Advice re heating please

esmf73

Just a quick question. Does anyone know if it is cheaper to keep the central heating on all the time at a low temperature (and turn up for an extra boost) or is it cheaper to have it come on in the morning and the evening?

I was thinking of setting it at about 12 degrees and encouraging children and OH to wear jumpers and wrap up warmly indoors, and then boosting when we have visitors or when its extra cold.

Apologies if this has been asked before. Many thanks
Emma

Lotus-eater

This has been a hotly disputed topic over on the heating board for years. Basically when your heating is on, it's costing you money, when it's off, it's not. Personally I think it makes a difference with the type of house you have and how often you are at home. You need to work it out for yourself.
You should get them to wear warm clothes anyway, regardless of the way you use it.

I would suggest 12 degrees is too cold, we set ours at 15 degrees as a base temperature, which is fine if you are busy, but a little cold to be sitting at night doing nothing.
One thing we don't do now, is have the heating on at regular times, only boost it for an hour at a time when we feel we need it.

Rossy2692

Yeah I think the same, when it is on etc, well I use mine as and when I need it, I dont have it on through night as we are warm in bed, I might put it on about a hour before dinner is served as the heat in the kitchen keeps us warm for a while after the by the time we have eaten we are warmer then its bedtime! I think its just a personal preferance, I just use as and when I feel we need it.

in_spired2

There's been someone at home all day in my house for many winters. Our heating stays on from just before we get up to just before we go to bed. I programme the room thermostat (in the living room) - different temperatures at different times of the day (usually around 20 early morning for warm bathroom, 18 daytime, 20 deg C evenings) - lower in the daytime than in the evening, because we're usually more active in the daytime - and then just let it get on with it over the winter - if it's cold enough the heating will come on, if not it doesn't come on (occasionally will manually change it if we're feeling really chilled or turn down an individual rad trv if we're too hot - e.g. kitchen while cooking).

If there was no one at home all day, I'd use the programmer on the room thermostat to switch it off while the house was empty. However, I'd have to monitor it as we have a generally "cold and damp" house. No heating during the day might make that much worse regarding mould. (received a dehumidifier yesterday though which is yet to be used :j)

I guess the best way to answer it is to run a week with it "low & boost" and a week with it "on". (would need 2 weeks with VERY similar weather and temperatures for the results to be even close to meaningful) As well as just considering the ON or OFF question, you need to consider how long it's on/off, who is in the house, when/if the house is occupied during the day, your own personal comfort zone, the type of heating/programmer/thermostat you have and anything else relevant to your household.

My bathroom and hallway are much colder than the rest of the house, so if I had the thermostat in those I'd have to set it to a much lower temperature or we'd bake in the other rooms. My kitchen is warm, so if I put the thermostat in there at the normal temperature we'd be too cold in the other rooms. I don't tumble-dry clothes and 4 of us live here, so my heating is also valuable to me in the winter for helping the clothes to dry.

smeeinnit

What we prefer to do (as there is always someone at home all day) is leave the thermostat on as low a temp as we feel comfortable with, about 17/18 degrees, this means the boiler is working steadily and not having to work at full tilt to heat up a cold house a couple of times a day. This is because its a very old, but reliable boiler so I dont want to unduly stress it. We relagged the loft and resealed a draughty external door last autumn and the gas bill was lower than the previous winter. So this proved to us it was economical for us to have it on all day with a better insulated house. This is just what works for us anyway but HTH

zippychick

Once of us will move this to the heating board shortly once it has more OS input

Zip
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