What size is my Potterton Prima F boiler?

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Hello.

I've lived in my current house for a year, it's a mid 90's house, 5bed. My gas bills are really high at present. I have a BG smart meter so I can see how much £'s and Kwh it's using when on full throttle.

Friends have similar houses to mine yet their gas usage is considerably lower (more than 50%) than mine and claim to have it on more.

I'm trying to find out how big my boiler is and if it's possibly undersized in addition to being old. I can see that my boiler is a Potterton Prima F but not model etc. What I can see is on the smart meter when the boiler is on full throttle it's using 24.5Kwh of gas. Would that mean its a 24kwh boiler?

Cheers
 
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you get Prima 30 F 40F 50F 60F all the way up to 100F Thae F means fan flued the numbers mean what heat input the boiler is, but these numbers are in thousands of BTUs not KW, would be surprised if you needed 24 KW of gas equals 83000 Btu so it is likely you have an 80F
 
Many thanks for your response. yep, I'm guessing an 80F is the most likely model.

My boiler is set to high, not quite max however, the rads probably take an hour to 1.5 hours to get up to 75 deg C. Is that what you would expect? It seems the house takes so long to heat up yet it can hold it when it's there. It usually goes up in temp by 1 degree per hour at best when it's cold. From a standing start, more like half a degree in the first hour.
 
check to see if you have a system by-pass and if it is automatic or fully open, also when your rads are starting to heat check your HW cylinder , it will have a flow and return indirect coil, this is what heats the cylinder up, if the return is really hot then you need a restricting valve fitted, the heat has to be going somewhere and if you are using 24.5KW the rads should be heating up a lot faster than that, try selecting CH only from cold with the HW shut down and see if the rads heat up faster, if they do you need a balancing valve on the HW return
 
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baggie79,inside the grey plastic controls cover (one screw to remove but dont force it off) there is a data badge stating the boilers kw/btu set up.

POTTERTON-PROFILE-PRIMA-NETAHEAT-PROFILE-30E-40E-50E-60E-CONTROL-COVER-907706-272867468105-3.JPG

Image is for a profile but its basically the same data badge for a prima.

they are a decent boiler,old tech but a very good boiler :!:
 
check to see if you have a system by-pass and if it is automatic or fully open, also when your rads are starting to heat check your HW cylinder , it will have a flow and return indirect coil, this is what heats the cylinder up, if the return is really hot then you need a restricting valve fitted, the heat has to be going somewhere and if you are using 24.5KW the rads should be heating up a lot faster than that, try selecting CH only from cold with the HW shut down and see if the rads heat up faster, if they do you need a balancing valve on the HW return


Thanks for your response, very helpful. Will check these out, this evening and report back.
 
I typically use 170kw per day according to my British gas dashboard, which is about 24.5kwh per hour for 7 hours per day. Does that sound right to you guys? from others I speak to their usage is more like 60kwh and they have the heating on more than 7 hours....
 
we dont know your usage only that you have a 5 bed house so how can we comment they could be box rooms with tiny rads they could be state rooms with huge heat loads, you could have 2 or three HW cylinders , simple answer is we do not know
 
we dont know your usage only that you have a 5 bed house so how can we comment they could be box rooms with tiny rads they could be state rooms with huge heat loads, you could have 2 or three HW cylinders , simple answer is we do not know

Ooops, apologies - you make a great point.

1 HW cylinder.
2 medium to large bedrooms each with 2 rads
2 medium bedrooms with 1 double rad
1 small box room with 1 single rad
Large kitchen with 2 double rads
2 rooms downstairs with 2 double rads
1 small bathroom and 2 ensuites each have a towel rad
 
I am no expert in gas usage but that is a fair heat load and your boiler will be sufficient to supply it all , still think that you are bleeding heat somewhere though as your rads should heat up a lot faster than that
 
baggie79,inside the grey plastic controls cover (one screw to remove but dont force it off) there is a data badge stating the boilers kw/btu set up.

View attachment 158325

Image is for a profile but its basically the same data badge for a prima.

they are a decent boiler,old tech but a very good boiler :!:


Thanks that worked a treat. It is indeed an 80f
 
So, you can see the central heating pump at the bottom there. From that picture can you tell me if I have System bypass valve and if so how do I check if it’s fully open or automatic?

Many thanks for your help, this really is much appreciated.
 

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you have an S plan system and cant really tell from your pics but it does look like that valve at the bottom of your cylinder with the red head (gate valve) could be the by-pass cant really tell from your pic
 
you have an S plan system and cant really tell from your pics but it does look like that valve at the bottom of your cylinder with the red head (gate valve) could be the by-pass cant really tell from your pic

Thank you so much.

Do either of these pics help at all?
 

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