Leaving the heating on for longer....

Maisie11

Could someone please advise. We have the heating on a couple of hours in the morning and 3 hours in the evening. If we increased to 5 hours in the evening (I work from home) would that really cost us or would the fact that the heating is already on make a difference.

I normally work from an office in the house and just heat that room. It isnt particularly pleasant to walk around the rest of the house and I was wondering if it was worth it to just keep the heating on for longer.

tincat

I would like the answer to this question too, but it would probably help if you said what type of heating you have.

I have GCH. I only have it on downstairs and in 1 bedroom upstairs.

Maisie11

Sorry, we have gas central heating to radiators

Magentasue

Not really an answer, but I read somewhere that reducing your heating time by 2hrs a day will save 6% heating costs but reducing temp by one degree saves 10%.

iamesbo

Magentasue wrote: »

Not really an answer, but I read somewhere that reducing your heating time by 2hrs a day will save 6% heating costs but reducing temp by one degree saves 10%.

I think you need a lot more informaion to make those conclusions, for example if you reduce from 2 hours and one minute to just one minute you will save a lot more than 6%.!!

How much a 1 degree reduction save you depends on what you are reducing it from.

A way which saves a lot of troublesome maths is to switch the heating on if you are feeling too cold :beer:

(that's why God gave you a central nervous system!!)

Magentasue

This is the website:

http://www.heatingcontrols.org.uk

As I said, not really an answer to the question!

iamesbo

Magentasue wrote: »

This is the website:

http://www.heatingcontrols.org.uk

As I said, not really an answer to the question!

That's a manufactures 'sales' site, the claims are pretty much nonsense, they might
be true in a specific set of circumstanes but to to state them as a generalised 'fact' is nonsense.

mech_2

The 6% figure is indeed suspect. Notice they use the magic words "up to". I wonder how they arrived at 6%. I suspect it's some kind of naive calculation along the lines of 6% being about a 12th of 80% of your heating bill (assuming 20% for hot water). Also assuming you start with the heating on 24 hours a day (2 hours also being a 12th of a day). This will not be even close to reality unless you live in an empty wooden chalet with a suspended wooden floor. Ie: Ultra-low thermal mass - no masonry anywhere to store heat between switch-offs and no solid floors. Even the heat stored in the water in radiators would affect the results significantly I would expect. The vast majority of UK housing is brick or stone and this acts like a giant storage heater.

I'm not even sure halving the amount of time my heating would reduce my consumption by more than 6% unless it started to mean my heating was on for less time than it takes to get the house up to temperature in the first place. I've also tried having the heating on 24 hours a day for long periods. That's 16 hours longer than I normally have it on for. Even with a margin for error I couldn't find an increase in usage of more than 15%. Typically 13%. Or looking at it the other way around, the savings from 24 hours down to 8 was just 11%.

Having the heating on only once per day instead of both in the morning and evening would give far greater savings if you can cope with that. This would dramatically increase the time in which the house can cool instead of charging it back up with heat halfway through.


However, the rule that states a 10% saving per degree lower on the thermostat is a good rule of thumb. It even seems to apply irrespective of the timer settings. Of course, in real terms, the saving between 21 and 22 degrees C on the thermostat is greater than the saving between 20 and 21 degrees, because it saves 10% of a larger number.

Kez100

Try it!

We tookgas and electric meter readings daily for one month and noted use of energy in those days (whether we had heating on, temp and time, plus how many washing machine loads etc) Now we are pretty knowledgeable on what everything costs.

We have helped my parents do the same. Their new boiler makes their system very efficient compared to ours - which is 12 years old - so even though we both have 3 bed detached homes, I know we cannot tell you what yours will cost on here. You have to do some testing yourself.

KimYeovil

" 'Energy efficient' kettle "? My a!se!

1carminestocky

Nathan_Gilbert wrote: »

If you are cold and decide to run your heating for longer it will cost you more so I would reccomend looking for savings in other places to subsidise the increased cost of the additional gas, you can buy radiator boosters that help move the air through the radiator which will increase efficiency and reduce cold spots in the room. You could use an energy efficient kettle that only boils the water you need therefore reducing electricity usage. A Good wbesite for this kind of product range is etree they seem to have a large range of environmentally responsible products that are more efficient at doing the same job as standard products. They also have energy meters so you can keep an eye on your ussage. www.etree.biz hope that helps.

Crikey, Nathan, 2 posts on MSE and BOTH mention that website (bizarrely you even got in a mention for it on a thread about nuisance calls ). I don't suppose there's anything you want to share with the group about you and this website, is there?