Pellet Boiler woes

Hello all,

I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with the consumption of my pellet boiler.

For the month of January I used 960kg of Verdo Premium pellets.
We live in a 10 year old detached house with an EPC heat demand of 15,600kwh per year (including DHW). Over the last 3 years we have average 6.5 tonnes of pellets per year, enough fuel to produce 31,000kw!

Over the last 12-18 months we have played with heating times and tried different stat settings. Over the same period of time, 5 of our 10 radiators have been switched off in an effort to save money.

Our MCS Installation certificate states that the annual generation is 16637kwh. The boiler is an HS Tarm15-22kw plumbed to a 500 ltr Akvaterm buffer tank. The install is in an insulated plant room on the drive and is connected to the house via 9m of Rehau insulated underground pipework.

Before the install, my maths and calculations suggested that (using the EPC heat demand figure) we would spend less money on pellets than we were on oil and it was a worth while investment. The RHI payments would cover the cot of the install and plant room. We were never going to make money from the scheme.

I know the installer locally through previous work and before my install he had been installing biomass boilers for more than 10 years already, long before everyone jumped on the band wagon. He had just finished an install in my village that was exactly the same as what I was due to get. Same boiler, same tank etc. It all looked good and I designed the plant room around that installation. The installation came and went and the guys made a very neat and tidy job.

I've recently visited the above installation to compare figures. Their heat demand is approximately 19,000kwh and they consume approximately 4 tonnes, pretty much as per the figures, they also haven't taken any drastic measures to reduce consumption.

So, can anyone offer advice as to what I should do now or how to have the boiler checked over. I am considering a heat meter but don't know how reliable these are. I have spoken to the installer (many times over the last three years) about my consumption but he has several excuses for it. He has suggested setting up the boiler again with a flue gas meter etc but at my cost.

I even spoke to Energy Trust Scotland last week about tearing it all out although I knew this wasn't feasible. This was the same day I couldn't find pellets anywhere and was about to run out.

Many thanks in advance for any advice offered.

Feen

Comments

  • thozza
    thozza Posts: 303
    First Anniversary Name Dropper Photogenic First Post
    Forumite
    It does seem that you are consuming a lot of energy, how long have you got your heating on for during the day, have you got TRV valves on the radiators, and what temperature is the roomstat set at?

    We used the same amount of pellets in January, and our annual usage averages about 5t, however our house has a much higher heat demand on the EPC (it's nearly 200 years old in parts). We have the stat set at 20 deg C and the heating runs for 6 hours a day, we also take use DHW mainly showers.

    I'd suggest trying to find another Heating Engineer to have a look a the way the system is set up, it maybe something that the original installer has done, or it could be you are losing heat somewhere, fitting a heat meter inside the property (i.e. after the underground section of pipe) should give you a pretty accurate view of the actual usage of the house.

    If installed correctly, heat meters are accurate, there is a Government review of their accuracy here, however they are not cheap.
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