Ways to save money on your energy bills.

Can you save money on your your energy bills without reducing comfort?

Hello everyone and welcome to another installment of how to save money on your energy bills, save energy and save the planet. Please check out our other blogs to see our top tips and help everyone get more money in their pockets.  I have spent the last two months looking into different ways to help our customers save money on your energy bills, and have tried to break it down to a bit more of a bite-size chunks to help homeowners understand. I am still learning myself as saving energy is a relatively new concept due to the increase in climate change. Having looked at these measure, I was shocked at just how much energy and money we throw away each year. I have tried a lot of the below items in my own home to help reduce my costs as we come into the winter, and have really enjoyed squeezing every single penny I can out of my gas boiler. I know there are now electric alternatives, but with the cost of electric being high and expected to increase even more; we believe the cost of electric alternatives will not be lower then the cost of gas. The environmental benefit of the electric alternatives are without a doubt much better, but with the cost of installation, space requirements and the running costs; I personally do not believe that the electric alternatives are the answer to heating our homes.

We are entering scary times with energy prices expected to shoot up and the cost of living being more then most people can afford. But did you know your existing system could save money on your energy bills without the need to reduce your usage or your habits? Most heating systems are not set up or installed correctly and it is a common belief among homeowners and installers that the boiler is where you can get the most energy efficiency savings. However this is just not true, the heating system is the most important part of getting a boiler to run efficiently. An old inefficient heating system will cost a lot of money to run no matter what type of boiler you have and making some changes to your system could save a lot more then you may think.

Save money on your your energy bills by turning your water down

Combi Boilers

How often do you run a bath or a sink of water to then add cold water in, so you can put your hands in safely?  If you have a combi boiler then learn how to turn it up and down.

Turn your Hot water down to forty-three degrees in summer as this will be more then enough to have a bath/ shower and wash your dishes in. You are already washing your dishes in this temperature water but dont realize as you add cold water. If you prefer to soak your dishes in eighty degrees water for a little while then turn your boiler up while doing dishes and back down when you have finished.

In winter, the incoming mains water will be a lower temperature, so you should turn hot water up to fifty degrees to get forty-three degrees hot water.

Doing this will save money on your energy bills of around ten percent of your gas bill.

Hot water cylinders

If you have a hot water cylinder then this is harder as you need the heat to prevent bacteria. However, you can reduce your heat up times to only when needed, Setting up your hot water to come on at 7am to 9am and 4pm to 8pm will save around ten percent on your gas bill. There is no point keeping the cylinder hot when not in use.

Save money on your your energy bills by getting to know your heating and hot water system.

Yesterday, I visited a property and the homeowner said: “the heating system might as well be a spaceship”. This is far too common and is the reason that a lot of bills are sky high. As a nation, we rarely look at our heating systems and doing your research could save money on your energy bill of approximately eighty percent.

New boilers have so many awesome features which can reduce costs and energy usage. Spending a few hours getting to know your heating system could save you hundreds of pounds each year.

Why is range rating your boiler important?

What on earth is range rating? Range rating is where the boiler is set to use less gas then the boiler is set to use out of the box. Most heating systems in homes these days are over sized. The reason for this is because many installers will replace old inefficient boilers with the same output boiler and the introduction of combi boilers means that most homes require high output for the hot water, but there was no way to reduce the output for the heating. When replacing boilers, installers have not taken into account the many changes that have taken place since the old boiler was installed. This includes: new more efficient radiators being installed, increased insulation levels or changes in building fabric.

Range rating is also particularly important for combi boilers as the boiler is designed for hot water usage. So lets look at a twenty-eight kilowatt combi boiler. The hot water will require twenty-eighty kilowatt, but the heating will usually require less then twelve kilowatts. This means that there is sixteen kilowatts of heat being lost each and every hour. So how can we value this?

Currently the gas price is approximately 7p per kilowatt hour (August 2022). That means for each hour the boiler is in use, we are using 0.84p but throwing £1.12 in the bin

0.07p x 12kw used = 0.84p per hour

0.07p x 16kw wasted = £1.12 per hour

You can easily do a heat loss calculation online. This is done by measuring each room and then inputting the values into a “heat loss calculator”. You can then add these values together to give a total heat loss for your house, so you can work out what size boiler you should have. I really like the city plumbing one as it saves each room after it is done and gives you the total heat loss calculation. Do not forget to add the hot water cylinder requirement if required. These calculators are not the most accurate method as there are many other factors that need to be accounted for but gives a rough estimate.

However, before doing any calculations we need to know if your boiler can be range rated. This information is usually hidden and hard to find. The easiest way to find out is to ask your boiler manufacturer. Ring them up on their technical helpline to find out.

