underfloor heating - first bill

Ramonapixie

Hi all,
just got the first proper bill in my newly built house. House is v well insulated, underfloor heating downstairs run by air to heat pump, upstairs are rads. house is 200sqm approx.
Got electricity bill for last two months and it was a whopper, €600. Does this sound right? I thought when i paid the small fortune for this efficent system that bills would come way down.
Was i expecting too much?

cruiser202006

Ramonapixie wrote: »

Hi all,
just got the first proper bill in my newly built house. House is v well insulated, underfloor heating downstairs run by air to heat pump, upstairs are rads. house is 200sqm approx.
Got electricity bill for last two months and it was a whopper, €600. Does this sound right? I thought when i paid the small fortune for this efficent system that bills would come way down.
Was i expecting too much?

Is your bill estimated? What brand of heat pump is it? You need to get in touch with installer if it's not estimated as it could be a problem with the outdoor unit.

MicktheMan

First point is that new houses take at least a heating season to dry out and therefore the heating cost can be up to twice what it may be in subsequent years. However, even at half your cost, it seems quite high for a recently built "v well insulated" house.

This brings me to my second point; even in "v well insulated" houses, a lot of heat can easily be lost by air leakage (aka draughts). What was your air tightness test result?

Ramonapixie

hi there folks,
bill not estimated, we read it ourselves. The heating system is Samsung. The blow test results we were told by the engineer were perfect. I hope it is just a drying out issue, we really felt that were going to make savings. We have turned the heating down a few degrees in all the zones so will keep an eye on the meter.

Water John

Hope there is very good insulation in the floor. Otherwise and I hope not, you are heating the worms.

TPM

Firstly you need to get a kwh meter on your heatpump so you know exactly how much the heatpump is costing to run as there could be other factors driving up your overall bill.
Once you know how much it is costing to run you can start asking questions of the heating designer/installer.

Are the upstairs rads heated by the heat pump also as Imo rads and heat pumps don't really go well together.

Water John

TPM, I agree, but it's mainly that the rooms with rads will be calling for a little heat quite often. Thus, the HP going on and off. UFH would have few requests from thermostats.

Don't know if that would make it inefficient.
A large heat storage tank should be matched with aluminium rads. This could be also used in conjunction with night rate electricity.

Johnny K

Ramonapixie wrote:

Hi all, just got the first proper bill in my newly built house. House is v well insulated, underfloor heating downstairs run by air to heat pump, upstairs are rads. house is 200sqm approx. Got electricity bill for last two months and it was a whopper, €600. Does this sound right? I thought when i paid the small fortune for this efficent system that bills would come way down. Was i expecting too much?

Hey I've a recently purchased ber a rated house with air source heat pump. Bill for last two months up to last week was €230. House is 110sqm, heating on 24/7 set to 21c., alu rads no underfloor, Actual readings, we've 2 you kids so dryer and washing machine on every day. Think it was 900kwh day rate and 500 night. Your house is a lot bigger but the underfloor should be more efficient, definitely looks like there is something wrong.

Ramonapixie

Hi everyone, thanks for your thoughts and comments. Our rads run off the pump alright. We adjusted some of the settings and on a daily basis (averaging out the previous bills usage) we seem to be a lot beater the mark where we thought we should be. Will keep a careful eye on it, thanks for all the input.