"Pete Brown" wrote in message
...
On 10:16 21 Sep 2009, Toby wrote:


"Pete Brown" wrote in message
...
Approx how much gas gets used to heat up a ordinary gas cooker's
oven? Approximately how much does it cost?

I need to run my oven for about 10 minutes to heat it up to Regulo
6. But I can't get a reading of gas used because my meter is so
cronky.


Surely your meter can tell you this information, otherwise how are
they going to bill you if it is not taking an accurate reading?

As the oven is not going to use a lot of gas to heat it up, the main
numbers probably won't go up, but the part units should...
When you are using gas, does a dial turn round?

If so, turn off any other gas appliances and count the number of
turns in, say, a minute, then you know how much gas it is using per
minute, then times this by the amount of time it takes to het up
(assuming the oven does not modulate down as it gets near the set
point!) then look at your last bill to see the calculation used, and
the units the meter is in (Ft or m3) and work it out.

Different ovens of different sizes and amount of insulation levels
are going to be different.


I originally tried what you suggested but my gas meter doesn't seem
sensitive enough to give an actual measurement for 10 minutes of gas.
That's why I posted. Here's a pic of the meter:

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=28vzrkp&s=4

The dial on the right goes round about once for 10 minutes of gas to heat
up the oven. However the digits don't advance.

I have no idea how to interpret the meter's reading. I think the pic
above shows "9612.90" cubic feet. Is that right? Maybe the dial has to
rotate 100 times to move this to "9613.00".

You have a U6 imperial meter which records gas usage in cubic feet.
The white digits are hundreds of cubic feet and the red digits are tens of
cubic feet so the moving red counter will revolve 10 times to increment the
white digit by 1.

The test dial records 1 cubic foot of gas per revolution and this is used to
determine the gas rate of the appliance under test.

Using a stop watch accurately time how long it take to complete one
revolution of the dial.
It is difficult to gas rate an oven because it could get up to temperature
before the end of the test and modulate down to a lower flame and perhaps
this is why it took around 10 minutes to revolve the test meter.

I turned my oven to 9 and left the door open to test and recorded
405seconds.

Divide 3600 (seconds in 1 hour) by time in seconds for 1 complete revolution
gives gas rate in cubic feet.

3600 multiplied by 1035(calorific value of gas) divided by time in seconds
for 1 rev of dial multiplied by 3412(number of BTu/h in 1 kW) gives kW

Bit mind numbing those sums so I just looked up my gas rate chart and came
up with 8.9 cubic feet and 2.7 kW per hour.
When you have calculated your consumption in kW then look up your most
recent gas bill to see your supplier charges you per kW and divide that by
your warm up time.

I need a sleep now.