Newb heating questions

DarkOne

Hello



I recently moved into a home (1900's era Victorian)  and the previous owners were getting a new heating system installed in the basement when we initially walked through. I don't know much about heating systems but I did look up most of the components that are connected to the system:



- Vitorond 100

- Riello 40 F5

- Grundfos UPS 15-58 FRC

- Argo ARM-4

- Safeguard 170SV



After doing some research online I see that this heating system is good system to have.



Now to some of my questions:



- I know my house is old but it seems fairly air tight for its age and its 3600sqft. I keep the thermostats at about 62-64. And all the hot water is heated with oil and I keep the hot water tank set to normal. It seems like I am going through 200gal of oil in 15-18 days. Is there some settings or something I can do on the heating system to use less oil?



- On the Grundfos pumps I see that there is a Hi-Med-Lo setting. What is this for? I know that 3 of them go to the forced hot water heating zones and the other is normal hot water for showers/sinks. Should these always be set to high?



- Will insulating pipes help much with the burning of oil?



Just trying to find out what is the quickest way to save some of this oil because spending $1000 a month on heating oil is kinda high for my wallet. I know my last rental had an 20+ yr old oil heater and I only used 600gal a year to heat the home and I would have used that in just 1.5mos of living here. Is the square footage really the big factor here.



Thanks for any comments. Just a little desperate to get this energy bill down.

STEVEusaPA

It's a tough question

To answer on the fly. The biggest factor is going to be, what's the heat loss for your home and is the boiler and the radiation sized properly. If it is, the the nest step is to make sure it's piped properly and all the components of the system are working/set up properly.

What kind of radiation do you have (baseboard/radiators)?

Are all the radiators getting hot?

Another option may be to have someone come over with a thermal imaging camera and see where the air leaks are, or have someone do a blower door test. If your house is an air leaker, and you live where the last 2 weeks have been very cold and windy, then the fuel consumption may not be that far off

DarkOne

Baseboards

All the baseboard heaters seem to be getting warm and it has been in the single digits for temps the past few evenings.I didn't know there was a thing as thermal imaging testing for your home to see where your heat loss was. I will look into this option because I am interested in knowing why the heating bill is so high. Thanks.

billtwocase

That is a high consumption

You didn't mention your oil tank, where is it? Not underground I hope. I would get an energy audit done to see where your heat is going. It not always about producing the heat as much as retaining it. Unfortunately the price of home heating oil is up this winter, so the dollars always make it seem worse. What control is in it?