Once you have the information and know it can be done, you may need a heating engineer to do this as it is usually in the hidden settings, but the cost of a heating engineer will be a lot less then you will save money on your energy bills.

Unfortunately, not all boilers can be range rated which is shocking as combi boilers have been available for over 20+ years which means we are burning approximately fifty percent extra gas then we really need to.

Save money on your energy bills by turning down your heating.

The new part L building regulations state that “all new” heating systems should be designed to fifty-four degrees flow temperature. This is a brilliant idea as the energy required to heat water from twenty degrees (average water temperature when cold) to eighty degrees is a lot higher then the energy required to heat water from twenty degrees to fifty-four degrees. However, most systems will struggle to be able to cope with fifty-four degrees. This is due to pipework and radiator sizes not being designed for fifty-four degrees flow temperatures.

We recommend lowering your heating temperature by five degrees per week to see if you are still comfortable within the home. This could save you approximately thirty percent on your gas bill each month.

This is where setting times on your heating really comes into its own because if you set the heating to come on approximately one hour before you need it; the house will be warm for when you need it. If you wait until you need it to heat the house then you will want the heat up time to be faster, so will need higher temperatures.

Please note: Boiler with Cylinders need a minimum of seventy degrees Flow temperature to get your hot water to the required temperature. 

Save money on your your energy bills by reducing your pump speed.

How can slower speeds help to reduce costs? Surely the higher the speed, the better the heat?

Think of it as a car if you drive at seventy miles per hour everywhere; you will get there faster then driving at thirty miles per hour, but you will not see the sights along the way. The same is true for the pump speed. The slower the speed; the more heat is released into the radiators. This will reduce your costs and increase efficiency.

The boiler will work harder as the pump is pushing the kilowatts away from the radiators, so it is using more kilowatts to produce the same amount of heat to each radiator.

Save money by power flushing your system.

Now think of the car again! Your travelling down the motorway and stuck in a traffic jam; you see the sights, but you soon get bored seeing the same sights over and over again. A sludged up system will disperse all of its heat a lot quicker when the system is sludged up and will struggle to heat all the radiators which will reduce efficiency, flow and increase costs. In a lot of other countries homeowners will flush their own systems and so it is possible to be done by homeowners with a lot of how-to videos online. Alternatively, if you get an engineer to do it then make sure they take a whole day to do it.

Renewing radiators

Old radiators are approximately thirty percent less efficient then new radiators. This is due to the material they are made from and the fins which help increase convection from the radiator to the air and the fabric of the building. It is extremely difficult to find the heat output of older radiators but here we have compared old Stelrad radiators to the newer versions in this table:

As you can see the older radiators are approximately thirty percent less efficient then the newer radiators supplied by Stelrad. This means your boiler will be working thirty percent harder to keep the room at the correct temperature. Designing radiators to fifty-four degrees flow temperature does mean that the radiator needs to increase in size. This can be up to 3 times larger then current radiators so this is definitely something to consider as many homes do not have the space for the larger radiators. To help with this, you would need to increase insulation levels inside (and now you can add insulation outside) the home.

Get to know your gas meter readings

I recently tried to understand my gas readings and I was shocked to see how difficult it all was.

Your boiler is in kilowatts per hour. There is usually a label on the boiler which will tell you how much the boiler will use, but remember this is the net output not the gross input. So for a thirty-two kilowatt boiler, you will more then likely be using around thirty-five kilowatt of gas per hour to give thirty-two kilowatts of heat to your system.

Your gas meter, however, is recorded in m3/hr. To get your m3/hr we divide the kw by 10.76 (calorific value of gas), so for every hour you use your boiler your meter will move 3.34 units.

Now to work this out in pounds and pennies, we convert it back to kw/hr so 3.34 x 10.76 = thirty-six kilowatts per hour of gas

thirty-six kilowatts x 0.07p = £2.52 per hour.

Multiply this by the amount of time we use our boilers (lets say seven hours heating and one hour hot water)

8 x £2.24 = £18 per day.

Now if we do the same calculation but with a reduce amount of gas to the heating and the same amount of gas to the hot water; going on the assumption that the hot water is used for 1 hour per day.

thirty-six kilowatts x one hour + eighteen kilowatts x seven hours x 0.07p = £11.34 per day

As you can see, range rating can dramatically reduce the cost with absolutely no reduction in heat or comfort levels.

If we mulitply these numbers for a 30 day month we would be saving £200 every month with absolutely no change in heating habits or comfort levels inside the home.

