Energy myth-busting: Is it cheaper to have heating on all day?

John_Pierpoint

JWhite wrote: »

In answer to your questions:

Our property is semi detached, 1960's, cavity wall insulated and as stated side and rear windows are double glazed but hardwood and minimum 8mm gap.

Loft has maximum insulation, floors are solid concrete as all gas central heating pipes are run up the walls and through the loft back down to the boiler.
As for the boiler thermostat temp., don't know where that is sited, read out on the front says 46c but nothing else is visible except a two dials for radiator and water with graduated marks for low and high.

As for eliminating draughts, we intend to do that by replacing our hardwood door and side panel for a more energy efficient door and panel, composite door and upvc side panel and frame.

When you bought this house, what did the EPC say and suggest ?

The so called sealed units are probably 4 - 6 - 4, where the 6 is 6 mm gap or 4 - 8 - 4..
Such sealed units can be had for less than a £50 a sq meter and if you use infra red reflective glass (eg "Guardian" ) the performance of the unit would improve by up to 50%. I did the whole of my bungalow all 13 windows for £800 - probably something over £1,000 now, but most of my units were blown after 30 years. A lot less than replacing the windows. Depends on you enjoying DIY.

http://www.replacedoubleglazing.com/double%20glazing.pdf
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/10246345#Comment_10246345

If you have got a flow temperature of 46 C your radiators think they are attached to an air source heat pump - see if you can post the make and model of your boiler and then we can look up its data sheets on line.
Ditto the gas fire.

It is not clear if it is a combi or a traditional one with a chimney or a more modern one with a balanced flue ? Have you got an expansion tank in the loft?

Personally I still have wooden doors but they are draught proofed and fitted with an internal panel of insulation, where required. Draught proofing is the number one requirement for energy conservation and that includes the likes of the loft hatch.

However I have a feeling that your gas fire is not room sealed and thus needs to suck in cold air from somewhere or is it a retro fitted balanced flue one?



http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jul/28/green-home-thermal-image-heating

Leodogger

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

When you bought this house, what did the EPC say and suggest ?

The so called sealed units are probably 4 - 6 - 4, where the 6 is 6 mm gap or 4 - 8 - 4..
Such sealed units can be had for less than a £50 a sq meter and if you use infra red reflective glass (eg "Guardian" ) the performance of the unit would improve by up to 50%. I did the whole of my bungalow all 13 windows for £800 - probably something over £1,000 now, but most of my units were blown after 30 years. A lot less than replacing the windows. Depends on you enjoying DIY.

http://www.replacedoubleglazing.com/double%20glazing.pdf
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/10246345#Comment_10246345

If you have got a flow temperature of 46 C your radiators think they are attached to an air source heat pump - see if you can post the make and model of your boiler and then we can look up its data sheets on line.
Ditto the gas fire.

It is not clear if it is a combi or a traditional one with a chimney or a more modern one with a balanced flue ? Have you got an expansion tank in the loft?

Personally I still have wooden doors but they are draught proofed and fitted with an internal panel of insulation, where required. Draught proofing is the number one requirement for energy conservation and that includes the likes of the loft hatch.

However I have a feeling that your gas fire is not room sealed and thus needs to suck in cold air from somewhere or is it a retro fitted balanced flue one?



http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ethicallivingblog/2009/jul/28/green-home-thermal-image-heating

The gas fire is a Valor Heartbeat Oxysafe 2 which we inherited from the previous owners. We have a normal brick chimney. We don't have a tank in the loft for our central heating system as we have a combi boiler, the brand is a Valliant Ecomax 800.

The EPC states that it is currently rated at 70 Band C with a potential of 88. Recommendations were for saving £123 over 3 yrs on floor insulation though how this could be achieved with concrete floors is beyond me. £66 over 3 yrs on Solar heating.

John_Pierpoint

Claims 78% efficiency, not room sealed but (am I right?) at 3.6 kW not over 5K so does not need a big ventilation hole in the wall; might be worth getting a carbon monoxide monitor though. Worth keeping.

http://www.valor.co.uk/product_details/0533901.htm?ref=/catalogue/gas_collection/outset/Heartbeat/index.htm

Some fellow boiler users here:

ecomax800 central heating performing poorly 10 500 Mon Dec 28, 2009 10:58 am

Vaillant ecoTEC Pro 24 Condensing Combi Gas Boiler 11 2620 Tue Aug 23, 2011 8:07 pm
Vaillant Ecoplus 837 combi condensing boiler - DHW problem 7 1740 Tue Nov 13, 2007
8:44 am
vaillant 637 condensing combi boiler 11 680 Sat Jul 10, 2010 9:30 am

Vaillant ECOmax 286E condensing combi boiler

http://www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=92947&start=15#ixzz2lg5L5nwx

Reasonably new and hopefully well cared for annually.

Identification pictures here
http://www.vaillantservice.co.uk/Identify_Your_Vaillant_Boiler_Model_Ecotec_Turbomax_Ecomax_VCW_VUW.html

Lots more via Google.

