Penners
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The benefit of having a youthful husband, perhaps?Moo said:
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Nemesis
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I thought in your case it was a matter of alcohol being used as a preservative?
Back to the subject of conserving energy not yoof, I just got a verbal quotation for a wood pellet boiler, installed with flue, around £7200. Bearing in mind I reckon I can fit an oil condenser and a tank for under £2000, I wonder how many years it will take me to recoup well over £5000 in fuel savings?
Penners
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Having seen pictures of your chateau, I would say about 18 months!!GK said:
skier-hughes
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GK in your searches for pellet boilers, did you ever come across any boilers that could take larger sized pieces of wood?
I'm still considering one if I can find one, as I get loads of free wood.
The other option is to buy a commercial shredder if the pellet type boilers will take that sort of fuel.
Graham
NT,
I'd never seen the atlantic heaters before, it just happened I opened the mag as I was reading the forum, are they no good?
I'm still considering one if I can find one, as I get loads of free wood.
The other option is to buy a commercial shredder if the pellet type boilers will take that sort of fuel.
Graham
NT,
I'd never seen the atlantic heaters before, it just happened I opened the mag as I was reading the forum, are they no good?
Aidan
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skier-hughes said:
http://www.fbcgroup.co.uk/baxi.html
skier-hughes said:
They're just electric heaters, like any other electric heater. With added marketing blurb. And any resistance heater is going to cost a pretty penny to heat a house with.
Non-storage electric heaters are simply the most expensive type of heating possible, and are not worth installing even if given them free.
There seems to be a series of attempts to re-market the simple old resistance heater to make it appear desirable. The oil filled radiator is perhaps the oldest of these, then there were ceramic heaters, now these... theyre all just electric heaters with the same 100% efficiency and the same very high run costs.
NT
With our current central heating we have a traditional oil boiler heating radiators and a domestic hot water cylinder. We also have an electric immersion heater in the hot water cylinder. With all the recent price increases in oil and electricity, does anybody know if it is cheaper to heat the hot water with oil or immersion heater these days? I tend to think that having the boiler on during the summer heating itself and a lot of pipework to get to the cylinder just to heat domestic hot water seems like a bad idea? In the winter when the boiler itself keps the kitchen warm and all the heat produced is wanted in the house it doesn't seem so bad. Are there any figures that anyone knows about that give £/Calorie (or joule or whatever the new-fangled thing is!) and even approximate conversion efficiencies of oil and electricity to hot water?
Penners
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Interesting question, Me!
I'm in the middle of an experiment to try and find the answer to it - for my house at least.
Last winter we ran the oil-fired Esse range (does cooking, water and central heating) and the immersion heater. My thinking was that the immersion would keep the cylinder warm all the time and that would mean burning less oil in the Esse.
This winter, I'm going to try doing without the immersion heater, leaving all the water heating to the Esse. It is timed to run for 90 minutes in the morning and 4 hours in the evening. We have a very large, factory insulated cylinder, so I'm hoping that we won't run out of hot ater during the day.
I'm obviously keeping tabs on our oil consumption.
I'm in the middle of an experiment to try and find the answer to it - for my house at least.
Last winter we ran the oil-fired Esse range (does cooking, water and central heating) and the immersion heater. My thinking was that the immersion would keep the cylinder warm all the time and that would mean burning less oil in the Esse.
This winter, I'm going to try doing without the immersion heater, leaving all the water heating to the Esse. It is timed to run for 90 minutes in the morning and 4 hours in the evening. We have a very large, factory insulated cylinder, so I'm hoping that we won't run out of hot ater during the day.
I'm obviously keeping tabs on our oil consumption.
Lime
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My gas is nearly as expensive as my 10 hour cheap rate electricity.NT said:
As electricity is 100% efficient compared to my gas wall heaters that are about 70-75% efficient the difference is now debatable.
Ten years ago gas was 3-5 times cheaper.
Electric heat to water is 100% efficient, but the electricity unit cost is high.
