Thermostat Settings (what's your minimum?)

renidroc

Hi, we have a 3 bedroom semi-detached house with a Gas central heating system. At the moment we have the heating come on an hour or so before we get up (20 celcius), on for 2 hours ish and then off again until about an hour before we get home from work? I have set the timer and thermostat so that the off temperature is 13c which basically means that if the house temperature drops below 13, the heating will switch on again.

We suffer from quite a bit of condensation and I am wondering if it would be better to maintain a higher temperature at all times rather than warming the house from cold but am not sure if it works out being more expensive or not? I am thinking that maybe it would be better if I set the minimum temperature at 17 or 18.

What do other people do? I have no point of reference for this and have created the on/off times myself without guidance :-)

Regards

Cardew

Condensation is more a problem of ventilation than heating temperature.

Warm air masks the problem because it holds more moisture; which is why condensation forms when warm air in a room hits a cold window(or a cold beer bottle!!)

DVardysShadow

Rather wasteful to heat to 13degC if you are not there. Drop that to about 3degC - if it is too cold when you get in, get the heating to come on a bit earlier. As for the condensation, it needs ventilation as Cardew says.

Robert2009

Rather wasteful to heat to 13degC

My heating goes off at 10 pm and comes on at 8:30 am and the temperature in my living room has yet to fall below 12degC and that is when the outside temp has been -6degC

Rob

Biggles

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Rather wasteful to heat to 13degC if you are not there.

Not really. The lowest possible setting on my system is 12ºC and, while the house is being lived in, it never reaches anywhere near that.

If we are away for any length of time during the winter months, it will only very occasionally cut in, but I regard that as being necessary to protect water pipes etc, as the temperature of much of the rest of the house will have dropped faster than the hall (where the thermostat is), due to having outside walls, windows etc.

If you set the stat in your hall for 3ºC, and it actually dropped to that temperature, you would probably already have water pipes frozen, eg in the kitchen, bathroom etc.

cyclonebri1

Agreed even in industrial premises with fully programmable systems we never set the frost stat at less than 7*c:T