Is your heating ON or OFF?

Rosa_Damascena

luvchocolate said:

I'm ok in the morning..doing jobs..shopping etc. 
Been putting heating on around 3pm for a couple of hours. 
I do go to bed early though and watch TV there. 
My combined gas and electric bill last month was £65 happy with that. 

That's pretty good! Are you in a small home / flat?

luvchocolate

Rosa_Damascena said:

luvchocolate said:

I'm ok in the morning..doing jobs..shopping etc. 
Been putting heating on around 3pm for a couple of hours. 
I do go to bed early though and watch TV there. 
My combined gas and electric bill last month was £65 happy with that. 

That's pretty good! Are you in a small home / flat?

Yes I'm in a one bedroom flat with gas central heating 

MikeJXE

luvchocolate said:

Rosa_Damascena said:

luvchocolate said:

I'm ok in the morning..doing jobs..shopping etc. 
Been putting heating on around 3pm for a couple of hours. 
I do go to bed early though and watch TV there. 
My combined gas and electric bill last month was £65 happy with that. 

That's pretty good! Are you in a small home / flat?

Yes I'm in a one bedroom flat with gas central heating 

Same here 1 bed flat just me £66 for December 

Could rocket up this month as my gas central heating is on 19 in the day and 16 at night 

Thats how it is but my £66 was £30 lower than Octopus estimate 

So I have £30 plus Octopus energy of £103 for this month 

mjm3346

First time for ages it was well below 50 in the lounge/kitchen this morning (44) it warmed up to 47 with a bit of sun but remained proper bitter outside - used short bursts of the fan heater late this afternoon and got it up to 52, also surprising what a difference a beanie hat makes. 3 more below zero nights due but at least Wednesday is forecast to be sunny even if freezing.

RHemmings

I must admit that I've been avoiding tracking how much I'm spending on energy. There has been nobody in the house for three weeks, and the fridge was off. Just a few LED lights on and the heating coming on for 3x 15 minutes throughout the day in case of  freezing pipes. 

Now I'm back, I'm freezing except when I'm in bed with my electric blanket. I'm putting the heating on for an hour now even though I will go to work soon. 

What I really should be doing is tracking energy costs on a day by day basis and using a reasonable amount. Last time I looked I was £300 in credit, and I would guess that I would be more in credit now after the last few weeks of pretty much no energy use. 

EDIT: I just logged in, and I'm less in credit than I thought. £287. My energy usage was high yesterday as I turned the heating on - not on the timer - and fell asleep. 

While I was away, I used about 20kw/hr per day of gas, and a tiny amount of electricity. 

Does anyone have advice on how much the heating should be on to prevent pipe freezing? That's my bottom line with comfort on top of that. 

Cherryfudge

@RHemmings, I know this seems high but I remember having to ensure for insurance purposes that an empty (furnished) house stayed at a minimum of 15C. I suspect this was not just to keep the pipes okay, but to avoid damp and mould, and all the deterioration they bring. Obviously if it's just about the pipes, freezing is freezing - the problem must be when the thermostat hits 0C, though you don't want to be that cold because it risks dipping into freezing if the thermostat is wrong, or during the night.

I'm sure if you did a really thorough survey of all pipes and ensure anything in unheated areas is lagged, you would have more leeway to let the temperature drop while you're away.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, our brand new boiler stopped working yesterday and the engineer is due out tomorrow. I've got a small electric heater in the room with me but the rest of the house is cold till I put the log burner on later. It's a 1930s mid-terrace, so either side is insulated by other housing but we've double glazed, which helps a lot, even though some of it is to an old standard. I noticed the background heat stayed up quite a while yesterday from having been heated before. Perhaps once you've been back at home a while, your background levels of heat will have built back up and it won't be so cold.

P.S. I think the DIY board is probably the best placed to offer technical advice on pipes freezing? I've started to read over there and ended up bookmarking a few posts because it's stuff I feel is useful to know.

mjm3346

To freeze pipes I assume it would need to be freezing indoors I know on the night storage heaters I don't use there is a frost guard setting. I have no pipes in the loft, if you have then your room temps would probably need to be a little higher - I have seen between 5 and 7 as a frost guard setting.

This morning the lounge was 42 (coldest this year) and really made my skin tingle but it looks like it will be sunny all day - sun is now fully on the door and the 3 sets of windows and it's now up to 46 with maybe 3 hours to go before all in shade again

Cherryfudge

I had to look that up (sorry, I'm not temperature bi-lingual!) and 42f is 5.5C, I think. Oh, that's a bit on the chilly side! I hope you get plenty of sunshine to bring it up a bit. Spring is on its way.

Rosa_Damascena

It is darned freezing today! I pegged 2 loads of washing out before work, sunny and breezy but my fingers froze . I left the clothes spinning and dancing merrily on the rotary line, but whether they dry to any degree is an unknown quantity.

mjm3346

Sat at the computer with the sun on my side/back feeling nicely warm, popped out to put fat balls in the bird feeder and the cold wind just slices straight through didn't seem to make any difference in the sun or shade definitely feels colder than the last couple of days which were also below freezing.