energy consumption question...

james3333

hi chaps,
i want to know the answer to a question that has been bothering me for a while.
i own a 2 bedroom semi detatched house.
the central heating, set to 22 degrees comes on at 6am and goes off at 7.30am ( then iam out for the day at work, so its off all day)
it then comes on again at 4.30pm and goes off again at 7.30pm ( so the house is warm when i get home).
now, is this the best way of working it, because i have been told that if i set my thremo to say 10 degrees and left it on all day and all night, i would use less gas and therefore, spend less on the bills.
at the mo my gas is about £25 per month
what do you all recon?

james3333

yeh, i thought it makes sense to only have it on when iam in the house.
i dont think i would like to be sat at work all day knowing that my gas metre is ticking away and iam not benefiting from it!
i wonder if its bad for the bolier to be firing up from cold all the time though?

james3333

ah, some verey interesting reading from the posts youve put above.
and , yeh, i suppose the boilder will be 'firing up' wether on constant or off when not needed,due to 'topping up'
cheers guys.
think i will stick to my usual on when needed usage, i think i spend very little per month and can rest assured in the fact that its not 'wasting away'
now..... the gas fire...... i often use that to 'boost' the heat when in the living room, it also makes the room more cosy looking.
i assume this is a bad idea and i should just turn up the thermo to highten the temp, correct?

iceicebaby

I used to be an advocate of leave it on all the time on low untill I started coming on here. I then tried a week leaving it on all the time on low and took metre readings and then a week of timing it to come on and off when i was here and took metre readings again.

Having it on a timer deffo uses less gas according to my little "experiment"

Hope this helps

Cardew

Albertross has summed it up accurately.

I would just add a couple of points:

It would have to be a very badly insulated house(or you leave the doors/windows open all night) for a house to drop from 22C to 10C overnight. Even on a very cold night it is rare for my house to drop more than 3/4 degrees overnight.

Personally I find that the setting on a wall thermostat is a pretty crude and inaccurate indicator of room temperature. For me it might as well have a scale reading from 'A' to 'Z' rather than 15C to 30C. You know setting it to, say, 'L' will maintain the room at the temperature where you feel comfortable.

IvanOpinion

One other thing is to make sure the system is properly balanced .. it can make quite a difference to the distribution of heat and your use of fuel

ivan