central heating costing a fortune!!

[lancenotalot]

We have recently moved into a bungalow and in the cold spell had the rads on a bit,being a tight sort I read the meter once a week to give myself an idea of how much we are using.
After doing some calcs using the last bill as a guide we used £39 worth of gas in the last week

The system heats the water twice per day,1 hour in the morning and 2 hours in the evening and I only try to have the rads on when the kids are getting frostbite

Why is it costing so much,it is an old baxi back boiler but I can't belive it's costing this much.

We had a quote for a combi to be fitted keeping the existing rads getting rid of cylinder and loft tanks but the came in at £3500 so we have put it off at the mo as out of our budget range.

 

[gas4you]

If it is a really old BBU then it will be expensive to run as it is so inefficient, but I still think the amount of gas you 'appear' to be using is excessive.

I would have thought that the BBU out and a combi in would cost more like £2500-£2900 depending on what make you have and flue type etc.

 

[gavinda]

get someone in to give it a proper service immediately. then they can gas rate the appliance and confirm that its just inneficient but SAFE.

 

[JohnD]

please tell us how thick the insulation is in your loft, and if it has gaps in it

are the water pipes insulated in the cold spaces (above ceiling and under floor)

do you have cavity walls

what heating controls you have (TRVs, wall stat)

if you have draughts from floors, windows, doors

is you meter in Imperial (cubic feet) or metric (cubic metres), and what were the meter readings per week?

note that we have recently had some exceptionally cold days.

 

[inasnum]

I have never checked my weekly usage but we have a 15 year old Baxi Back Boiler (bungalow 8 rads & Gas Cooker). When we first moved in a year ago BG charged us 50 quid a month direct debit - however we have sinced serviced the boiler and powerflushed. Our bill (bearing in mind Gas has gone up) has droped this year to 38 quid a month. The amount of gas you are using certainly appears to be excessive.

I have compared our gas bills to friends & family with new boilers and some are more expensive and some less. I would keep an open mind.

Get an engineer out to look at it and see where to go from there.

Our water is on all day (as partner is there most of the day) but off at night. Heating is on 24x7, 21 Deg during day and 15 Deg at night. Boiler doesn't fire up that much but it depends on the weather (in the cold snap if would come on in the evening 2-3 times for about 15 mins) At the moment its on 1-2 times the whole day.

 

[bengasman]

A bbu will loose more than half of what you put in when you add up the loss by the flue, the draft from the ventilation, the low efficiency and the loss through the cylinder.
Add possible further draft and heat loss through lack of insulation and you can easily burn off a hundred quid a month.
Also bear in mind we just had extremely cold weather for England, and that you use as much in dec-feb as in the rest of the year.

 

[htgeng]

After doing some calcs using the last bill as a guide we used £39 worth of gas in the last week

Why is it costing so much,it is an old baxi back boiler but I can't belive it's costing this much. .

Im paying about half that and I have the house up to 20c most of the daytime. I've got an Atag boiler so aiming for 95%ish efficiency.