Leodogger

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Claims 78% efficiency, not room sealed but (am I right?) at 3.6 kW not over 5K so does not need a big ventilation hole in the wall; might be worth getting a carbon monoxide monitor though. Worth keeping.

http://www.valor.co.uk/product_details/0533901.htm?ref=/catalogue/gas_collection/outset/Heartbeat/index.htm

Some fellow boiler users here:

ecomax800 central heating performing poorly 10 500 Mon Dec 28, 2009 10:58 am

Vaillant ecoTEC Pro 24 Condensing Combi Gas Boiler 11 2620 Tue Aug 23, 2011 8:07 pm
Vaillant Ecoplus 837 combi condensing boiler - DHW problem 7 1740 Tue Nov 13, 2007
8:44 am
vaillant 637 condensing combi boiler 11 680 Sat Jul 10, 2010 9:30 am

Vaillant ECOmax 286E condensing combi boiler

http://www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=92947&start=15#ixzz2lg5L5nwx

Reasonably new and hopefully well cared for annually.

Identification pictures here
http://www.vaillantservice.co.uk/Identify_Your_Vaillant_Boiler_Model_Ecotec_Turbomax_Ecomax_VCW_VUW.html

Lots more via Google.

We will probably get it serviced and get advise from the central heating engineer as to the rad problem.

I am not about to start messing with dials and knobs on the boiler when I know nothing about central heating and am not an engineer.

We have now turned up the stat to 21deg in the hall as it turned the rads off when it reached 20 and the bedrooms were still cold and I have just been into the coldest bedroom and it is still not as warm as the rest of the bungalow but it has been left empty after we moved in and the stat was down to 3 as this was where all the leftover household stuff got put when we moved (including the fridge/freezer and cooker as we are waiting for a kitchen refit). If there is still a temp. difference later tonight in there I will get a heating engineer in to check the boiler and rads and to see if they are of suitable BTU output as I still believe they are not. They are the smallest ones I have ever seen in rooms of this size (averaging 24" width, doubles in rooms 12' x 9').

Cardew

You cannot do any harm by turning the water temperature dial up - the higher the number - the hotter the water.

Don't forget that bedroom radiators are correctly sized to provide a temperature lower than living rooms.

IDEAL ROOM TEMPERATURES (oC)




Lounge 21





Dining Room 21





Kitchen 16





Bedrooms 16





Bathroom 23





Stairs 18

Leodogger

Cardew wrote: »

You cannot do any harm by turning the water temperature dial up - the higher the number - the hotter the water.

Don't forget that bedroom radiators are correctly sized to provide a temperature lower than living rooms.

Turn the water temp up ? Radiator water temp gauge do you mean?

Does that mean the radiators will get hotter and turn off the heating faster when it reaches the thermostatic valve setting quicker or go off on the thermostat in the hall before the radiator valves reach their temperature?

It is all very confusing as where we lived before, all we had was a thermostat in the hall and no rad thermostats and at our previous house before that radiator thermostats and no room thermostat.

Cardew

JWhite wrote: »

Turn the water temp up ? Radiator water temp gauge do you mean?

Does that mean the radiators will get hotter and turn off the heating faster when it reaches the thermostatic valve setting quicker or go off on the thermostat in the hall before the radiator valves reach their temperature?

It is all very confusing as where we lived before, all we had was a thermostat in the hall and no rad thermostats and at our previous house before that radiator thermostats and no room thermostat.

Yes, the temperature of the water for the radiators.

These days it is mandatory, in new CH installations, for both a room thermostat and TRVs; albeit in the room where the room(wall) thermostat is situated it is recommended not to have a TRV on that radiator.

The point I was making in my last post is that when a living room is being regulated to a normal temperature(20C to 21C), the radiators in a bedroom temperature are normally sized to reach 16C or so. It is not the idea to use it as a lounge to watch TV as you require.

This problem raises itself in Student houses where the bedrooms are used as 'bedsits'. With the heating in the living rooms set to the correct temperature, the bedrooms are not warm enough, and students get £10 fan heaters and electricity bills rocket.

There is a thread currently running about this conundrum of a room thermostat determining the temperature of other rooms; see:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4825027

John_Pierpoint

JWhite wrote: »

We will probably get it serviced and get advise from the central heating engineer as to the rad problem.

I am not about to start messing with dials and knobs on the boiler when I know nothing about central heating and am not an engineer.

.

If we lived in Germany the guy calling himself an "engineer" night well prefix the title with "Herr Doctor", but in the UK it has about as much meaning as "estate agent" and has connotations of greasy jeans and a spanner jammed into his overalls. His visit will be stressed by the need to get on to the next appointment (especially at this time of year); so don't expect too much in the way of understanding, time and thought invested into your system's problems.

There is no real substitute for understanding your system and its interplay with the construction of the property. I think we have established that your walls are brick - filled cavity - dense breeze block, construction.

