e.g. taking a shower) without much thought which might be causing higher use.

We shower once a day for a really short period time. (around 5 minutes). We really are trying to do everything we can to save what we use, its almost silly..

The shower is not electric as when we turn on the hot water, the boiler comes on so that would be gas.
Same happens when we use hot water around the house, the boiler comes on and then turns itself off when we stop using the hot water.

Alnat1

That makes it sound like a combi boiler but then you wouldn't need a hot water tank.....

Alnat1

There are lots of super detectives on this forum, we will solve your mystery 

Haydenlm1

Alnat1 said:

That makes it sound like a combi boiler but then you wouldn't need a hot water tank.....

It is a combi boiler! But we also have a tank in the attic and also one in the bathroom with an immersion heater that I believe i turned off because there are a few electric plugs in there.
If i turn all of those plugs upstairs off, i believe we dont get any hot water in the house ..I know it is extremely strange..

Haydenlm1

Alnat1 said:

There are lots of super detectives on this forum, we will solve your mystery 

I hope so, we had a few plumbers look at it and couldn't figure this out , so it would be extra brownie points for whoever manage to figure this out.. in fact, ill be amazed and very thankful lol.

TheElectricCow

Haydenlm1 said:

TheElectricCow said:

With five people in the house everyone’s bathing habits could play a significant factor here. How many baths/shower are happening each day. For a shower what is the approximate duration and for baths how full is the tub? 

Potentially more to the point, is there an electric shower in use or is it fed from the hot water system?

The energy must be going somewhere so to find out where it might help to consider activities that people typically just do as part of their daily lives (e.g. taking a shower) without much thought which might be causing higher use.

We shower once a day for a really short period time. (around 5 minutes). We really are trying to do everything we can to save what we use, its almost silly..

The shower is not electric as when we turn on the hot water, the boiler comes on so that would be gas.
Same happens when we use hot water around the house, the boiler comes on and then turns itself off when we stop using the hot water.

In that case I would certainly turn my attention to that immersion heater first, you’ll definitely want to rule out that as being the issue, as if it isn’t switched off it may be kicking in at the same time as the boiler whenever hot water is used which would be rather unhelpful.

Haydenlm1 said:

Alnat1 said:

That makes it sound like a combi boiler but then you wouldn't need a hot water tank.....

It is a combi boiler! But we also have a tank in the attic and also one in the bathroom with an immersion heater that I believe i turned off because there are a few electric plugs in there.
If i turn all of those plugs upstairs off, i believe we dont get any hot water in the house ..I know it is extremely strange..

That actually sounds fairly similar to the setup my mother has at the moment, even down to the extra switch turning off the hot water (which oddly enough I think was installed in the last few years, as I’d never noticed it in the house previously, but she can’t recall why it was put in or what it did). Trial and error seemed to show it cut power to the boiler and/or boiler programmer but I can’t recall exactly what it did other than determining it needed to stay on.

Hopefully with some pictures we’ll be able to figure out exactly what’s going on in your situation.