Heating timed or on all day low???

Meadows

Quote:
Originally Posted by emmaanddave
Do people save money by having the heating on low all day or is it best to stick to timed to save money?? Thanks.

They used to say it was cheaper to keep your heating on that it coming on and off. Not sure that really applies these days with things like combi boilers.

I tend to leave mine on throughout the period we need heating and just up and down the thermostat as needed through out the day and drop it lower at night when we go to bed.

I think everyone has a different approach to heating.

macman

Whether it's a combi or a conventional boiler makes no difference to this debate. Leave it on, it will cost you more.

Cardew

Meadows wrote: »

Quote:
Originally Posted by emmaanddave
Do people save money by having the heating on low all day or is it best to stick to timed to save money?? Thanks.

They used to say it was cheaper to keep your heating on that it coming on and off. Not sure that really applies these days with things like combi boilers.

Whilst the Urban Myth, that it was cheaper to leave heating on 24/7, has been around for years, it has never been true. The laws of physics apply!!

Leaving the timer on constantly and turning the room(wall) thermostat up and down is virtually the same as having the boiler on/off on a timer(not quite)

Meadows

Cardew wrote: »

Leaving the timer on constantly and turning the room(wall) thermostat up and down is virtually the same as having the boiler on/off on a timer(not quite)

You are right but when you are home all day you are not going to sit in a cold house because your heating is on a timer. This is why we all have a different approach to heating, it depends if you are out at work all day or not.

Cardew

Meadows wrote: »

You are right but when you are home all day you are not going to sit in a cold house because your heating is on a timer. This is why we all have a different approach to heating, it depends if you are out at work all day or not.

Agree totally, if someone wants it on all day at 30C - so be it.

However the question by the OP - and it comes up a dozen times each winter - asks is it cheaper to have it on constantly rather than timed. Not is it more convenient/sensible.

There is this Urban Myth that maintains you use more energy to heat a house up from cold than keeping it at a steady temperature - when it only needs little bursts of energy to maintain temperature.

It is only Oct. I guarantee this qestion will be asked again several times!

nannasue60

i agree it depends on how much youre in the house. A house should be cosy in my book but i'm out at work all day and set it come on just before i get in to warm it up. seems to be working fine just on a bit in the morning and afternoon. i've set it for more on a saturday as i have my grandaughter over and don't want it chilly for her.

piratefairy

I don't put any heating on at all. Sadly, I have storage heaters in my home, which have no timer facility, and are v expensive as my elec. supplier refuse to put me onto an E7 tariff. Therefore I had them disconnected (they had no power switch, just a dial to tu7rn them down, but not off - not very MSE!), in January, and can't say I've missed them at all, I was never home when the heat was coming out anyway as I work long hours.
I shan't be having them wired in again this winter, so guess that'll save on this yr's elec bills!

Katie-Kat-Kins

There are so many imponderables that it is impossible to answer this question, the insultation of the house, the type and efficiency of the boiler, the outside temperature and your own comfort levels! The best thing is to have an experiment, take a meter reading at the begining of the week and another at the end and compare a week of on all day and a week of timed.

I would however suggest getting a "smart" thermostat, these enable you to programme them and have multiple settings. This makes it less likely that you will "waste" your money. My parents have one of these and it amazing, they are brilliant and not expensive at all, if I had gas I'd get one!

What they do with theirs is have the heating turned on all the time but use the thermostat to vary the settings. Basically they set it so that the thermostat is at a comfortable temperature for sitting around watching tv in the evening and then the thermostat turns down when they go to bed, then back up a bit in the morning, and down a bit during the day when they are more active and in and out. The thermostat recognises weekends and the settings take account of getting up later and so on.

The thing to remember is that what is relevent is the time your boiler is firing, not whether the heating is turned on or off. Your heating can be on but if the thermostat is turned low enough the boiler will never fire and it will cost you no more than having it turned off.

It can be worthwhile from both a cost and a comfort perspective not letting your house get too cold (think damp, mould, frozen pipes, coming in to a stone cold house) so it may be worth turning the thermostat down low rather than turning the heating off, this means that the boiler will fire if it gets REALLY cold but it won't heat the house to silly levels while you are in bed or out. This will also reduce the time that the boiler has to fire for in order to raise the temperature to normal comfort levels later on, and that is where the myth stems for.

Think about it this way, if your boiler firing for an hour cost you £12 (completely fictioal figure) and to get your house from 10C to 20C it needed to fire for an hour. If your heating is OFF overnight and the temperature drops to 10C then in the morning you pay £12 to get the house up to 20C. But if you left your heating on with the thermostat set at 15C overnight come morning you would only need it on for 15 mins at a cost of £3, but your boiler would have fired during the night to maintain the temperature at 15C rather than allowing it to drop to 10C as long as it didn't fire for more than 45mins you would be cheaper leaving it on all night, and that would probably feel more comfortable too as it wouldn't be freezing cold if you got up in the night or the covers fell off.

Now i can't say whether that example would hold true because I don't know about the effciency of your boiler or your insulation but it is possible for leaving the heating on to be cheaper (obviously not if you leave it on full set at 25C all day) so it is worth an experiment.

nannasue60

i'll never get used to the weather in this country. Had the heating on for the last two weeks in the evening and then this evening i had to open the windows and the back door as it felt stuffy and warm, just when the clocks are going back and summer is properly over. Maybe its just my age!