What to know before buying a residential heat meter

Undoubtedly, if there is an opportunity to install a heat meter in your apartment - you should do it. But before making a decision, you should know:

1. The heat meter does not save, the owner of the apartment saves. The heat meter allows you to pay for the heat consumed. If you planned to significantly reduce the monthly heating bill, simply installing a heat meter will likely disappoint you immediately after receiving the first bill.

Experience shows that installing a heat meter without additional actions from the apartment owner allows reducing the heating bill by no more than 30%, and in some cases, the payment remains the same or even increases. But you can reduce the heating bill several times only by carefully using heat and applying energy-saving measures.

You can reduce the heat consumption of the apartment by: turning off the water supply to the heating system during your absence, insulating the facade and replacing windows or installing radiator thermostatic valves. You can be sure that the costs of energy-saving measures will pay off in the next heating season or two.

2. Recently, there has been a plethora of private individuals who install heat meters and are not burdened with office rent or obliged to pay employees. They offer comprehensive services for installing heat meters without concluding a contract or with the conclusion of a fictitious contract for a noticeably low price. It is possible that the heat meter will indeed be installed for you at the promised price, but will the project and installation be fully carried out in accordance with the requirements of norms and technical conditions, or will some aspects be ignored?

Remember! You are installing a heat meter for many years, and who will you turn to if something happens to it? Where to find this installer with whom you have concluded an agreement in the stairwell? Even a hammer can break, not to mention a complex technical device, even if it is of European production. Solid organizations usually provide a warranty for the device for several years and take care of its maintenance throughout the entire period of operation.

In any case, it is better to entrust the installation of the heat meter to an organization that you can go to the office, which has a license for installation, certified specialists, and experience in performing this type of work, as well as taking responsibility for warranty and post-warranty maintenance - remember that the heat meter must be verified after four years.

3. In addition to the heat accrued by the heat meter, you will have to pay a portion of the heat spent on heating common areas and your share of heat loss from pipes laid in unheated rooms. Overall, the total additional payment for these heat losses is about 10% of the heating bill for the apartment.

4. Each month, you will have to submit readings from the heat meter to the heat supply organization. Otherwise, the payment for the reporting period may be charged at the rate for apartments without metering devices. Although according to the law on heat supply, billing for heating based on calculations, when a working heat meter is available on the object, is illegal.

5. Once every four years, you will have to give the heat meter for verification. Therefore, be sure to keep the contract with the organization that installed it for you, they will most likely agree to verify it.

6. You can install any certified heat meter in your apartment, and no heat supply organization or balance holder has the right to prohibit you from installing any of them.

8. The dependence of heat consumption by an apartment on the amount of water entering the system is not linear. This means that by reducing the instantaneous flow rate of the coolant through the heating system by half, heat consumption decreases very insignificantly. The graph shows the dependence of heat consumption by an apartment on the coolant flow rate through the heating system. The graph is compiled for a coolant temperature at the inlet to the heating system of 60°C, which corresponds to the average temperature for the heating season and the most common temperature graph of 90/70°C.

9. A decrease in air temperature in a heated room by 1°C leads to a 5% decrease in heat consumption.

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