New Bolier but Eating Kerosene!!

bradygaz

:mad:

We are in a rental house (4 bed detached, circa 2200 sqft).

New boiler installed in the summer. House has cavity walls (early 1980 build) which have never been pumped with insulation. Some rooms have warm board. Dont even have all radiators on.

Thermostat set at 18c-19c which makes house warm but if want hot water need to trun it to 20c.

System set to run 5am - 7.30am and 4pm to 6pm with maybe an hour boost during the day. have twin babies so wife hits it when a chill in the house in early afternoon and home from a walk.

Used 700L from Oct 3 to Nov 30 (59 days) and now another 700L up to yesterday (54 days)

What the actual hell?

Boiler is in back shed and discovered pipes to house are running around conservatory so a distance of 40 ft before get inside. Look to be 1/2 inch cream coloured poly pipe.

This use of oil cant be normal. Good jaysus!!

Is this distance my main issue here?

Pitch n Putt

bradygaz wrote: »

:mad:

We are in a rental house (4 bed detached, circa 2200 sqft).

New boiler installed in the summer. House has cavity walls (early 1980 build) which have never been pumped with insulation. Some rooms have warm board. Dont even have all radiators on.

Thermostat set at 18c-19c which makes house warm but if want hot water need to trun it to 20c.

System set to run 5am - 7.30am and 4pm to 6pm with maybe an hour boost during the day. have twin babies so wife hits it when a chill in the house in early afternoon and home from a walk.

Used 700L from Oct 3 to Nov 30 (59 days) and now another 700L up to yesterday (54 days)

What the actual hell?

Boiler is in back shed and discovered pipes to house are running around conservatory so a distance of 40 ft before get inside. Look to be 1/2 inch cream coloured poly pipe.

This use of oil cant be normal. Good jaysus!!

Is this distance my main issue here?

Definitely piping has to be bigger than 1/2 inch. Should be 3/4 inch minimum. What size is boiler ? Should be name plate on it or Kw size

bradygaz

It is a C35 Firebird EnviroGreen (Output (kW): 26-35kW)

Maybe it is 3/4 inch but actual void is only size of little finger.

My dad was gardening and put spade through a pipe only 3 inches below a flowerbed and this had running hot water in it. Two similar pipes so presume are the heating pipes to house as followed them around in to house. But pipe coming from boiler and across shed and down in to ground is gun barrel, prob 2" pipe. Whole house system is gun barrel apparently.

Car99

bradygaz wrote: »

:mad:

We are in a rental house (4 bed detached, circa 2200 sqft).

New boiler installed in the summer. House has cavity walls (early 1980 build) which have never been pumped with insulation. Some rooms have warm board. Dont even have all radiators on.

Thermostat set at 18c-19c which makes house warm but if want hot water need to trun it to 20c.

System set to run 5am - 7.30am and 4pm to 6pm with maybe an hour boost during the day. have twin babies so wife hits it when a chill in the house in early afternoon and home from a walk.

Used 700L from Oct 3 to Nov 30 (59 days) and now another 700L up to yesterday (54 days)

What the actual hell?

Boiler is in back shed and discovered pipes to house are running around conservatory so a distance of 40 ft before get inside. Look to be 1/2 inch cream coloured poly pipe.

This use of oil cant be normal. Good jaysus!!

Is this distance my main issue here?

For comparison for you , our house is 2500sqft built in 2008, grant condensing boiler , oil timed on for 60 mins in the morning and 90 mins in the evening, heats all the rads and hot water. Boiler in the garage 40ft piping to the house. 300l steel hot water tank in the house. House remains around 20 degrees throughout the day. We also have a solid fuel NON boiler stove in the main living area which is lit in the evening or earlier depending on the weather.
We use 5.7L oil per day for 150 mins run time
You use 11.7 L oil per day for 330 mins run time per day .
I'm burning just over 2 litres oil per hour.
Your burning just over 2 litres oil per hour runtime .

I'd say your burner is doing what it should comparing it to mine.

Pitch n Putt

bradygaz wrote: »

It is a C35 Firebird EnviroGreen (Output (kW): 26-35kW)

Maybe it is 3/4 inch but actual void is only size of little finger.

