G
gaswizzard
All depends on the tariff.
Would leaving boiler on all day increase bill?
- Thread starter filthyturk
- Start date
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eehh have you tried shopping around
i pay 3.4p per kw for gas and 10.8p per kw electric before discounts
Does that include VAT?
Do you have a standing charge?
Who is that with?
Tony
A
ALEC1
Here is a graph showing gas consumption of a house that had its controls up graded from "numpty" on off controls to out door and indoor compensation controls running 24/7. Both the boiler and the controls are vaillant
the white bars are standard on-off controls, i.e. the heating shut down on a standard UK room thermostat twice a day.
The blue bars are compensation controls with the system working between two temperatures, 17-18c and 21c.
The summer quarter show an increase as the heating was available to heat as it was a cool summer, as has been pointed out people generally have heating to be comfortable.
The january quarter is particularly interesting as it was actually colder in the blue year rather than the white year.
so yes heating being on 24/7 does save energy, but tonly with compensation controls
To make it clear you cannot set up the heating like this with out using compensation controls...something that are not generally available in the UK
In fact up grading a cast iron heat exchanger hot water cylinder with compensation controls on condensing boilers can lead to savings of around 45%, I frequently see that!
the white bars are standard on-off controls, i.e. the heating shut down on a standard UK room thermostat twice a day.
The blue bars are compensation controls with the system working between two temperatures, 17-18c and 21c.
The summer quarter show an increase as the heating was available to heat as it was a cool summer, as has been pointed out people generally have heating to be comfortable.
The january quarter is particularly interesting as it was actually colder in the blue year rather than the white year.
so yes heating being on 24/7 does save energy, but tonly with compensation controls
To make it clear you cannot set up the heating like this with out using compensation controls...something that are not generally available in the UK
In fact up grading a cast iron heat exchanger hot water cylinder with compensation controls on condensing boilers can lead to savings of around 45%, I frequently see that!
that's lovely, Alec.
You've compared energy usage in two different years, when weather was different, the control systems were different, and usage patterns were different.
Energy usage in the two years was different (no surprise!)
You believe this enables you to say "so yes heating being on 24/7 does save energy"
However strip out the complications and other variables, and the fact remains: heat loss is proportional to (temperature difference) x (time)
So 24-hour heating will always use more energy than heating for a lesser period.
You've compared energy usage in two different years, when weather was different, the control systems were different, and usage patterns were different.
Energy usage in the two years was different (no surprise!)
You believe this enables you to say "so yes heating being on 24/7 does save energy"
However strip out the complications and other variables, and the fact remains: heat loss is proportional to (temperature difference) x (time)
So 24-hour heating will always use more energy than heating for a lesser period.
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thanks Alex for that beautiful colourfull chart, only if I could expand it and I would use it on my computer as my screen saver or a desk top page! wow!
(Lol)
No I didn't really mean that, but yes good effort! well done seriously. I will look into that too. I mean controls! Beacuse currently I coulod be paying £100 per quarter too much for using my heating on constant without the finer controls. Plus the fact I could save a further betwen 10 to 15% if it was a coindensing boiler!
On the other chord, I have noticed a strange or a peculiar phenomenon, I am not sure if others have also felt this, when it is really cold outside and you have your heating on inside, the room temperature may only be around 18 - 19 degrees celcius, and you feel really comfirtable.
On the other hand, the heating is off, because outside is quite warm, but still a bit cold, the room has been heated to 22 celcius, and its not that cold outside, and yet you feel cold chill and want to sort feel like put the heating back on!
I wonder why I feel like that quite often, and end up putting more heat on even though it is hotter than say the 19 degrees in real cold weather, where you feel so good even at 18 dgrees! A bit like a wind chill factor i guess, but there is no kind of wind in the house as all doors are closed.
could this be due to higher temperature causes your body to (I am lost for word now) perspire or something like that the word is, so this slow evaporation cools your skin due to higher room temerature and possibly lower humidity! and this creates the cooling effect upon evaporation.
(Lol)
No I didn't really mean that, but yes good effort! well done seriously. I will look into that too. I mean controls! Beacuse currently I coulod be paying £100 per quarter too much for using my heating on constant without the finer controls. Plus the fact I could save a further betwen 10 to 15% if it was a coindensing boiler!
On the other chord, I have noticed a strange or a peculiar phenomenon, I am not sure if others have also felt this, when it is really cold outside and you have your heating on inside, the room temperature may only be around 18 - 19 degrees celcius, and you feel really comfirtable.
On the other hand, the heating is off, because outside is quite warm, but still a bit cold, the room has been heated to 22 celcius, and its not that cold outside, and yet you feel cold chill and want to sort feel like put the heating back on!
