400l of oil in 2 months

[Custom45]

Hi
Had an oil boiler installed beginning of October...

-Worcester Greenstar Heatslave II external oil combi.
-1200l oil tank, Kingspan Titan
-4 bed detached house North Wales, walls fairly well insulated, double glazed, some areas where heat is escaping though (open loft hatch)

Had 500l of oil put in for the first fill. Currently I'm living alone and only there about 10 days a month. Central heating is set to maintain 12°c when I'm away and 15°c when I'm home. In that 10 days I shower once a day and use hot water in kitchen for washing up etc. Heating is running for around 3 hours a day.

My Watchman tank monitor is now telling me the tank is almost empty, it started on 4 bars and is now down to 1. I dipped the tank, there's about 14cm deep of oil in there, not sure how much that is in litres though, maybe 100l left?

400l in 2 months when I live alone and am not here 2/3 of the time? Seems a lot. That's about £250 of oil. Am I worrying about nothing, is this about right?

I've checked for leaks, can't see anything obvious. Just ordered another 500l, so will dip it regular to check consumption.

 

[ianmcd]

get someone in to check it , that is excessive , if you have a leak and dont get it sorted and it is leaking into the ground the cost goes into tens of thousands to repair, does you tank have a lock on it, common here for ****** to go around syphoning off the oil from tanks and use it to run diesel vans

 

[Custom45]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, got a lock on it.

I'll give the installer a call and ask them to stop by and check it over. Thanks.

 

[ianmcd]

while you are home, turn everything off so no oil is being used , take a measurement of your oil level , then treat yourself to a day out and measure the oil level when you get back, obviously if it has dropped you have a leak somewhere

 

[Custom45]

Thanks, going to do that. Have an electric shower in ensuite, some electric rads and will fire up the stove, going to turn boiler off for 2-3 days.

 

[ianmcd]

Thanks, going to do that. Have an electric shower in ensuite, some electric rads and will fire up the stove, going to turn boiler off for 2-3 days.

Yes that will tell you if you have a leak, I used to rent a town house and it had an OIL stored HW combi and as I was on a 6 month renewable lease, I only ever got a half fill of 500L and that would easily last me the whole six months and the heating was on most of the time

 

[martyndc88]

Do you switch your hot water off while you're not using it? If not the boiler will fire to keep the slave tank warm 24/7

 

[oilhead]

Over 2 months, this equates to about 7 litres a day. Off the top of my head, I think you will have a 0.75 gallon nozzle fitted which will use about 3 litres an hour whilst it is running. If you have the HW constantly selected, it is an outside boiler, then the usage is probably not that excessive, especially as you are maintaining at least 12oC for the rest of the time. A cheap hours run meter will let you know just how long the burner is running for.

 

[Custom45]

I have Eco mode turned on and hot water is turned to lowest setting, 1 on the dial, so it does fire up occasionally to maintain the small tank in the boiler, but I would've thought the usage for this would be minimal?Is there a way of turning this off altogether so it doesn't maintain the slave tank?

I don't think it's been much effort for the boiler to maintain 12°, the house rarely drops below that outside of the timed heating hours, so I doubt the boiler is kicking in much to maintain this.

 

[martyndc88]

Eco mode on these means the burner will fire less frequently but will still fire. Fitting a programmer with a hot water function will give you greater control on when the boiler fires to heat the tank

 

[Custom45]

I've got a Nest 3rd gen, but had trouble getting it to work with the hit water, so gave up, it controls heating only. Because it's a combi the Nest doesn't give any control over hit water, unless you set it up to think you have a system boiler, but when I did that it started acting weird and I got no hot water.

 

[speccy]

Just fyi we have a WB Greenstar 15/25 and on average we are doing 1000 litres a year. In heavy use time we can do 500 litres in 2 months like last year i see we used around that much between beginning of Dec and early Feb. But when you work it out over the year it's not so bad.

What hacks me off about this boiler is it fires up very frequently even through summer months for about a minute or two, i was told it was the anti frost cycle but not at 20degress outside that's just bull mud!

We too have a fairly well insulated 4 bed detached bungalow. Still don't like it when the needle hits empty so quick. To make up for it we now have a solar trickle unit which will heat our tank in summer months via solar panels.