My dad was gardening and put spade through a pipe only 3 inches below a flowerbed and this had running hot water in it. Two similar pipes so presume are the heating pipes to house as followed them around in to house. But pipe coming from boiler and across shed and down in to ground is gun barrel, prob 2" pipe. Whole house system is gun barrel apparently.

Very very rough calculation for

35kw boiler running constantly for an hour will use 3.4 litres per hour.

4.5 hr run time x 3.4 = 15.75 litres per day x 60 days = 945 litres.

Your boiler will never be running constantly once initial warm up is over.

bradygaz

Pitch n Putt wrote: »

Very very rough calculation for

35kw boiler running constantly for an hour will use 3.4 litres per hour.

4.5 hr run time x 3.4 = 15.75 litres per day x 60 days = 945 litres.

Your boiler will never be running constantly once initial warm up is over.

So my issue is actual "run time" within my set times? Hence lack of insulation within house is losing heat and so thermostat is kicking the boiler on as once it knocks off the temperature in house drops within 10 mins.

John.G

Very simple calcs, allow say 5.5 hrs/day (1 hour boost) then calc 1 shows that you are averaging 107.5 kwh/(5.5hr) day allowing for 85% boiler effic which equates to 19.5 kwh/hr which is certainly fairly hefty even allowing for system water contents warm up.
calc2 shows that you used 1400 litrs in 113 days which = 12.4 litres per (5.5hr) day,to put it in perspective, my cavity BLOCK house averages ~ 7.5 to 8 litre/day but heating is on (boiler enabled) for at least 15 hours/day and my house requires ~ 5.5 kwh/hr.

I would first check that you are not heating up your garden with your flow/return pipes, get hold of a scanner and compare the boiler flow temperature to where it enters the hose and ditto with the return and this will narrow down your quest.

Firebird will tell you the dispatched output of your boiler but assuming 30kw then I would expect your boiler burner to be firing ~ 75% of the boiler enabled time which would certainly reflect your usage. Just time the burner ON time in secs and the OFF time in secs, then divide the burner (ON time)/(ON+OFF times) to give you the % boiler firing time, get the actual output from Firebird and you will get a very accurate picture of what your energy demand actually is.

bradygaz

John.G wrote: »

Very simple calcs, allow say 5.5 hrs/day (1 hour boost) then calc 1 shows that you are averaging 107.5 kwh/(5.5hr) day allowing for 85% boiler effic which equates to 19.5 kwh/hr which is certainly fairly hefty even allowing for system water contents warm up.
calc2 shows that you used 700 litrs in 113 days which = 12.4 litres per (5.5hr) day,to put it in perspective, my cavity BLOCK house averages ~ 7.5 to 8 litre/day but heating is on (boiler enabled) for at least 15 hours/day and my house requires ~ 5.5 kwh/hr.

I would first check that you are not heating up your garden with your flow/return pipes, get hold of a scanner and compare the boiler flow temperature to where it enters the hose and ditto with the return and this will narrow down your quest.

Thanks for the comparison. I need to look in to the garden more as in the shed there is two gun barrel pipes with manual valves. One is for upstairs and one is downstairs. But we saw only two small poly pipes under the flowerbed which go in to house. But here should be return for both upstairs and downstairs eh?

Thanks for all help. Will get someone on the case as we need to improve effeciency.

TheBoyConor

If the boiler itself, not the room stats, are set to a high temperature the system will run less efficiently as the exhaust gas will be a higher temperature, thus losing heat.
Set the boiler stat to a lower temperature, say 50*. That way the burner will fire for longer cycles to heat the rooms to the required temperature but it will be doing so more efficiently.
Then set your immersion heater to boost the temperature of the hot water cylinder to 65* once a week to kill of any legionella bacteria.

If you have gunbarrel piping running to the house there is also the possibility that it is leaking and pissing hot water and energy down into the ground. Have you had the system pressure tested for leaks?

There is also the possibility that someone is robbing your oil from the tank. It happens.

John.G

Over the last 65 days since last fill my average is 8.58 LPD.

Tom44

Customer's ask me, " What is the most efficient setting? "

Simple answer is OFF

Everything else costs, amount of hours, size and type of house and how many radiators on all the time? (you don't need heat everywhere all the time.

You do have a good "A" rated high efficiency boiler, imagine the costs if it was a bad boiler????