Efficiencies for boilers are listed on a sedbuk site, lets see...
http://www.sedbuk.com/
The system efficiency will be lower if the boiler cycles just to heat the HW, as its heating itself and the pipes too, and that heat is lost not to the water.
Oil heating of water will most likely still be cheaper.
This might fail to be the case with some cast iron boilers with very low efficiencies eg 55%. There you've got low efficiency, plus heat storage and loss in the iron exchanger and pipework.
NT
Efficiencies for boilers are listed on a sedbuk site, lets see...
http://www.sedbuk.com/
The system efficiency will be lower if the boiler cycles just to heat the HW, as its heating itself and the pipes too, and that heat is lost not to the water.
Oil heating of water will most likely still be cheaper.
This might fail to be the case with some cast iron boilers with very low efficiencies eg 55%. There you've got low efficiency, plus heat storage and loss in the iron exchanger and pipework.
NT
Lime
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My cheap rate electricity costs 4.75p per kilowatt hour whereas my gas costs 2.83p per kilowatt hour.NT said:
When factoring in the 75% efficiency of the gas heaters the cost per kilowatt hour for gas rises to 3.77p.
The difference has substantially reduced in the last year or so.
Penners
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That's an interesting observation, NT.NT said:
Electricity may be 100% efficient at the point of usage, but (assuming non-nuclear) it still relies on the combustion of fossil fuels at the point of generation, which is certainly not 100% efficient.
Then there's the voltage drop across the grid....
Be aware that some E7 type schemes have higher day rates than flat rate tariffs. When this is so, youre effectively paying more than the quoted rate for your night time leccy.
All energy conversions have losses except one, and thats the conversion of electricity to heat.
NT
All energy conversions have losses except one, and thats the conversion of electricity to heat.
NT
mark_j_k
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Did there used to be oil heating? Not oil fired, but with oil in the pipes that gets pumped around instead of water.
Sombebody told me this but I can't say I've heard of it myself, oil filled radiators (electic ones) yes, but not umped oil ones.
Sombebody told me this but I can't say I've heard of it myself, oil filled radiators (electic ones) yes, but not umped oil ones.
NT said:
Excellent site NT, thank you very much.
OK, this is all based on numbers I've found on the internet and some rather rusty O level maths, so please will anyone let me know if I get this wrong -
1 tonne of kerosene = 1128.97 litres = 11630 KWh
so 11630/1228.97 = 9.46 KWh/l
but my boiler is only 70% efficient so 9.46 x 70% = 6.62 KWh/l
assuming 30p/litre for oil then 30p/6.62 KWh = 4.53p/KWh.
Currently I pay 8.12p/KWh for electricity, so it looks like oil is much cheaper than electricity.
Also, Penners, please do let me know the outcome of your experiment, but I have a couple of thoughts.
Firstly, if your cylinder is like mine then the heating coil is lower down than the immersion heater, so if I have both on like you did last winter then the immersion will only come on if I use a lot of hot water during a boiler 'off' period. Is this the same with yours?
Secondly, are you keeping a record of the winter external temperatures over the two years? I would have thought that the differences between a cold and a mild winter would have a big impact on your oil usage and confuse any figures you are getting from your immersion heater use?
Penners
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You've correctly described my cylinder. It's about 5ft high (can't remember its capacity), so the primary coil is lower than the reach of the immersion heater. This means that the immersion only heats about the top 60% of the cylinder, while the coil does the whole thing.Me said:
Nevertheless, I did find last winter that the immersion came on from time to time during the day, when we were using the dishwasher or washing machine, etc. With the immersion switched off, it is, of course, possible that the morning and evening boiler burns are having to be supplemented by the heating coils in the white goods, but we don't seem to run out of hot water, even just before the evening burn, so I don't think this is the case.
As to the outside temperature - no, sorry. I'm not that methodical! This is far from a truly scientific experiment. I just want to get a vague idea of what happens, and extrapolate a reasonable conclusion from it.
I'll do my best to remember to report back next Spring, but given that I can barely remember what I had for breakfast today, don't hold your breath!