Help with heating costs please

narabanekeater

Hello I appologise in advance as im sure others have asked the question lots but I hope someone may be able to help.
We live in a 3 bed semi, no cavity wall (cant have one) or loft insolation as its been converted badly by the old house owners.
Alltogether there are 4 rads downstairs of which one if turned to 0 on its control as in winter we do not use that room and 5 rads which includes a heated towel rail upstairs.
My son has a medical condition so I like to keep the house warm but not hot to we find 17 a confy temp. We have a combi boiler which is serviced and works well.
Ive was told it would be cheaper to leave the heating on low i.e the 17 all day and let the boiler kick in when it goes below this.
However now were doing this ive noticed from being at home the boiler takes about 2 hours originally when 1st switched on to get up to 17 then turns itself off but half and hour later its on again as its reading it below 17 then its takes another half and hour to get back up to 17
So what im saying is it clicks on and off twice an hour.
With it doing this is it really the cheapest option to run the heating in this way rather than let the house get very cold then put in on for a couple of hours at a time?
I am going to start to take daily readings to see along the way but I would value anyones opinions.
Our boiler is a Worcester 28i junior

mackemdave

As with other similar threads asking the same question,the only answer to this is to try running some tests.Read your meter,then for a week leave the heating on 24x7 then take another meter reading then for the following week have the heating coming on at times siutable to you and your family...at the end of that week take another reading and see which week has consumed more units

penrhyn

The longer your boiler is firing the more gas you will use.
The colder your house is when the heating comes on the longer it will take to warm up to the desired temperature.
This is especially so if its cold and windy.
Its not possible to say what would be better for you, I use a programmable room stat and set it to different temperatures during the day, mainly 17 during the day when I'm moving around a lot and 20 in the evening when curled up with the TV, over night I deault to 15 and is only comes on if constantly sub zero outside.

C_Mababejive

Maybe you need to consider just heating the lounge and occupied bedrooms?

The option to heat the whole house to the required temp may well be an unrealistic and expensive aspiration.

Also,buy some thermal vests with long sleeves...very effective.