Excessive Gas Consumption - Not sure what to try next!

mjr_havoc said:
It varies room by room. But essentially I only have my study heated during the day and then by evening the other rooms we use are heated ready for when everyone gets home. During the night only the bedrooms have a temp set to stop people freezing overnight.
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So you keep your study radiator heated all day and all other radiators are off?
 
Mister Banks said:
But your Octopus gas usage suggests that something is turning your boiler on periodically all day long. How have you setup the heating schedules in Tado?
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There are spikes when the hot water is heated (only for a half hour in the morning and evening). But the rest of the usage will be when the radiators are calling for heat based on the schedules. I also have "early start" turned on so that the radiators turn on prematurely to ensure the set temperature is reached by the scheduled times.

Just had a look though and it seems one room's usage is substantially higher than the rest (it has an old fireplace which you can feel a cold draught from so presumably it it losing all heat from here, resulting in the radiator constantly fighting it). I am going to turn off that room completely to see if it is the culprit...
 
mjr_havoc said:
There are spikes when the hot water is heated (only for a half hour in the morning and evening). But the rest of the usage will be when the radiators are calling for heat based on the schedules. I also have "early start" turned on so that the radiators turn on prematurely to ensure the set temperature is reached by the scheduled times.

Just had a look though and it seems one room's usage is substantially higher than the rest (it has an old fireplace which you can feel a cold draught from so presumably it it losing all heat from here, resulting in the radiator constantly fighting it). I am going to turn off that room completely to see if it is the culprit...
Click to expand...
Also turn off "early start" and see if that also improves gas usage, I have a similar mode on my Wiser system called "comfort mode" but it just wastes gas IMO.
 
Mister Banks said:
Also turn off "early start" and see if that also improves gas usage, I have a similar mode on my Wiser system called "comfort mode" but it just wastes gas IMO.
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I think early start may be a big culprit as for the room which I mentioned has an old fireplace with a draught, it seems the trv was going nuts and calling for heat pretty much all day. I am going to keep the heating off in that room and see how I go for the next few days (at least) and turn off early start on all others.

Thank you.
 
fourtytwo said:
Your heating a lot more than just your study, the boiler in a cold garage and the entire pipe run out and back, a considerable additional heat loss.
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Very true. The pipes do have insulation on them though which would help a little I guess.
 
mjr_havoc said:
Here is a screenshot from my Octopus app. I turned off the boiler at about 10am for a couple of hours so you can see zero usage until I turned it back on. The boiler is installed in the garage so was cold before I turned it back on. However the gas usage only peaked to about 10 kWh as you can see from the picture.
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Here is mine, from 18th January, for a three bed semi. I notice you seem to run your heating around the 24 hours. My system, sets the temperature back to 14C, but it almost never, ever gets to 14C, so the boiler only extremly rarely needs to fire during the night hours. It increases to 18C, at 10am, where you see the 5Kwh consumption. On an evening, we now settle down in the living room, taking the thermostat in with us, and light a 1Kw gas fire. The peaks between 18:00 and 20:00, is the boiler firing to reheat the cylinder, after a bath.

I
1737406019587.png
 
mjr_havoc said:
I think early start may be a big culprit as for the room which I mentioned has an old fireplace with a draught, it seems the trv was going nuts and calling for heat pretty much all day. I am going to keep the heating off in that room and see how I go for the next few days (at least) and turn off early start on all others.

Thank you.
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Just a thought but what is the boiler flow temperature set to? Don't have it higher than 65c.
 
mjr_havoc said:
I think early start may be a big culprit as for the room which I mentioned has an old fireplace with a draught, it seems the trv was going nuts and calling for heat pretty much all day. I am going to keep the heating off in that room and see how I go for the next few days (at least) and turn off early start on all others.

Thank you.
Click to expand...
Let's us know how you get on.
 
Harry Bloomfield said:

Here is mine, from 18th January, for a three bed semi. I notice you seem to run your heating around the 24 hours. My system, sets the temperature back to 14C, but it almost never, ever gets to 14C, so the boiler only extremly rarely needs to fire during the night hours. It increases to 18C, at 10am, where you see the 5Kwh consumption. On an evening, we now settle down in the living room, taking the thermostat in with us, and light a 1Kw gas fire. The peaks between 18:00 and 20:00, is the boiler firing to reheat the cylinder, after a bath.

I
View attachment 370106
Click to expand...
Thanks so much.

Now that I've turned off the heating in the offending room, and turned off early start across the board on my Tado system. I will use your screenshot as a reference in the next few days and see how I go.
 
Mister Banks said:
Let's us know how you get on.
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Most certainly will do.

That one room was half the entire consumption for January so far! Absolutely mad! I know someone said to ignore the Tado consumption data, but in relative terms it is useful to see what each room's usage is.
 
It sounds like you thought you're running the boiler just for your office radiator, but it turns out there was another radiator calling for heat as well. If you succeed in just heating your office radiator, your boiler is going to cycle constantly as it's unlikely it will be able modulate down low enough for one radiator to dump all the heat. This is more a concern for longevity of the boiler than gas consumption.
Turning down the flow temperature will help with consumption as well, as your boiler will be more likely to condense if the return temperature is <55°C.
 
Why Not Indeed said:
It sounds like you thought you're running the boiler just for your office radiator, but it turns out there was another radiator calling for heat as well. If you succeed in just heating your office radiator, your boiler is going to cycle constantly as it's unlikely it will be able modulate down low enough for one radiator to dump all the heat. This is more a concern for longevity of the boiler than gas consumption.
Turning down the flow temperature will help with consumption as well, as your boiler will be more likely to condense if the return temperature is <55°C.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your insight. I have tried to mitigate the cycling issue by not having standard TRVs on the towel rails in the bathrooms. So when any radiator with a Tado smart TRV calls for heat, it also heats up the towel rails.

I have set the flow temp to 65 as suggested earlier, hope this is ok.
 
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