It is not a "chalet bungalow" by any chance is it?
My daughter has a detached chalet bungalow, viewed from the air, it forms a cross with three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.
The previous occupant put a posh gas fire into the living room, and she has insulated the loft (such as it is) and the part of the eaves where it is possible to crawl inside. However there is still a large area of roof forming the inward leaning ceilings of the bedrooms that is uninsulated and the building is now unbalanced.
In the summer I was called in to fit her radiators with thermostatic valves; I must see how she is getting on with the instructions to keep the lounge diner door shut and the three bedroom doors upstairs open, as she tries to rebalance the system. She might well end up with a really warm hall and a red hot bathroom towel rail and the bedrooms will still be chilly.:mad:

One final thought, now you have insulated your cavities you are living in something a bit like a night storage heater = heavy blocks surrounded with insulation.
My own bungalow is partly built like that and when we go away,. in the middle of winter, leaving the heating off, those original bedrooms, in the part of the building where there is no thermal gain from the windows, take 24 hours of constant heating to get back up from (say) 7 degrees to comfort level. [The new well insulated rooms with larger windows facing southerly directions are welcoming us back with an internal temperature of 12 degrees].

[There is an inbuilt conflict in this thread, which is all about turning off the heating to save money, because it is possible to build a comfortable home that needs virtually no heating, - there have been examples on "Grand Designs"; the simplest design is to buy a disused quarry on a South facing hill side and build an insulated concrete "bunker" with an arc of glazed frontage facing the view, and then fill in the quarry. The massive thermal mass means the temperature stays almost constant all year round, provided the BRISE SOLEIL (clever awning) is effective in the summer.]

[Deleted User]

Energy myth-busting: Is it cheaper to have heating [STRIKE]on [/STRIKE] off all day?

Fixed that for you...

Leodogger

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

If we lived in Germany the guy calling himself an "engineer" night well prefix the title with "Herr Doctor", but in the UK it has about as much meaning as "estate agent" and has connotations of greasy jeans and a spanner jammed into his overalls. His visit will be stressed by the need to get on to the next appointment (especially at this time of year); so don't expect too much in the way of understanding, time and thought invested into your system's problems.

There is no real substitute for understanding your system and its interplay with the construction of the property. I think we have established that your walls are brick - filled cavity - dense breeze block, construction.

It is not a "chalet bungalow" by any chance is it?
My daughter has a detached chalet bungalow, viewed from the air, it forms a cross with three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.
The previous occupant put a posh gas fire into the living room, and she has insulated the loft (such as it is) and the part of the eaves where it is possible to crawl inside. However there is still a large area of roof forming the inward leaning ceilings of the bedrooms that is uninsulated and the building is now unbalanced.
In the summer I was called in to fit her radiators with thermostatic valves; I must see how she is getting on with the instructions to keep the lounge diner door shut and the three bedroom doors upstairs open, as she tries to rebalance the system. She might well end up with a really warm hall and a red hot bathroom towel rail and the bedrooms will still be chilly.:mad:

One final thought, now you have insulated your cavities you are living in something a bit like a night storage heater = heavy blocks surrounded with insulation.
My own bungalow is partly built like that and when we go away,. in the middle of winter, leaving the heating off, those original bedrooms, in the part of the building where there is no thermal gain from the windows, take 24 hours of constant heating to get back up from (say) 7 degrees to comfort level. [The new well insulated rooms with larger windows facing southerly directions are welcoming us back with an internal temperature of 12 degrees].

[There is an inbuilt conflict in this thread, which is all about turning off the heating to save money, because it is possible to build a comfortable home that needs virtually no heating, - there have been examples on "Grand Designs"; the simplest design is to buy a disused quarry on a South facing hill side and build an insulated concrete "bunker" with an arc of glazed frontage facing the view, and then fill in the quarry. The massive thermal mass means the temperature stays almost constant all year round, provided the BRISE SOLEIL (clever awning) is effective in the summer.]

Well we left the heating on for 6 hrs last evening until 10.30pm and left the doors open to the hall where the thermostat is. The same bedroom that is always cold warmed up slightly but not as much as the adjoining bedroom which is the inner one connected to next door (semi bungalow). The bungalow is not a chalet style bungalow but traditional brick built with cavity wall insulation. Went in there this morning as we have a decorator in putting up coving and you could have stored a body in there ! What I don't understand is that the back of the bungalow faces north but the front where the bedrooms are, are where we get all the sun (when it is out) from about 11am through the afternoon so common sense would dictate that the bedrooms on the front should be warmer than the rooms on the back (the kitchen is also freezing on the back as soon as the heating goes off and even though it is small, but I can understand this to an extent because it does face directly north and has 2 windows and a door in hardwood double glazed (again minimum gap glass), which is why we are having one window bricked up primarily to give us more cupboard space but also to see if it improves the insulation of heat. We are changing the other window and door to upvc double glazing also to see if that holds the heat in more.

The only solution to my way of thinking is to change the radiator in the coldest bedroom for a larger one as we were going to move in there as this is where the fitted wardrobes are, or leave the thermostat turned to max and as you say leave the pump running all day. As we are pensioners and in all day, it is horrible when you have to avoid using 2 rooms in a bungalow because your hands turn blue when you are in there for more than one minute !;)