Heating on or off in empty rooms

anna_conda

Hello all. Wonder if anyone can help with this. My little darlings have finally left home permanently (I think). So I now have 2 almost empty bedrooms, plus another small room which I just use for storage. I’m wondering if I should turn off the radiators in those rooms altogether or to keep them on low for times when I do have the central heating on. I live in a house where the hall, lounge, stairs and landing are all open plan and it does take an awfully long time to really warm up as the heat just rises straight up to the top! Terrible design!

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

trailingspouse

I'm in the same boat, but also don't know the answer for sure. We have a 4 bed detached house, and as all the children are away now (yippee!!!), and DH works away from home in the week, I do kind of rattle around the place. I have the radiators turned off in the bedrooms we're not using, but I've never been sure if that's the best method. As I have an office in the house, where I work most days, I just have a little electric heater that I put on to heat that one room if it's just a bit chilly, then I put the gas fire on in the sitting room in the evening. I only really put the heating on when it gets really cold.

Pooky

All our bedroom rads are turned off, can't stand sleeping in a hot stuffy room. Luckily this house is well able to cope without it being a damp risk but it really does depend on the house.

It is quite bracing to get up and dressed in a chilly room so I tend to take my clothes in to the bathroom and get dressed straight after my shower.

valk_scot

I don't use my bedroom radiators either. The heating engineer who installed them told me I should run them for half an hour once a month though to keep them running clear. Also if I had the whole CH system switched off during the summer I should run the system for half an hour once a month.

Also given the sort of open plan design of your house it might be worth making sure the doors into the cold bedrooms are adequately draft proofed, with a draft excluder along the bottom of each door and perhaps even a curtain across the doorways if there are still drafts. It will help prevent cold air from these rooms rolling out under the doors and down into the living space.

anna_conda

Thanks. I don't have my heating on during the night either, Pooky, but you're a braver person than me to get out of bed without some warmth!
Good idea about the draught excluders, Val, I'll get those sorted, and I'll try leaving the rads off.....

Ann

Take_it_like_a_man,_sonny

All our radiators are on full blast and the heating never turned off. Though the progammable thermostat may noit kick in until lat October or Early November. It is cheaper to keep the house at about 17C and shove the Gas Fire on, than keep rooms cold and switch heating off during the day. In the evening, our heating comes on for about 30 mins, via the thermostat, where as before, it ran almost constant trying to get it up to 21C.

And MS Soinny never noticed the difference.