I wonder why I feel like that quite often, and end up putting more heat on even though it is hotter than say the 19 degrees in real cold weather, where you feel so good even at 18 dgrees! A bit like a wind chill factor i guess, but there is no kind of wind in the house as all doors are closed.
could this be due to higher temperature causes your body to (I am lost for word now) perspire or something like that the word is, so this slow evaporation cools your skin due to higher room temerature and possibly lower humidity! and this creates the cooling effect upon evaporation.
A
ALEC1
I think the real issue is that there are degrees of off as well as degrees of on...
heatloss is variable and heat input needs to vary in invers propoertion....but cannot with numpty on-off controls...
Over heating is very wasteful, whats need is a "just in time" heating system..and thats what compensation controls do...
heatloss is variable and heat input needs to vary in invers propoertion....but cannot with numpty on-off controls...
Over heating is very wasteful, whats need is a "just in time" heating system..and thats what compensation controls do...
A
ALEC1
I think that answers the question...
the good thing about24/7 heating is that if you raise the room temperature the boiler increases the flow temperature in proportion to the demanded temperature...
with a room thermostat if you increase the temperature the boiler fires from cold and has to heat everything up from 20c... and quickly... that must account for a huge amount of energy... some of it going out of the flue...
I used to believe that heating constantly is just as expensive if not cheaper, if you had it on timed, but clearly, you got to do your own testing, or experimenting, its pointless discussing as each house has millions of different variables, or circumstences,
You could turn your boiler on full, (full heat) and allow the room thermostate to control and mainatain a steady temeperature, or there is the other option too, where you allow the boiler to run continuously irrespective of the room temeperature, but at a very reduced heat output, or in otherwords at a very low flow temeperature, so low that if you set your room thermostate to say 20 degrees it will never heat that far!
If you set the flow temeperature to its lowest on your boiler, mine can happily run at 35 degrees C flow, all day along, just the boiler's own thermister regulates the flow temeperature, so it is constantly cycling On/Off possibly 2 to 3 minutes On an then may be 5 to 8 minutes off, thats my rough guess as I hear the boiler go boom every 10 or so minutes interval! I haven't actually timed this accurately, but then again it is pointless because other variables will alter that timing.
With the flow temeperature set to lowest, the boiler when it sees the return flow has cooled down a degree below the setting, it refires the burner, so a steady 35 degrees flow temeperature is maintained on all my rads, this provides a steady background heat, which obviously will radiate only a small amount of heat into the room, and the room stays warm throughout, around 18 ish degrees.
But the draw back is that when it gets really cold outside, the differential temeprature increases, so does the losses, they become higher, the room temeprature starts to fall to around 17 degrees or even less, depending on how far cold is out there, so you start to feel the chill, because even at 35C flow temeperature the radiators cannot radiate enough heat to over come higher of heat as the outside temeperatures plumpt down, so you are forced to turn up the boiler's heat control, increase the flow temeperature from its setting 1 to say 3, in order to maintain the room temerature to around 18c.
This new setting at 3, now raises the flow temperature from 35 to about 50 celcius, and the radiators are now radiating more heat to componsate for higher loss of heat from the rooms due to exceptionally cold weather outside. you are using more gas now of course!
When it snowed in the begining of January, and we had temperatures around 0 degrees, or even at some stage -3 in London, I had to up the setting to even 5, or around 60 degrees flow for about a weeek!
it is back obviously down to 1 now, and i have just worked out my bill through the meter readings taken today and the one that was taken on the 10th of January, I worked out it will cost me £80 more this quarter sadly!
However, in my view it is or was well worth paying the extra to feel the warm house throughout the day and night,
You wouldn't get anything for nothing, so if you love a warm house 24/7, then you must be prepared to pay a little extra!
Choice is yours, really, you all know the more you will use the more you will have to pay, or else everyone would have turned up their heating on constant24/7.
But for me the £80 extra only works just under a £1 per day for the priveledge of having 24/7 heating, if one can affoard it then go for it, but it is not like you would pay a huge amount over the normal bills, my last quarter bill was actually £333.00 and this quarter I am going to be expecting around £400.00 unfortunately, but this will be it, winter is almost gone now, summer is around the corner and I can't wait for it!
My wife is a good waster of hot water, thats where most of our gas goes down the drain pipe, I have seen her open taps full just to wash a cup of tea and she will take like a good minute to do that!
but not only that, water itself is a very precious resource, and it should be respected and conserved, i hate to see people wasting drinking water, washing their cars, watering their lawns like there is no end to it, we are on a hose pipe ban in south east!
we need to change habbits and also I would like to work on a way of extracting that heat from that wasted bath and kitchen sink water, reclaim that heat through heat exchanger and feed it back into the house.
You could turn your boiler on full, (full heat) and allow the room thermostate to control and mainatain a steady temeperature, or there is the other option too, where you allow the boiler to run continuously irrespective of the room temeperature, but at a very reduced heat output, or in otherwords at a very low flow temeperature, so low that if you set your room thermostate to say 20 degrees it will never heat that far!
