"Helen" wrote in message
ups.com...

John wrote:

SNIP


As a first step and making the assumption you have alternative cooking
means
try taking a tank level reading. turning off the Rayburn for a week or
more
then take a second reading to estimate the oil usage over that period
without the Rayburn running. Then repeat with the Rayburn running and
provided there isn't an extreme change in weather conditions you should
have
a reasonable basis to judge what your course of action should be. (Oil
usage
meters are available but not usually worth the cost here.)

Our tank doesn't have any form of reading on it - do you mean just
marking the tank, turn the Rayburn off and see how much has been used?

Correct - thats why I suggested a week or more for the test


I thought of doing this and didn't think it was a particularly accurate
way of going about things (am more than likely wrong on this count) -
have looked into oil usage meters but they seem quite costly as we
don't want to monitor the usage long term

The rayburn (and Aga) uses a natural draught vapourising oil burner as
opposed to a pressure jet and such vapourising burneres are NOT efficient
by
any stretch of the imagination.
As regards the actual central heating usage this depends vastly on the
efficiency of the boiler, size of and insulation/draught proofing of the
house, occupation/control patterns etc. The above tests will give you a
better handle on the problems. It may be that the actual usage by the
Rayburn is high but affordable whereas the heating may be the culprit (I
don't know your financial circumstances so I cannot give an opinion) so
it
could be that your house is leaking heat all over the place.
Can you fill in some of the blanks for us?

Financially we can cope with the current costs - however we don't have
money to burn so would like to make what we have as efficient as
possible. Not sure what you mean about filling in the blanks - we have
double glazing in all bar two of our windows - the front of the house
has three largish windows (about 3ft x 6ft each) which are double
glazed. The loft is inaccessible - and is something we need to do
something about.

The loft sounds like a good candidate for leaking heat. Also room sizes and
outside wall areas very pertinent. I suggest using a heat loss program such
as the Myson or Barlo ones