Energy Prices (Strictly NO referrals!)

My downstairs stat was 18.5C last night at around 7PM, this morning was just over 15C at 7AM, so 12 hours it went from 18.5 - 15 which isn't terrible, no heating on in that window. It seems to hold 17-18C OK but I think I'd see it drop off a lot quicker if I tried to maintain 19/20C through most of the day.
I wish I was getting that. It impressive. I went from 15c to 8.5c from 9pm to 6am. That is all windows closed, trickle vents closed, all blinds/curtains closed etc. It has taken me 3.5hrs of heating to get back up from 8.5c to 13.5c at moment downstairs. I am pretty sure it cauase the lack of radiators given out enough heat for the room size. Only 2 600x600mm single sided rads for whole downstairs which just isn't enough.
 
I wish I was getting that. It impressive. I went from 15c to 8.5c from 9pm to 6am. That is all windows closed, trickle vents closed, all blinds/curtains closed etc. It has taken me 3.5hrs of heating to get back up from 8.5c to 13.5c at moment downstairs. I am pretty sure it cauase the lack of radiators given out enough heat for the room size. Only 2 600x600mm single sided rads for whole downstairs which just isn't enough.

I have 5 radiators downstairs area, kitchen has 1 x tall radiator on the wall, lounge has 2 x moderate ones, hallway and downstairs WC have 1 x smaller one each.

Having more will speed up heating but it's all area based, smaller house needs less heating full stop, having less rads means they need to run longer but gas consumption should be less as the volume of water in the system would also be less.

If I put on both zones full blast it's about 1m3 for an hour of heating the whole house.

Upstairs has 6 rads but two of them are basically off at the TRV.
 
You've offset gas usage with heating your home by electricity instead :p a background 400W is a considerable amount of heat continually pumping into your home


That makes sense, we've been using approximately £5 a day combined on really cold days. The house never drops below 16C overnight and the heating is turned on for 30 minutes here and there as required, max seems to be 20C at the moment.
 
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I have 5 radiators downstairs area, kitchen has 1 x tall radiator on the wall, lounge has 2 x moderate ones, hallway and downstairs WC have 1 x smaller one each.

Having more will speed up heating but it's all area based, smaller house needs less heating full stop, having less rads means they need to run longer but gas consumption should be less as the volume of water in the system would also be less.

If I put on both zones full blast it's about 1m3 for an hour of heating the whole house.

Upstairs has 6 rads but two of them are basically off at the TRV.
Indeed but I think the issue being that the whole two rads for downstairs isn't enough. 1 in corner of living room near the hallway which has the second rad and then nothing in the kitchen or downstairs toilet so relative to having heating across enough of the downstairs zones the small radiator just isn't enough to ever get the full area to temp even if it is left on. The landing upstairs is open to downstairs meaning that the stairwell volume is also really only heated by that one small rad.

Upstairs has 2 radiators and a small towel radiator in bathroom. The bedrooms keep warmer relative at around 10c instead of 8.5c when it drops and heat up faster because each bedroom has about double the radiator surface compared to 1/3 of the volume to heat. So upstairs in the same 3.5hr period I have gone from 10c to 18c okay.

Longest I left the heating on was overnight from 9pm to 8am next day and set it to 18c. It never even achieved 15c during that period downstairs. Upstairs clicked off after 2hrs. It is just a really badly inbalanced system in this house type and a new large radiator in opposite corner of the living space/bottom of stair would likely allow it to actually achieve heating the volume of space much better. But getting a plumber right now. I have phoned 5, 2 answered, 1 to say sorry I am booked till April and the other wanted £350 to plumb a rad into existing pipework! So yeah I am not really getting anywhere.
 
My last 30 days, up 20kWh on last month again, having to charge the battery on off peak.

Even in this cold weather I'm using a third of the electric I was using over the same time period last year.
No storage heater use this year.

Standing charge is the killer.

yqACBsd.jpg
 
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My last 30 days, up 20kWh on last month again, having to charge the battery on off peak.

Even in this cold weather I'm using a third of the electric I was using over the same time period last year.
No storage heater use this year.

