Anybody any ideas how I can cut my heating costs - =A3600 on oil (2000 l)in 3 months. Have a large 3 bed house - solid stone walls - single glazed. A variety of rads some old with no fins some newer, and a pumped HW system with conventional tank. What will make the biggest saving most quickly, new boiler / new rads / thermal store Thanks
Last year I had a similar situation in a new (for me) house. The Oil Boiler (Worcester Combi 16KW) was very old, and completely undersized - my own estimate based on a full thermal analysis (wall by wall - floor & Ceiling) suggested that I needed 20KW. On top of this I think many of the baffles in the boiler had corroded away reducing it's efficiency to (my estimate) about 35% (when we got it out we found you could see into the flame chamber from round the flue). It was also a non-balanced flue type running in my workshop (aka Garage) ingesting wood dust with the air.
Now what I did was to calculate the effects of changing the large single glazed windows for Low-E Argon-filled double glazing, Topping up the insulation in the loft and adding cavity-wall insulation (not an option for you). Doing all that reduced the requirement to 15KW.
I put in a new condensing boiler (Mistral) with 90000 BTU output and converted the combi-DHW to an Un-vented Cylinder (Oso - stainless steel).
My oil consumption is less than half what it was (and the price has fallen) last year. It is a warmer winter, yes, but the house is so much warmer - I now leave the boiler on all night with the programmable thermostat set to 10C - it only fires on the coldest nights.
So I'd say, if the boiler isn't modern, fit a new boiler. But in truth you need to do the spreadsheet thing on the losses to work out what you need first.
R.
Boilers mostly arent worth renewing, as the new ones are les reliable, much shorter lived and more costly to maintain.
However if yours is a 55% efficient one then yes replace it.
Insulation is the big one, you can dry line walls with PB on battons with rockwool behind. This makes a serious difference for ever more.
If youve any rooms youre not in much, a thermostat for that room wired to wallwart & TRV will enable you to control the individual room temp.
Insulation is the big answer, walls, loft, under floor. Floor wood boards or concrete?
NT
Improving draught proofing and insulation.
On 8 Feb 2007 22:49:25 -0800 someone who may be snipped-for-privacy@btinternet.com wrote this:-
Turn down the thermostat a little. Loft insulation to modern standards and heavy/lined curtains. Insulate any pipes that are not in the heated areas.
Then consider the more expensive jobs, by doing research on what suits your situation best.
Boilers mostly arent worth renewing, as the new ones are les reliable, much shorter lived and more costly to maintain.
wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@a34g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... Anybody any ideas how I can cut my heating costs - £600 on oil (2000 l)in 3 months. Have a large 3 bed house - solid stone walls - single glazed. A variety of rads some old with no fins some newer, and a pumped HW system with conventional tank. What will make the biggest saving most quickly, new boiler / new rads / thermal store Thanks
In order of price:performance ratio:
I don't know what your windows are like, but most old single-glazed windows I've ever lived with have been very draught. Consider replacing them with double glazing - it doesn't have to be uPVC, you can get some lovely DG with oak frames. This provices additional insulation in the glass, but more importantly the frames will be much less draughty than old ones.
Replacing your boiler will only make a significant difference if it is more than say 20 years old. Servicing it can make a big difference if it hasn't been serviced recently (the jet orifice enlarges over time, messing up the oil/air ratio).
Replacing your radiators may improve the overall performance (how quickly you can heat up rooms etc) but it won't improve efficiency (burn less oil). Same goes for a thermal store.
That is over 26 kW. There will be excessive boiler cycling when heating the house.
Bad move. I don't want to rain on your parade, but do you know you need an annual service for this unvented cylinder? That cost negates any insulation you put in.
A heat bank/thermal store would have been better (no annual service charge) and it would provide boiler buffering to eliminate inefficient boiler cycling and a neutral point and buffer where two heating zones connect to. Each heating zone can have TRVs on all rads using a Grundfos Alpha pump on each heating loop.
The message from snipped-for-privacy@btinternet.com contains these words:
Double glazing.
A thermal store will eliminate boiler cycling, increasing efficiency.
This is true, and is in fact the setup we used with our oil boiler if you remember. However, I think you can reduce cycling to a very large extent by using a decent room stat with adjustable hysteresis.
Insulating the walls. Draughtproofing. Assuming you have done the roof already.
Then look at the floor. Finally double glazing.
If you are restricting the question to the actual CH itself, rather than the house. Boiler only. Going from e.g. 60% to 70% will save about 16%
Changing rads won't improve efficiency.
Better regaulation might. Zone valves/TRV's and reducing the average internal temperature.
Also check for pipes in the loft losing heat.
The most useless suggestion yet.
In an old house with smallish windows, it barely makes any difference at all, unless the old windows are leaky draughty sash windows.
AND its expensive..more expensive than e,g. dry lining the walls.
Or a Proportional-Integral type thermostat/controller with programmable cycle time such as the Honeywell CM9x7 series (and others). A 3/hour setting (a 20 minute cycle) should be right for an oil boiler, with a
4-minute minimum on-time.stone walls are poor insulators, this really is the Big One to do.
boiler efficiency is not so much about age but exchanger type. The cast iron 55% efficient ones are the bad boys. The exchangers last forever, but the heatloss is grim.
Zoning the heating system is a good thing, but tbh its probably cheaper to make each room its own zone using a stat, wallwart, trv & some resistance wire. And better performance.
NT
"reduce" is not eliminate.
It wasn't.
Actually,if they are 15 ft thick, they are pretty good :-)
I wonder when it will become standard practice to have loads of zones each with its motorized valve, and a remote radio stat.
And looks crap - a Heath Robinson approach. Have you figured out how much these 8, 9, 10 transformers hanging out of sockets, emitting heat will cost to run?
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