On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 09:50:45 +0000, Tracy wrote:

Hi I have gas heating my hot water cylinder and use approx 22KW of gas per
day for this. Is this about normal for four 5min power showers per day plus
hot water for hand washing and dish washing etc? It works out about £3.75
per week as I pay a higher rate for the first 1465KW per quarter, so in the
summer my gas costs me more than the winter because I use less of it

The hot water is a Johnson & Starley Janus system that is always on as there
is no convenient way to turn it off

My hot water cylinder is foam coated plus it has an additional cylinder
jacket and all the hot pipes have a foam type of insulation.

So any suggestions as to how I can save more money on my gas?
Regards, Tracy

I assume you mean 22kw hours i.e. the equivalent of 22kw for one hour each
day. (BTW how did you measure this?) 22kw is roughly the output of a small
combi so it's like running this at full DHW output for an hour each day.
Your power shower is probably about this so that accounts for about 4 * 5
= 20 minutes = 1/3 of the total. You'd have to be running a hot tap at
full output for another 40 minutes for the rest, so your usage does seem a
bit high. Either your power showers are using a lot more than you estimate
or there are high losses somewhere in the system or a combination of the
two.

One source of heat loss you probably haven't accounted for is the boiler.
Johnson & Sarley implies a warm air heating unit and I guess this has a
permanent pilot light which is probably burning up a significant amount of
energy even when it's doing nothing.