Standing charge is the killer.

yqACBsd.jpg
Lol it's negligible.
I'm running at £12 a day..
 
Gas
Standing charge
22 days at 27.12p per day
£5.97
Energy use charge
796.31 kWh at 9.81p
£78.12


DateReading

14 Dec 2022 8779 (Manual)

12 Dec 2022 8775 (Manual)

11 Dec 2022 8773 (Manual)

6 Dec 2022 8766 (Manual)

19 Nov 2022 8750 (Manual)




Electricity
Standing charge
22 days at 37.08p per day
£8.16
Energy use charge
347.76 kWh at 33.38p
£116.08
 
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You think that's low? We're in an end terrace, 1950s-built brick three bedroom. We run the heating 24/7/365, keeping the house at an actual 19oC. This month, we used an average of 20kWh/day in gas. I'd be mortified at 30! :p If you're heating your house up from cold all the time, it's going to need the boiler running flat out each time. We find it cheaper to just leave it ticking over, along with being sensible about not opening doors/windows more than needed, having curtains closed and over exterior doors etc.

Screenshot-2022-12-14-at-07-26-13.png


On the other hand, the 'leccy has murdered us lately. This month it was £170, and that's with LED-everything and running the bare minimum. Our background usage is about 400W in the day and 200W for 12 hours overnight (plus bursts for dishwasher, washing machine etc). Before this quarter, our whole energy bill was £90/month for dual fuel. Jumping to £170 for electricity and £80 for gas is an eye opener... We've basically gone from paying £22.50 a week all in to £62.50 a week. Not at all terrible by some standards (my in-laws on pre-pay spent that a week even before the rises!), but it's a jump nonetheless!

Edit: Weekly maths fail (no coffee yet).
I found someone who was told dont worry it will just trickle, like me single glazed, stone age boiler. It used over 70kWh for just under 10 hours. :( He set thermostats to just 16C but couldnt reach it, too much heat loss I assume.

GCH seems so variable its like the figures are barely believable at each extremity, the variance seems to be massive. I have asked him for his hourly break down as he has a smart meter, to see if it was full pelt constantly or if it ever did slow down.
 
Here's my study
i8BBGVX.jpg

Here's the living room

efawqB2.jpg



Is it just better to heat to say 17 as a base 8am-8pm and then 20 in room you're in? Rather than this big swing?

House dipped to 13c overnight without heating.

Pale verticals are the actual requests by trv for heat


Its looking like the heating is basically being requested almost all the time when you combine all rooms. Is there any point in this? Making me wonder about the value of smart heating.

For example if the study has hit target, but other study is under the heating is on heating 1 radiator. You can imagine this ping pong keeping the heating on potentially all the time.

However, does this get countered by the flow only going to, say 2 radiators?


Effectively..
Is it worth heating 2 radiators 8 hours a day (smart heating) vs all radiators 8 hours a day (dumb heating)
That graph shows why some are having problems with GCH been so costly.

It looks like your heating can get you from 12 to to over 17 in under 1 hour? There is people who struggle to gain 2-3 C in about 3-4 hours, about 1C an hour. So for those the boilers are working much harder not just to heat up but also to maintain if they ever hit the target temp. Yours looks like its a clasual stroll up hill and barely doing anything to maintain.

Imagine if it was like this, we assume full pelt on boiler during red line ramp up. Your temp drop off seems really slow as well, taking all night to get down to 12C. I might do another graph with grey shades filled in and with faster temp drop off. If by boiler got me from 12 to 19 in an hour I think I would have a different view.

LAoQ5Ii.png
 
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I found someone who was told dont worry it will just trickle, like me single glazed, stone age boiler. It used over 70kWh for just under 10 hours. :( He set thermostats to just 16C but couldnt reach it, too much heat loss I assume.

GCH seems so variable its like the figures are barely believable at each extremity, the variance seems to be massive. I have asked him for his hourly break down as he has a smart meter, to see if it was full pelt constantly or if it ever did slow down.

Well its hardly surprising to be honest that if you have a home that leaks heat it will take much more heat to get it up to temp than a house that doesn't.

