Typical new three-bed detached house, well insulated, new oil boiler, average temperature in most rooms maintained to around 22 degrees C from 8 am to 10 pm.
How much oil will the boiler consume very approximately in winter in the UK? 5 litres per day? 10 litres? Much more? Much less?
TIA!
MM
Where in the UK? South coast or north Scotland will give rather a lot of difference...
cheers, clive
Average annual usage is reckoned to be about 2000 litres, most of that in winter of course, so 10 litres per day wouldn't be far off the mark. 22c is pretty warm though. You could save a lot by turning that down a bit.
IN winter with about 3 times that I get through 2000 litres So mebbe 600?
about 8 litres a day?
Funnily enough, it isn't that much of a difference, and the colder it gets the less percentage difference it makes.
If the outside temp is - say 15 degrees, then going from 22 to say 19, drops the temp drop across insulation from 7 degrees to 4 degrees..nearly halving the power.
But at zero outside, its from 22 to 19, - less than 15%.
Since the majority of the oil is burned when it IS that cold, there is not a lot of gain to be had at all.
The Fens
MM
This may not be the most helpful way to express the answer but here we go...
Our 1200 litre tank is about 1m tall and we use roughly 1cm a day in the cold bits of the winter. Almost too little to measure in the summer. That means a tank full lasts about 3 months so we fill it once or twice a year depending. Also on the edge of the fens we find that wind rather than cold is the determining factor in oil usage here.
Ditto here, not too far away.
I'd say for a well insulated house (but not super insulated), something like 100 liters per month per bedroom in winter is somewhere in a rough ballpark. And about the same for the rest of the year altogether.
Thanks all for your replies. Thank goodness the weather's turned much warmer this morning! By the way, anyone thought what they're going to do when 1,000 litres = £1,000? Maybe another five years away, but....
Are there no plans on the internet for DIY nuclear mini-reactors? What about fuel cells?
How much warmer would a house be in winter if it was surrounded by walls of straw bales pushed close to the house walls?
MM
Once it is cheaper to superinsulate than buy oil, it will be done. That's the wonder of markets.
The problem with the straw bales is that tehy have windows in them. And venitilation.
I cant remember the EXAT calcs, but it was something like the fact that to get the required ventilation reduced the effective insulation of my house to a limiting U factor of about 0.15. Unless I somehow used the outgoing warm air to heat the incoming colder...
Ventilation is easy to provide. And why do you need windows? Keep one window free, if you must!
MM
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