Is it cheaper to leave heating on all the time?

My house is freezing (3 bed, detached) I currently have heating and water on a timer, 530-730am and 330-8pm. I leave for work at 8am and get home at 4pm. I only have 4 radiators on, living room, hall way bedroom and bathroom.

The issue, I am due to go on maternity leave in 4 weeks, new baby in house at home most of the time, will it be cheaper to leave radiators on all day and just have water on a timer or should I just use my electric haogen heater?

Any advice much appreciated.
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  • 456789
    456789 Posts: 2,305
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    Someone recently told me it is cheaper to leave heating on at a constant temp and then turn it up when required rather than turning it on and off repeatedly - so I would also be interested in what people can advise
  • Raksha
    Raksha Posts: 4,570
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    If your house is VERY well insulated to prevent heat loss, it may not add much to your fuel bill to leave the heating on all day.
    Please forgive me if my comments seem abrupt or my questions have obvious answers, I have a mental health condition which affects my ability to see things as others might.
  • Igol
    Igol Posts: 434 Forumite
    Friend of mine has started leaving the CH on all the time at 17 deg and hasnt noticed any change to the gas bill but the house itself is a lot warmer.
    There was a post last year on here, fairly certain the consensus was that it takes a lot of energy to get the house up to temp but as long as your insulated not much to keep it at a reasonable level.
  • Cardew
    Cardew Posts: 29,036
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    Igol wrote: »
    Friend of mine has started leaving the CH on all the time at 17 deg and hasnt noticed any change to the gas bill but the house itself is a lot warmer.
    There was a post last year on here, fairly certain the consensus was that it takes a lot of energy to get the house up to temp but as long as your insulated not much to keep it at a reasonable level.[/quo

    There have been literally hundreds of posts on this subject if you do a search.

    It is without doubt NOT cheaper to leave your heating on all the time.
  • nad_
    nad_ Posts: 489 Forumite
    yeh but if you can afford solar panel or wind turbine then it will effect you bill and i know its expencive at start but its for life time and i will recon it if its your own home
  • nc73
    nc73 Posts: 16 Forumite
    my heat never shuts off unless i do so manually. so how is leaving it on going to reduce costs?
  • gemz20
    gemz20 Posts: 146 Forumite
    i have a room thermostat that shuts the heating off when it gets to a certain heat and if temperture drops the heating automatically comes on without me having to keep switching on and off
  • Leaving the heating on as a way to save cost is a fallacy. The only place your house heat goes ultimately is in heat losses to the outside - everything you put in when you buy gas, electricity, oil etc ends up as heat losses (laws of thermodynamics - conservation of energy) The rate of this heat loss is directly proportional to the difference between outside temperature and inside temperature. The hotter your house the more energy you loose - the higher your bills. So if your house is being heater when you don't need it - guess what, you are wasting money. But the problem is if your heating system is not powerful enough to bring it up to temperature from cool when you need it (ie over the period of time of your occupancy) you may need to have the system running longer than really needed to keep it comfortable.
  • vikingaero
    vikingaero Posts: 10,920
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    It all depends on the ambient outside temp.

    For instance Mrs Viking likes the house at 21/22 degrees which is like living in an oven. :rolleyes:

    At night mostly turn the thermostat down. When the temp drops at night it takes about an hour of constant boiler activity in the morning to raise the room temp from 17 deg to 21/22 deg.

    If I leave the thermostat on 20deg then the boiler lights on average about once an hour for 5-10 minutes so there isn't much in it. Our house is a new build with very good insulation, thick cavity double glazing and we have thermal blinds and thermal curtains on all windows.
    The man without a signature.
  • puddy
    puddy Posts: 12,709 Forumite
    i think it must depend on the type of property you have, im in a top floor flat, although i have no one either side of me, but i suspect i must have some heat from below coming up. my front door is in a hallway, not on the outside of the property and i have full double glazing.

    if i get up, say today, very late about 1pm, the flat felt freezing because i usually have windows open even in the winter and the timer on the heating had gone off at 6am as per my timer. so i put the heating on and within about half hour, the whole flat is warm enough for me to have kicked me slippers off because my feet were hot. i had closed the windows by now. the suns now gone down, so i can feel the temperature dropping, which means i may put the fire on later for about 20 mins to warm the room through. i dont have a thermostat so i dont know what the actual temp is
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