Electrical consumption of old oil boiler

[bogmonster]

Hi,

I have an oldish oil central heating boiler. The unit consumes about 50w of electrical power when neither the heating or water is on. This works out at a fair cost a year as the unit is on 24/7. There are no motorized valves and a pump that is not running when the heating is off. Therefore the boiler and control panel (which was replaced not so long ago) are consuming a fair amount of power achieving very little.

I am no plumber but I believe the water is gravity fed. Therefore the boiler is turned on for water. If heating is also required the pump is also running. This sounds like a very simple system so what is consuming all that juice?

Cheers, BM.

 

[Dan Robinson]

£35 a year is hardly worth worrying over?

 

[Tibbot]

An old oil boiler uses no power when there is no demand as it is only wired for switch live (no permanent live). You must be mistaken.

PS. Dan. 'A man sees god in his car - he crashes'. Or.
If democracy is a bra and the Monarchy are breasts, one cannot imagine a society without breasts'. e-la.

Jaques Jaques Liverot.

 

[bogmonster]

£35 a year is hardly worth worrying over?

I think it is more like 60 quid. I know that is not going to break the bank but I am going on an economy (and green) drive and it all adds up. I have already cut my electricity and oil consumption with very simple changes. For example my AV system was costing 50 quid a year on standby and homeplug network adaptors were costing another 50 quid. Simple changes in heating (use log burner more) car use (combine trips), cooking (cook more at a time) etc are saving me hundreds of pounds a month and it is quite addictive and having a positive lifestyle impact. I am saving up for world trip in 5 years time - I plan to be away with my wife for 5 years once my son is through uni and that means being frugal now. I am not tyring to preach, each to their own but for me I think it is worth at least investigating.

Also, it does seem a high consumption for seemingly doing a big fat nowt. If I am not mistaken, with old oil boilers they can simply be turned off at the mains when not in use so a countdown timer may be a simple and cheap fix. We tend not to run the boiler on a timer, just turn on for an hour at a time. That is probably as mean as it sounds but that's just me

BM

 

[Dan Robinson]

Fair enough... I was working on 8p a kw. You should see the amount of leccy we waste at home

 

[bogmonster]

An old oil boiler uses no power when there is no demand as it is only wired for switch live (no permanent live). You must be mistaken.

PS. Dan. 'A man sees god in his car - he crashes'. Or.
If democracy is a bra and the Monarchy are breasts, one cannot imagine a society without breasts'. e-la.

Jaques Jaques Liverot.

Thanks, that is exactly what I thought. The only thing I think is permanently live is the electronic timer and I struggle to believe that consumes 50w. My energy meter (the clamp on Owl type) was registering about 0.05kw which went to 0 when the boiler was turned off at the mains. Everything else in the house was off. Maybe the Owl meter simply is not accurate enough. I have an AVO meter so maybe I will wire that into the circuit and see what it says.

BM

 

[Dan Robinson]

I would say that the meter will have some inaccuracies to consider.

I gave up with my 2 energy monitors as it only had 2 states. 1kw draw, or 3.5kw draw depending on if the oven was on.

 

[RF Lighting]

Those energy meters should only be used as a rough guide.

To measure power properly, you need to measure both current and voltage. As the owl jobbie only measures current, it has to guess what your voltage might be, making it not very accurate at all.