February 8, 20242 yr Recently our boiler was broken. Whilst we awaited it being fixed we were using two gas fires we hardly ever use. One of them has a pilot light which I leave turned off as it is rarely used, but turned on at this point. I looked at my Octopus app and saw we were using gas. I was surprised as the boiler was broken and thought that there was something wrong. Then I remembered the pilot light. It appears that the pilot light used around 3.5kWh of gas a day. That is 1300kWh a year or around £90 a year in gas. It is pretty small compared to our gas bill, but would be equivalent to 10% of the assumed gas usage in the price cap calculation. Boiler is fixed and the pilot light is turned off. So I am not wasting 3kWh a day, justing using 300!
February 8, 20242 yr So this is a "plumbed" in, fixed gas fire with a pilot light? I thought gas fires used piezo ignition these days - is it really old? Obviously the gas equivalent of standby on all those electrical fittings. Edit: Just remebered my parents had a gas fridge back in the '60's I guess that must have had some form of pilot
February 8, 20242 yr Author 2 hours ago, kandgmitchell said: So this is a "plumbed" in, fixed gas fire with a pilot light? I thought gas fires used piezo ignition these days - is it really old? Obviously the gas equivalent of standby on all those electrical fittings. Edit: Just remebered my parents had a gas fridge back in the '60's I guess that must have had some form of pilot It is a Gasco gas stove just five years old. It does have electric ignition but that lights a pilot light which you can then leave on. I only left it on as we were using it every day for a few days. Otherwise it only gets used a few times a year if that.
February 8, 20242 yr Author 10 minutes ago, SteamyTea said: That is about 100 litres of gas. Seems a lot to me. I thought it was a lot but I googled how much gas does a pilot light use and the answer I got was 14400btus a day which is just over 4kWh so is consistent with the amount I was using. Worth noting as most people with gas probably have a boiler also so would never notice this small usage. There is also a thread about it on MSE where people noted similar usage.
February 8, 20242 yr Just now, AliG said: just over 4kWh About what I used to heat my house yesterday. Are they still allowed to be sold? With electrical equipment there is an upper power rating for standby.
February 8, 20242 yr Author I cannot find any regulations re pilot lights. A boiler with a pilot light would have appalling efficiency hence they have been phased out. Gas fires have appalling efficiency anyway so might well still have them. One of ours does and one doesn’t. Of course many people will have older appliances which would have them. 4kWh would provide around 80litres of hot water a day. I found someone with an old boiler just used for hot water saying the pilot light was 40% of their gas usage! Seems ridiculous that we are regulated down to 0.5W standby on electrical equipment when a pilot light could be using 150-200W so way more than all the standby consumption of electrical equipment in a house.
February 8, 20242 yr Author They still sell the Gazco stove we have. It has a remote control and to use the remote control to switch it off and on you have to leave the pilot light on. The other fire made by Bellfires has full remote electric ignition.
February 27, 20242 yr On 08/02/2024 at 08:47, AliG said: Recently our boiler was broken. Whilst we awaited it being fixed we were using two gas fires we hardly ever use. One of them has a pilot light which I leave turned off as it is rarely used, but turned on at this point. I looked at my Octopus app and saw we were using gas. I was surprised as the boiler was broken and thought that there was something wrong. Then I remembered the pilot light. It appears that the pilot light used around 3.5kWh of gas a day. That is 1300kWh a year or around £90 a year in gas. It is pretty small compared to our gas bill, but would be equivalent to 10% of the assumed gas usage in the price cap calculation. Boiler is fixed and the pilot light is turned off. So I am not wasting 3kWh a day, justing using 300! When I replaced an old non condensing 1980's boiler with a new condensing boiler back in 2009 I saved 4000 kWh per year so around 10kW per day I reckoned 50% was down to the pilot light and 50% was down to condensing eff improvements (as we couldn't get below 72 deg flow temp due to rads sized for 80/60 so condensing was marginal after the initial warm up phase The pilot light was set up to be robust or it would get blown out on a regular basis when it was windy so I'd say the 3.5 was probably quite representative of pilot light wastage
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