Is it best to keep heating on?

Radsteral

it takes my new boiler couple of hours to work before i start not to think about cold.

semi detached , and have put lots of insulation on loft..so much , that if any mouse, living there, it ll find it hard to live and ll move to the neighbours;)

i suspect the house losses much from the walls..
2 months ago i booked with Eaga to do cavity insulation.. last tuesday seemed to be my luckyday till me essex man called '' uuuu we are stuck here..sorry ''
been calling eaga every day to rebook and today i managed to get through... the earlist day we can do is... december the 24th!!
bast++ds!

Rikki

cbrpaul wrote: »

Rikki

I have a old back boiler , it has a temperature stat on the boiler itself , in the form of a dial numbered 1 to 6 ,

The purpose of this stat is to adjust the boiler water temp , not the room temp as such, my room temp does that , but the 2 do work together so to speak

Mine is set at 3 , i found this to make the rads piping hot , when the room stat set at 20deg C ,

When i reduce the room stat to say 15degc , the rads are luke warm ,

this will depend on your current burner pressure also ( size of actual flame under your boiler water tank)

HTH

Thank you. I have never worked out what this should be set at and every time it's been serviced the engineer has changed it?

At present it's on 4 and the central heating thermostat is 15 at it's highest and the radiators get really hot.


So 3-4 is right for this time of year for the central heating. When or why would I need to alter it?

cbrpaul

Rikki , your welcome,

If yours is the same as mine m then it also heats your HW, which is a far smaller circuit that the CH , i used to have my boiler dial stat at 5 but found this was too high , the water was just too hot, even though i had a cylinder stat on the HW tank. Easiest option for me was to turn the boiler stat down to 3 , :-)

Incidentally , my boiler is 30+ years old and I love it !! , they dont make them like they used too !!! :-)

inaminute23

Leave your heating on!!!

I have done both, and saved a large amount of money.

Key things you need to do....

1. If you don't already, move your room stat into your lounge. After all that is where you spend most of the time. Also if you can get a wireless digital one. They cost about £30 and are easy to install. Have you ever wondered why most room stats are in the hall? Me too! Anyway mine was, and the current temp in there with no rads is about 15 deg!! That means you will always be guessing what to set it at. So set it to say 20 degrees celcius in your lounge and that is what it will heat too. If you can't do this. then by a cheap digital thermometer and just use it accordingly, ie if the stat is set at 20, but your lounge is 25 deg., then knock it down accordingly so your lounge thermometer registers 20 deg.

2. Turn your boiler up to max and on a combi boiler, pressurise the system (open the filling loop) until its about 1.5 - 2 bar. This should ensure the rads are operating at there optimum.

Just do a simple test, that is if your heating doesn't come on until you are home from work. Take a temp reading, in this weather even in a well insulated house the temp can go to as low as 15 degrees celcius. Now turn your heating on with the stat set at 20, and see how long it takes to get there. Today it took 45 minutes to heat my living room by just 1 degree! ( I was doing a test, not using my normal method) so do the math and you'll see the pennies disappear. My boiler uses around 3 units per day (95kwh) with the heating on all day set at 20 deg. This is an extreme too as we all know we are suffering a horrendous winter so far.

If you decide to switch to this method then i would advise in buying a fan heater. for around £15 they will heat your living room up to the desired temp in a lot quicker time than the boiler will so worth doing if your start temp is only around 16. In fact if i could do it all again, all my house would have convector heaters installed.

Obviously if you are away for days on end, then turn it off, or leave on very low (to stop any pipes freezing). Upon return set to your desired temp, but use the fan heater to start off with to get to this temp quicker.

I hope this helps you all, but if you are in doubt just do the test. Also the size of the room where you frequent most might also be a circumstance to wether it works for you or not.

Rikki

cbrpaul wrote: »

Rikki , your welcome,

If yours is the same as mine m then it also heats your HW, which is a far smaller circuit that the CH , i used to have my boiler dial stat at 5 but found this was too high , the water was just too hot, even though i had a cylinder stat on the HW tank. Easiest option for me was to turn the boiler stat down to 3 , :-)

Incidentally , my boiler is 30+ years old and I love it !! , they dont make them like they used too !!! :-)

A simple explanation for a simple person.

My boiler is twenty years old and now I may know how to use it efficiently.

I'm going to turn mine down to 3 and see how it runs at that. I only have the hot water on for two hours a day the heating is on constant in the day but our outside temperature is -5 today and -12 last night.:eek:

So I'm need to set the boiler as low as possible but making sure it can still heat the radiators to their maximum according to the room thermostat.

Does this decrease your gas consumption?

JasX

inaminute23 wrote: »

Leave your heating on!!!

I have done both, and saved a large amount of money.

so basically you find if you stick an electric heater in your lounge and use that for heat your gas bill goes down..... brilliant! (not)

takes all sorts, use a timer

(but putting the thermostat in the rooom you actually want to control is a sensible) move

ariba10

The same nonsense has been posted here.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2891800

RichPyke

Cardew wrote: »

I give up.

You have just proved that the laws of thermodynamics which scientists have relied upon for centuries, are incorrect.

Get someone to put you forward for a Nobel prize.

Not at all. I've given facts, actual statistics. It may be tough for you to get your head around however is there any arguing with a gas meter and actual facts?

With my house, it has certainly been cheaper to leave the heating on than to have it timed. Heat loss in my house seems to be quite high and heat gain slow. It's obviously cheaper to maintain the heat level than to get up to temperature each day... this does not necessarily prove thermodynamic laws incorrect.

inaminute23

RichPyke wrote: »

Not at all. I've given facts, actual statistics. It may be tough for you to get your head around however is there any arguing with a gas meter and actual facts?

With my house, it has certainly been cheaper to leave the heating on than to have it timed. Heat loss in my house seems to be quite high and heat gain slow. It's obviously cheaper to maintain the heat level than to get up to temperature each day... this does not necessarily prove thermodynamic laws incorrect.

Thankyou Rich!

At the end of the day it will possibly depend on how quick peoples rooms heat up. It does annoy me though how people on here do not read my posts correctly. If they did they would realise that a simple test which i explained in lamens terms, would determine which was best for them.

Attention to detail people!

victor2

inaminute23 wrote: »

At the end of the day it will possibly depend on how quick peoples rooms heat up. It does annoy me though how people on here do not read my posts correctly. If they did they would realise that a simple test which i explained in lamens terms, would determine which was best for them.

Attention to detail people!

Attention to detail inaminute23 (and lamens)!!