Is your heating ON or OFF?

mjm3346

There have been below zero nights for least twice as many as they originally forecast and they have been colder - due to be minus 4 again tonight then 4 nights around zero. Less ice on the lanes today with the good sunny weather but still some tricky stretches. Would have been nice if the cold snap could have held off till the end of the month then the effect would have been in the next quarters electricity bill.

liberty_lily

Despite the cold snap #2 continuing here, we've held back from putting the oil-fired heating on since the last one 😁

Until the week before Christmas we were living in our kitchen (where we're fortunate in having a large, squishy sofa and 9kw wood burner that we had installed soon after buying the house in early 2018 - just after the beast from the east!) and had been fairly snug. This temporary set up was due to major DIY building work, begun in Feb 2022, and which we only 'finished' (still a bit to do 😉) on 18th Dec. I'm just thrilled we fitted the new double glazed frontage on before the truly cold weather hit!

Now we're finally able to use our newly reconfigured living space, we're noticing the difference between the 9kw stove and the 7kw one in that space. There is a large, reconditioned cast iron radiator in there too, but as yet it's not connected because we need to complete the flooring first. 

So, for now it's lots of fleece and faux fur throws, hot water bottles and hugging the dogs for additional warmth 😂

Fortunately we have a never-ending supply of wood to burn...it's just the chopping and storing to season that can be problematic. 

Auntycaz

I hope we don't get any power cuts as I'm all electric except for my gas central heating which won't work if there's a power cut and it's still -4 here at the moment. Also my home phone runs through the internet so I have to make sure I always have my mobile charged up with some credit on it.

YorksLass

@Auntycaz - Same here.  And since it's council owned there's not a lot we can do about it either!  Probably made even more complicated by the fact it's a maisonette in a block of eight properties, half rented and half leasehold.  There are times when I really envy those who have alternatives - log burners, solar panels etc - but hey ho, it is what it is.

Auntycaz

@YorksLass I'm in a privately rented property and I'm really glad to have my central heating now. In my last house I had a wood burner but I had no central heating and no gas. I tended to use oil filled plug in radiators during the week when I was working as i was up and out the house before 7am and didn't get home until 8pm as it took 1.5hrs each way by bus to get to work. It was lovely having the wood burner lit when it was my days off but not much fun chopping wood in the garden when it was freezing cold and the wood was really expensive.Also it got delivered to the front garden and i had to take it round the back to the woodstore by wheelbarrow as I lived in a terrace.
It would be nice to have another source of heating but as an either or choice I like my central heating.
 

miss-tified

.... meanwhile, an anonymous source in Ukraine has posted location details for sites of expected Russian rockets and shelling so that local people can gather any remaining hot rocks for heating; and in Afghanistan it's rumoured that the burning of books may not only help people keep warm but will also reduce stocks of the redundant educational material in girls' schools....
PS: no offence intended to anyone, simply dark "humour", which I put down to having no heating or hot water for the last 9 days, and realising that still leaves me a great deal better off than many, many others. 

greenbee

Effician said:

greenbee said:

Effician said:

greenbee said:

@sillyvixen - I've let the oil tank get a little low, so have turned off the heating and hot water to allow for the frost stat while I wait for the delivery. I'm lucky in that i have a woodburner (and while I'm low on logs, I have used the opportunity to burn some of the big stuff, bits of pallet and bits of old compost bin etc) so the living room is tropical (with cold draughts). There's an electric oil-filled radiator in the bedroom for before bed/first thing which I hang my clothes on to warm up, and endless hot water bottles. 

Luckily I have an electric immersion, so we have hot water. I've also been doing lots of cooking in the slow cooker (including bulk cooking pulses) as keeping it on provides a little bit of background heat in the kitchen. The electric airer has also been in use, even without anything drying on it. My office has been 8C this week, so I've been working from the sofa wearing thermals, gloves and a hat!

Why not use the log burner to heat some water in a kettle or pan, we no longer use the immersion & are electric only, just got fed up wasting hot water when all it was doing was heating pipework up for the occasional warm hand wash.

Not much good for having a shower, and I don't feel a need to make myself suffer more than necessary. The immersion is there for a reason - and even working remotely, it's still not appropriate to turn up for work looking unprofessional. 

It's also about heating the house - having the immersion on means there is a heat store in the airing cupboard that will keep the core temperature of the house from dropping too low, reducing the health risk and the risk of pipes freezing. 

You sounded as though you were struggling , my bad.

Only to check the watchman regularly 😳

sillyvixen

Auntycaz said:

@sillyvixen I hope you have an oil filled radiator or other type of heater you can use to keep the chill off in the room you are sitting in at least. 

Yes I do have an electric heater - not cheap to run - but necessary this evening. 

YoungBlueEyes

Heating off here, not that I have it on in the day time unless it's properly cold. I've got the windows and back door open now to let in some lovely fresh air and clear it all through.

When I fed the birds earlier I noticed that all my neighbours have their heating on, great plumes coming from their boilers!

Wednesday2000

It has been very cold the past few days here. I have had the heating on for a good few hours each day and my halogen heater on in the evenings too. I just popped out to Coop and it feels much milder. I just wore my roll neck jumper, skirt, leggings, boots and gloves and didn't need a coat. I put the heating on for about an hour to dry the washing and then switched it off.

I was speaking to the man in a local cornershop last night and I asked where the freezer had gone. He said his energy bill had gone up from about £750 to £1,700 so he had to get rid of it!!!