I used roughly 70kwh of gas yesterday, but we are both still getting over illness so we had 18-19 from about 8am till 10pm, this is a 4 bed detached. It is cold at the moment so I don't really see that as bad value.
Sure for many its a bit painful but equally for me for maybe 3 months its worth the cost.
 
Monday and Tuesday we used 57kwh of gas. each day not so bad was as we have gas heated shower 2 of us use daily and the lad used it Monday.
leccy we use about 16kwh Monday and Tuesday most of it off peak
 
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In

You seem to use very little electricity.
i am not sure why.

we have a 70 inch LCD TV with soundbar, i have a pc with an rtx 3090 and 65 inch lcd tv ... i dont get to use it much sadly due to work and we cook (albeit use air frier as much as possible rather than oven) and have a dishwasher that we use every other day, and do maybe 4 or 5 loads of washing per week with either tumble drier or a heated clothes horse.

yes i have solar but right now am getting only 1 - 2 kwh a day off it, and whilst the battery gives me 6kwh of off peak power per day, it still needs to be charge so am still using the power just cheaply.

i also WFH 2 days a week which involves pints of coffee and 3 monitors.
 
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having less rads means they need to run longer but gas consumption should be less as the volume of water in the system would also be less.
A house with undersized radiators will never get up to temperature, so in effect it's a waste of gas. If the radiators are too small or too few they will not dissipate sufficient heat into the room. It's not the fault of the boiler. When the thermostat calls for it, the boiler only switches on when the water in the central heating loop drops below a specified temperature.

I've got this very problem with my hallway, I installed a fancy vertical radiator, but undersized it, now the rest of the house heats up quickly but the hallway is still cold, not helped by the fact the heat the radiator does give off rises up the stairs.

In my search to find a solution to my hallway radiator problem, I learnt aluminium radiators are a thing and they give off significantly more heat compared to radiators of steel construction, and they heat up quicker to, but they cost a lot more also.
 
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I found someone who was told dont worry it will just trickle, like me single glazed, stone age boiler. It used over 70kWh for just under 10 hours. :( He set thermostats to just 16C but couldnt reach it, too much heat loss I assume.

GCH seems so variable its like the figures are barely believable at each extremity, the variance seems to be massive. I have asked him for his hourly break down as he has a smart meter, to see if it was full pelt constantly or if it ever did slow down.
This is my problem. House goes cold so fast after the heating goes off that it's barely worth putting it on. If I had a smart meter I'd do some proper tests but mine got fitted as electric only and now bulb won't add the gas :rolleyes:
Office has been sub 9c every morning this week. Giving it a blast with the electric heater whilst the central heating is on in the morning just to get it to a civilised temp and then just going for warm clothes, hot water bottle etc during the day. Mrs uses the electric blanket although I pinched it yesterday while she was out and it was great. Prices seem to have rocketed for them though

Meanwhile I visited both my dad and brother last weekend who both have <5 year old new builds and had the central heating just ticking over at a nice temperature using barely anything.
 
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Its looking like the heating is basically being requested almost all the time when you combine all rooms. Is there any point in this? Making me wonder about the value of smart heating.

For example if the study has hit target, but other study is under the heating is on heating 1 radiator. You can imagine this ping pong keeping the heating on potentially all the time.

However, does this get countered by the flow only going to, say 2 radiators?

It looks like your heating can get you from 12 to to over 17 in under 1 hour? There is people who struggle to gain 2-3 C in about 3-4 hours, about 1C an hour. So for those the boilers are working much harder not just to heat up but also to maintain if they ever hit the target temp. Yours looks like its a clasual stroll up hill and barely doing anything to maintain.

can't see if the boiler is nonetheless being solicited efficiently(minimal gas) with continual low modulation(not on/offs) and low return temperature - need those geek statistics
bookmarked this discussion had some appropriate plots https://www.reddit.com/r/tado/comments/lhrfow/opentherm_analysis_not_so_smart_tado/


e:

we cook (albeit use air frier as much as possible rather than oven)
have you put a power meter on it, to see what it actually uses ?
 
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