Money Saving Boiler Challenge

[SteamyTea]

We have been hearing for months now that we need to turn down the boiler flow temperature.

Now there is a proper website to help.

Anyone fancy giving it a go to see if the advice is sensible/practical/appropriate.

 

Not having gas I am beyond help.

 

https://moneysavingboilerchallenge.com/

[JohnMo]

I have a combi, and tried running DHW at 55 degrees, routinely used 8kWh of gas on DHW alone, no CH on at that point.  That was with some water preheat upstream of the boiler.

 

Long story short, I ended up setting the DHW to 65, then routinely used 6kWh, so actually saved money. Not sure if that's because the boiler has flue gas heat recovery and upstream preheat also.

 

Central heating, I am charging a buffer to 32 degs, flow temp max is set to 50, but generally doesn't go past 45 flow temp, with a return mid to low 30.  Have energy meter just prior to the UFH heating.  Monitoring the energy use, both gas and at the energy meter, shows an efficiency of converting gas to heat of 95%.

[Radian]

3 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Have energy meter just prior to the UFH heating.

Can you tell me a bit more about this energy meter? I could do with something like that.

[JohnMo]

 

2 minutes ago, Radian said:

Can you tell me a bit more about this energy meter? I could do with something like that.

 

[Radian]

"Unfortunately we’re unable to suggest that you reduce your boiler flow temperature if you have a water tank.

Our guidance doesn’t currently cover central heating systems that have a hot water tank. "

 

Shame to put people off unnecessarily, many condensing heat-only boilers (if not most judging from my experience with a few different ones I've checked recently) are set to around 80^oC  The label on my own glow worm installed in 2008 perpetuates the old pre-condensing regime...

 

 

...by showing an example flow setting of 82^oC. I'm pretty sure plenty of people would take this as advice when contemplating what the setting should be.

 

Yet without any additional instruction, people with HW cylinders could be told to set the cylinder stat to 60oC and the boiler to 70oC and gain a bit of extra efficiency. The additional instruction would be that if they have a control system that provides independent HW and CH flow temperatures then take the extra step of reducing the CH in steps of 5^oC until the system seems to take too long to heat the house. It does seem that they're trying to keep it dumbed down a bit too much to me. I mean, things are pretty serious at the moment. People need to apply themselves.

[SteamyTea]

59 minutes ago, Radian said:

People need to apply themselves.

People need to be told that during primary school science lessons.

If 8 year olds cannot be taught how reducing a flow temperature, or a flow rate, will reduce energy transfer, then school teachers need a kicking, not a (expletive deleted)ing pay rise.

 

This reply was partly prompted by two women in the cafe talking about increasing the boiler temperature in their homes because, and this is their words 'it saves money', 'that but on the news was bollocks'.