Energy & Gas Consumpion on a Semi Detached house

born_again

I wonder is getting another company in to look at the whole system. As it sounds like a real bodge job, given going from a old boiler to combi boiler & still having old tank installed. With the comment. Just installed boiler & said all OK. Not a mention of having to run new pipes or anything.

So as others have said tank could well be being heated by boiler. As well as by immersion heater. Which could also explain why rads are not working to any degree. 
As there could still be a diverter valve that is stuck on hot water, of set on both. So in effect is not heating rads as it should.

Not very MSE, but if it was me & could afford it. I would get the whole lot ripped out & a new system installed.

Haydenlm1

Here are more pics of the tank, it is an old tank and a very old system combined with a combi boiler..
I cant feel anything behind the tank and its too close to the wall behind it, but there are so pipes on the bottom right side of it ..

markin

I would guess if you closed that red tap the Rads would be far hotter! (pic 1)

Can you trace the pipe coming out the top of the tank and what it feeds?  With the red tap closed is the Shower cut off/go cold?

Haydenlm1

markin said:

I would guess if you closed that red tap the Rads would be far hotter! (pic 1)

Can you trace the pipe coming out the top of the tank and what it feeds?  With the red tap closed is the Shower cut off/go cold?

I am going to try this! What will closing the red tap do if you dont mind me asking? There are 2 red taps, im assuming one is for water and the other might be..gas / heating ?

TheElectricCow

From that last picture (and your explanations from earlier) I think we can quite confidently say the immersion heater isn’t running and is not the source of the high electric consumption. The middle switch definitely seems to be the only direct control/power source to the immersion. 

This does of course mean that you may need to look at other areas to find what’s using all the electric, but we at least know it’s probably not the hot water.

It’s probably also a safe assumption here that the tank is being heated from the boiler, which would also be why the immersion heater feels hot as it’s conducting the heat from inside the tank. 

Whether or not the tank needs to be heated at all is another matter - in theory the tank itself should be redundant now as the boiler should directly supply the hot water, but perhaps there are some plumbing difficulties that might make this difficult. I’m surprised that professional plumbers wouldn’t be able to work out how the system works as on the face of it, it doesn’t seem too overly complex even if a bit outdated, so I would be cautious about any hidden unusualness  we might not be seeing here.

markin

The left seems to be the cold feed going up into the loft header tank? keep that open. The Right is the coils and should be controlled by a 3 way valve so its heating the rads or the hot water not both at the same time.

Haydenlm1

markin said:

The left seems to be the cold feed going up into the loft header tank? keep that open. The Right is the coils and should be controlled by a 3 way valve so its heating the rads or the hot water not both at the same time.

Just to be sure i am doing this correctly, I have turned the tap all the way to the left (which was pretty much almost there to begin with) or do i need to twist the tap to the right?

markin

Twisting Right is close, The pipe going up from the tank to the loft seems to be lead! so a very old system.

Is the tank heating Only for a Bath? That no one uses or has even tested?

FreeBear

markin said: The pipe going up from the tank to the loft seems to be lead! so a very old system.

The HW take-off from the tank is (normally) at the top, and any pipe going off to a header tank would be for expansion/overflow. Cold water feed to the tank is usually at the bottom - The pipe & tap on the left hand side would appear to be in the right position, and there looks to be a drain down point at the bottom. But.... The pipe appears to be capped off just above the timer/cables. [edit] There is a copper pipe at the back on the right hand side - Is this the cold feed to the base of the tank I wonder....

The two connections low down on the right are about the right location for the heater coil. What is confusing is the top one appears to be connected to the HW take-off from the top of the tank via a stop tap. In all, a very hinky setup. It would pay to have another engineer take a look at the plumbing with the view to ripping out the tank and plumbing the combi boiler in properly.

Haydenlm1

FreeBear said:

markin said: The pipe going up from the tank to the loft seems to be lead! so a very old system.

The HW take-off from the tank is (normally) at the top, and any pipe going off to a header tank would be for expansion/overflow. Cold water feed to the tank is usually at the bottom - The pipe & tap on the left hand side would appear to be in the right position, and there looks to be a drain down point at the bottom. But.... The pipe appears to be capped off just above the timer/cables. [edit] There is a copper pipe at the back on the right hand side - Is this the cold feed to the base of the tank I wonder....

The two connections low down on the right are about the right location for the heater coil. What is confusing is the top one appears to be connected to the HW take-off from the top of the tank via a stop tap. In all, a very hinky setup. It would pay to have another engineer take a look at the plumbing with the view to ripping out the tank and plumbing the combi boiler in properly.

Will this usually be an expensive job?