The added benefit of this is most of the boilers which can be range rated also modulate down (automatic process done within the boiler), so could be using as little as three kilowatts per hour.

Hopefully that has not hurt your brain too much, and you can see exactly how you are throwing £200 away each month you have heating on.

Balancing heating systems

Balancing systems is one of the most important things to do to keep the heat inside radiators and increase efficiency in boilers. We want a twenty degrees difference between the boiler output and the boiler input as this increases condensing and efficiency of the boiler. Most combi boilers in the UK are not set up properly which means they are more likely to be eighty-six percent efficient then the ninety-two to ninety-six percent efficiency that is stated in the manuals. There are three main ways to balance systems:

Turning down lock shields

Turning down lock shields helps to keep the heat inside the radiator and reduce the amount of energy which is wasted. This is done by removing the cover on the lock shield and turning it down until you have a twenty degrees difference between the inlet and outlet of the radiator. This method is rarely successful due to the radiator valves having a wide opening, so can not reduce flow as well as required. This method is still worth doing to help with reducing the flow if you are on a tight budget as the other options are quite expensive.

Balancing radiator valves

These are the most expensive option with each radiator valve costing around £30, with the average home having seven radiators, it can easily start to add up to an expensive cost of installation. However, if this is with the budget; this is by far the best option. The valves limit the amount of flow going into a radiator and slow the water down at the precise point of use which maximizes the heat output of the radiators. Once installed each radiator needs to be adjusted to the correct setting to allow the correct amount of heat to be released into the radiator. This will then provide a twenty degrees difference between the boiler output and the boiler input which will then increase the efficiency of the radiators and the boiler.

Balancing valve on boiler return

A balancing valve on the return to the boiler, reduces the flow around the system by introducing a restriction at the last point before the boiler. This works by slowing down the flow to all radiators and allowing the radiators to absorb as much of the heat as possible. This can vary in price depending on the method used. You could use a gate valve which would supply the same restriction on the return to the boiler at a very low cost or you could get a flow restrictor which is a lot more accurate and would also provide a restriction. Both methods would provide an easy option for getting your twenty degrees difference between the boiler output and the boiler input which will then increase the efficiency of the radiators and the boiler.

What Have I done in my own home?

At home, I started by doing a heat loss calculation which gave me a total heat loss of 5.5kw which was absolutley shocking to say the least. I then found and installed a new Worcester Bosch twenty-eight kilowatts A rated combi boiler, This replaced a perfectly good twenty-eight kilowatts Baxi A rated combi boiler, but the Worcester Bosch boiler can be range rated down to twelve kilowatts, so this will save me at least fifty percent on my heating bills. The Worcester boiler can also modulate down to three kilowatts. I am hoping that this alone will save me over seventy percent on my energy bill.

I have turned down my hot water to forty-three degrees which has absolutely shocked me how many benefits I can get from this. The most significant of these is less steam in the bathroom which in turn will mean less mould and limescale, less cleaning and a much better experience all round in the bathroom. The biggest thing for me was if the shower would be comfrotable at forty-three degrees, which is was. Fortunately we have a dishwasher which uses less energy then washing dishes by hand so we do not need to change the temperature to anything higher then 43 degrees.

I have sealed all the holes externally to ensure that the cold can’t sneak in through all the nooks and crannies.

I have changed the radiator valves to be at the top of the radiators. This increases efficiency of the radiators as well as comfort levels within the home.  This means we are no longer over heating the room as the radiators sense the temperature when the top half of the room is heated. The Thermostatic radiator valves (TRV’s) then begin the process of closing which takes around 40 minutes. This means that by the time the TRV is shut, the whole room should reach the required temperature without over shooting and cauisng the room to be too hot. It also increases flow and efficiency through the radiator.

I know for a fact that the radiators in my home are not big enough for fifty-four degrees boiler output temperature as i have down the calculations. However I have reduced my boiler to sixty degrees and will begin the process of reducing the heat when the weather starts to get colder to see what our radiators can cope with.

I have also balanced the system using the lock shields (I know I am being cheap) and added a balancing valve to the return of the boiler to maximize efficiency.

I am really excited to see how much we save this winter and how much more comfortable we are within our home. All of these changes will no doubt require a change in usage and will need adjusting as we go along, but if my bills are as low as I expect them to be then I feel it would all be worth it. As a family, we do not like being in a hot home and perhaps the biggest fight this winter will be keeping windows shut, so that we do not end up having to pump more gas in to keep the house warm, but the plan is that with a comfortable level of heat, the whole thought process of opening doors and windows will be removed and we will feel comfortable in our homes while paying a whole lot less on our gas bills.