Regulating Home heating

monthehoops

I've been living in my current house with 2 years. It's a 3,000 sq foot house with underfloor heating and 11 heatmiser stats throughout the house. I have them set is all zones as follows:

6:30am - 09:30am -> 18-20 degrees
18:00 - 21:00 -> 18-20 degrees.

Some of the zones are slightly lower than the rest in rooms we don't use as much.

The heating also heats the water and on top of this I have two solar panels that heat the water as well though not sure how good these are.

The heating has my heart broken. I put €500 in the end of November and this morning I've run out of oil - I would have expected it to last until the end of Jan maybe. This winter hasn't been cold at all, it's been mild in fact.

I can't seem to regulate the house at all. Does anyone have any details of the ideal setup i.e. what times I should have it come on/go off or if at all.

SCOOP 64

€500 at the end of November and its ran out! i would be concerned as well.
do you need it on the 3 hours in the morning?
if the house is empty from 9.30 onward so would put it on at 8am,just to warm up when im up.
Filled mytank up cost €900 in june have it on timer 7.30am to 8am ,evening 5.30 to 6 pm,turn on manually if gets too cold,
now dec still oil in it.
your heating system sounds better then mind ,would love underfloor heating.
my brother has it , he's feet are never cold!.

Curly Judge

monthehoops wrote: »

I've been living in my current house with 2 years. It's a 3,000 sq foot house with underfloor heating and 11 heatmiser stats throughout the house. I have them set is all zones as follows:

6:30am - 09:30am -> 18-20 degrees
18:00 - 21:00 -> 18-20 degrees.

Some of the zones are slightly lower than the rest in rooms we don't use.

The heating also heats the water and on top of this I have two solar panels that heat the water as well though not sure how good these are.

The heating has my heart broken. I put €500 in the end of November and this morning I've run out of oil - I would have expected it to last until the end of Jan maybe. This winter hasn't been cold at all, it's been mild in fact.

I can't seem to regulate the house at all. Does anyone have any details of the ideal setup i.e. what times I should have it come on/go off or if at all.

3,000 sq feet is quite a big house.
Is it a bungalow? They are more difficult to retain the heat in than a two story because of the extra roof area.
Is it well insulated?
In particular is the floor below the heating coil well insulated
Is your boiler of the new, high efficiency, type?
Why do you need to heat the rooms you seldom use twice a day? I would have thought that twice per week would be more than enough!

monthehoops

Please don't take this as being a smart ass reply, but I thought the whole point of underfloor heating (so I assumed) was that you don't turn it on for an hour in the morning and the evening but rather keep it on the whole time if that makes sense, since it takes more effort to heat it up for a short period and then cool down again rather than keeping it constant.

Anyways, the reason why I heat these rooms that don't get used so often is because the stats are set up that way i.e. they have two time settings - one for the weekdays and one for the weekend. They're not great stats I don't think but they're the ones the plumber chose.

It's a two storey house and I made a point of insulating it really, really well but I reckon I have €2,000 gone into it this year if not more although it did seem to be working economically until this month. I am at a total loss as to where the heating oil has gone over the last month, since the house hasn't been excessively warm. I will check tomorrow with the heating company hopefully if they're open.

Oh, my oil tank is inside my garage so it's not that it's been stolen, and the whole heating system is brand new. I know it does take time to regulate these things properly, but 2 years in and €500 in a month is daft*.


*The last time I put oil in was another €500 the end of August.

As oil boilers don't modulate and if you are using your boiler to heat your hot water (which would require a higher flow temperture than under floor) I wonder if your boiler is cycling on and off effecting efficiency?

Curly Judge

I'm a little reluctant to post this as I don't want to alarm you unduly.
Is there any chance you have a leak in your heating system?
To go from three months to less than one month [a 300% increase?] is a very severe escalation in oil consumption.
The leak could have been caused by some recent house alteration?
Or it could be historic and have just got worse recently?
I have experienced severe leaks in houses which have gone undetected for quite a long time.
A house, built on a gravel site, with the the pipework under the damp proof course, could have a leak for months without it being detected.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to get your plumber to establish if there is leak or not?
The least destructive and surest way might be to monitor the amount of water being consumed through your water meter or the filler valve that maintains the pressure in your heating circuit.
I hope I'm wrong but I think it should be checked out.

monthehoops

Thanks for the post Curly Judge. After running out of heating oil on Dec 30th I purchased a further €200 and hey presto it has run out this morning, not lasting 3 weeks. There must be a leak somewhere, I can't think of any other scenario. I turned down the stats in every room and still it's gone in jig time.

deandean

Maybe someone is stealing your oil?

Billy Bunting

monthehoops wrote: »

Thanks for the post Curly Judge. After running out of heating oil on Dec 30th I purchased a further €200 and hey presto it has run out this morning, not lasting 3 weeks. There must be a leak somewhere, I can't think of any other scenario. I turned down the stats in every room and still it's gone in jig time.

I dont see any mention of your boiler model so lets take an average and do the maths, .65usg/hr nozzle so say 3lts/hr (this is alll dependent on lots of things but its an average), the first hour its on it may actually run constant to get the house upto temperature, so thats 3lts x twice a day, total 6 lts, then the next couple of hrs with the boiler cycling on its thermostat it may just run for 20min/hr, so x that by 4hrs and you get 1hr 20min, at 3lts/hr will give you another 4lts used, add that to the 6lts on initial start up and you get 10ltrs/day, your €200 would have got you around 220lts, 220 divided by 10 gives you 22days of fuel, bought it on the 30th and todays the 18th, sounds about right to me. :eek:

shane0007

Billy Bunting wrote: »

I dont see any mention of your boiler model so lets take an average and do the maths, .65usg/hr nozzle so say 3lts/hr (this is alll dependent on lots of things but its an average), the first hour its on it may actually run constant to get the house upto temperature, so thats 3lts x twice a day, total 6 lts, then the next couple of hrs with the boiler cycling on its thermostat it may just run for 20min/hr, so x that by 4hrs and you get 1hr 20min, at 3lts/hr will give you another 4lts used, add that to the 6lts on initial start up and you get 10ltrs/day, your €200 would have got you around 220lts, 220 divided by 10 gives you 22days of fuel, bought it on the 30th and todays the 18th, sounds about right to me. :eek:

+1
Plus the fact it is a 3,000sqft house so it probably has a 35kw boiler. This will be a 0.85 nozzle.

del23

I need about 150ltrs/month of heating oil and is on just 3hours a day and just 4 rads are on. Think is too much,isn't?

Billy Bunting

Boiler make model, house size and type ??