Hi I have gas heating my hot water cylinder and use approx 22KW of gas per day for this. Is this about normal for four 5min power showers per day plus hot water for hand washing and dish washing etc? It works out about £3.75 per week as I pay a higher rate for the first 1465KW per quarter, so in the summer my gas costs me more than the winter because I use less of it
The hot water is a Johnson & Starley Janus system that is always on as there is no convenient way to turn it off
My hot water cylinder is foam coated plus it has an additional cylinder jacket and all the hot pipes have a foam type of insulation.
So any suggestions as to how I can save more money on my gas? Regards, Tracy
I assume you mean 22kw hours i.e. the equivalent of 22kw for one hour each day. (BTW how did you measure this?) 22kw is roughly the output of a small combi so it's like running this at full DHW output for an hour each day. Your power shower is probably about this so that accounts for about 4 * 5 = 20 minutes = 1/3 of the total. You'd have to be running a hot tap at full output for another 40 minutes for the rest, so your usage does seem a bit high. Either your power showers are using a lot more than you estimate or there are high losses somewhere in the system or a combination of the two.
One source of heat loss you probably haven't accounted for is the boiler. Johnson & Sarley implies a warm air heating unit and I guess this has a permanent pilot light which is probably burning up a significant amount of energy even when it's doing nothing.
OK here are my working out figures for gas consumption. Yesterday, meter read 6754 and today read 6756 which give 2 cubic meters of gas. Using figures supplied by my gas supplier this gives 2*40.27292*1.02264/3.6 which gives 22.88039 KW of energy used in 24 hours NOT 1 hour as you have mistakenly written. So regardless of when I have my showers and for how long and use my hot water the cost remains at cost of gas per KW times 22.88039.
Why do people seem to not understand how gas consumption is measured and paid for and assume totally unrealistic things.or do they just like to complicate matters
. where did I say that?
It is perfectly clear that I mean I used 22.88039 KW of gas in a day. That is what I said.
or to make it easier I used 2 cubic meters of gas but the gas company converts it to KW and charges that way.
All I want to know is if that is the quantity of gas in cubic meters or kilowatts that other people use with a similar set up to mine. Also you might have misunderstood what I meant by a power shower. It is a shower that has a hot pipe connected to the hot water tank in the bedroom cupboard, a second pipe connected to the cold tank in the attic and when it is turned on a pump in the shower unit sucks hot and cold water from their appropriate containers, mixes them then delivers it from the shower head at a greater pressure than if gravity was allowed to act normally.
No, it converts it to kWh (kilowatt hours) as the other poster said. kW is a
*power* unit (ie when on at full tilt you boiler is running at xkW, if you leave it running like that for 2 hours you have used 2xkWh of energy). If you use a certain amount of power for a certain time, you can calculate the energy used, which is what you are charged for. As the other post (quite correctly) said, an energy consumption of 22kWh over one day is equivalent to a usage of just under 1kW per hour continuously OR, using 22kW for one hour.
He was trying to help you by estimating what such a usage could be caused by (more or less correctly as far as I could see). He also probably felt that misunderstanding the usage units led to more confusion and was trying to lessen such confusion.
22kWh is therefore perhaps a bit high, as (as he says) a standard combi will run at about 22kW if it was flat out (say heating and running a shower). No, you don't have a combi but the same amount of energy would be required to replace the hot water you use. Less actually, as you'll use more water in the power shower. Assuming the meter is correct, the only real ways to save gas are:
Have showers not baths and make them short if a power shower Turn down the heating thermostat Make sure the hot water tank is lagged Fit thermostatic valves to radiators and make bedrooms/little used rooms colder.
The point being made is that you used the wrong units. It's a bit like saying "London is 65 miles per hour away".
A kilowatt is an instantaneous measure of energy consumption. If you run a 1 kilowatt appliance for an hour, it uses 1 kWh (kilowatt-hour). Thus, saying you use 22kW a day is meaningless. Your conversion indicates that you probably meant 22kWh, which can be consumed in many ways (e.g. 22kw for 1 hour, 44kW for half an hour, 1 kW for 22 hours, or an average of
No that suggests 22 kWh or energy used (kW (note not "KW") is a measurement of power not energy).
I don't know - lack of education I guess. Still I think John's explanation should have set you on the right track so you need not make the same mistake again.
Yup, and it is still nonsense.
I suggest you look a little more carefully at your bill.
Yours seems a bit high. But that could be your 5 min showers are actually 8 mins... Given Most J&S boilers are warm air units, it may also suggest it is not that efficient at hating the water.
Yup, that is what is usually understood by power shower.
If you are only taking a reading over one day, you should really use the decimal field on your meter as well.
Your readings could have been 6754.9 and 6756.0 - which would only be
1.1 cubic meters of gas, or they could have been 6754.0 and 6756.9 which would have been 2.9 cubic metres. There is a huge potential margin for error - you could have used as little as 12.5kWh or as much as 33kWh...
I would suggest you run the test over a week rather than a day to give a more balanced view anyway.
Well my boiler is rated at about 15KW and it refills a 250liter tank pretty quickly in terms of hot water.
We PROBABLY (2 of us) use a bit less than that in a day.
Assuming a 50C rise, (10C->60c) it takes 1.25 megacalories to heat that tank.
That's about 14KWh
With a boiler efficiency of say 70% that is about 21KWh.
So what is being said (if we are correct that he means 22KWh is that he is probably using around a tankful (250l) of hot water a day
My wife can do that just by leaving the hot tap running in the sink, or a large shower and a bath for me.
Plus things like dishwashers and washing machines MAY be using it as well.
I would say its about par for a family of three or four, and a bit high for two.. Heck its only around £2.20 a day. Less if econo 7 is used , and about what? 60-70p a day for gas?
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