If you set the flow temeperature to its lowest on your boiler, mine can happily run at 35 degrees C flow, all day along, just the boiler's own thermister regulates the flow temeperature, so it is constantly cycling On/Off possibly 2 to 3 minutes On an then may be 5 to 8 minutes off, thats my rough guess as I hear the boiler go boom every 10 or so minutes interval! I haven't actually timed this accurately, but then again it is pointless because other variables will alter that timing.
With the flow temeperature set to lowest, the boiler when it sees the return flow has cooled down a degree below the setting, it refires the burner, so a steady 35 degrees flow temeperature is maintained on all my rads, this provides a steady background heat, which obviously will radiate only a small amount of heat into the room, and the room stays warm throughout, around 18 ish degrees.
But the draw back is that when it gets really cold outside, the differential temeprature increases, so does the losses, they become higher, the room temeprature starts to fall to around 17 degrees or even less, depending on how far cold is out there, so you start to feel the chill, because even at 35C flow temeperature the radiators cannot radiate enough heat to over come higher of heat as the outside temeperatures plumpt down, so you are forced to turn up the boiler's heat control, increase the flow temeperature from its setting 1 to say 3, in order to maintain the room temerature to around 18c.
This new setting at 3, now raises the flow temperature from 35 to about 50 celcius, and the radiators are now radiating more heat to componsate for higher loss of heat from the rooms due to exceptionally cold weather outside. you are using more gas now of course!
When it snowed in the begining of January, and we had temperatures around 0 degrees, or even at some stage -3 in London, I had to up the setting to even 5, or around 60 degrees flow for about a weeek!
it is back obviously down to 1 now, and i have just worked out my bill through the meter readings taken today and the one that was taken on the 10th of January, I worked out it will cost me £80 more this quarter sadly!
However, in my view it is or was well worth paying the extra to feel the warm house throughout the day and night,
You wouldn't get anything for nothing, so if you love a warm house 24/7, then you must be prepared to pay a little extra!
Choice is yours, really, you all know the more you will use the more you will have to pay, or else everyone would have turned up their heating on constant24/7.
But for me the £80 extra only works just under a £1 per day for the priveledge of having 24/7 heating, if one can affoard it then go for it, but it is not like you would pay a huge amount over the normal bills, my last quarter bill was actually £333.00 and this quarter I am going to be expecting around £400.00 unfortunately, but this will be it, winter is almost gone now, summer is around the corner and I can't wait for it!
My wife is a good waster of hot water, thats where most of our gas goes down the drain pipe, I have seen her open taps full just to wash a cup of tea and she will take like a good minute to do that!
but not only that, water itself is a very precious resource, and it should be respected and conserved, i hate to see people wasting drinking water, washing their cars, watering their lawns like there is no end to it, we are on a hose pipe ban in south east!
we need to change habbits and also I would like to work on a way of extracting that heat from that wasted bath and kitchen sink water, reclaim that heat through heat exchanger and feed it back into the house.
A
ALEC1
agreed Mickey, but there is a lot of Knee jerk reactions with out people thinking things through or considering all the variables..
the answer is that in some cases leaving a boiler on and available to heat may well save energy....but it is a function of usage as well as temperature...
and as I have said on an SE boiler depending on the hours of use it may well consume no more energy...and provide a more comfortable temperature..
the answer is that in some cases leaving a boiler on and available to heat may well save energy....but it is a function of usage as well as temperature...
and as I have said on an SE boiler depending on the hours of use it may well consume no more energy...and provide a more comfortable temperature..
I always think of that when I pull the plug from the bath, a holding tank/heat exchanger could at least bring up the temperature of incoming mains supply by a degree or so. I guess the overriding problem would be the bacterial growth in either the exchanger or storage place of the now slightly increased temperature water supply. The cleaning and maintaining of it, negating the saved costs in energy.
With regards the 24/7 , I think a compromise of 17/7, just adjusting for time actually in bed!
NB. This year however, having lost the will trying to keep the room thermostat down to reasonable levels, as the wife keeps turning it back up. Not only does she do that, she now insists of fiddling with the boiler thermostat, again only turning it up!!!! (I'm sure she must have a forum name on this site, learning her bad habits.)
To overcome this problem I have now put the monthly standing order in her name so she can pay the bill. Variable of course, so any increase should be noticed quite quickly on her bank statement. Although I must admit to enjoying the increased warmth, I'm not so sure if I'm cutting of my nose to spite my face
It has been done before and it is a shlt idea.
Sorry.
A
ALEC1
its good for showers, heating the cold, to reduce the hot usage, but with baths its problematic...
not as simple as that i dont think, if you turn it on from cold it will use max gas for the first hr (or so) but for the next 9 hrs it wont use the same amount each hr as the house will not be cold, the heating comes on and off as the temp drops,
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