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Q: how to turn gas heating off for summer?
isleofdogs
Posts: 69 Forumite
in Energy
This may be a very dumb question, but we are from Australia - so please be gentle and sorry for the long post! [We have reverse cycle heating & cooling in our home in Australia, and controlling the temperatures is very easy - just set the temperature and the timer.]
We have been renting a house in London directly from a landlord. There is gas central heating (in the form of radiators in each room of the house). It is on a timer - which comes on in the mornings for 4 hours and in the evenings for 6 hours. Now the weather is warming up, and the house gets really warm / hot inside and there is no fan so the bedrooms can get very hot (we do open the windows but if there is no breeze, it stays hot). I have asked the landlord the following questions, but he was very vague. So, I need help from the forum here, please. Thank you in advance!
1. I know I can turn each radiator down from 5 to 0, but does this mean the gas for heating still on? Our gas & electricity bills have gone through the roof in the recent 2 quarters!
2. I have turned the thermostat in the hallway to 20C, but it only controls the radiators on the ground floor (no heat), and not on the the 1st and 2nd floors. I would have thought the thermostat should control the whole house. Is this correct?
3. I understand that the gas boiler in the kitchen heats the water for both radiators and hot water. There is a timer for the heating / radiators and a timer for the hot water. Should I turn off the timer (manually) for the heating when I do not want the heating?
4. Landlord said when we go away in the winter, we should leave the heating on low - otherwise the pipe will freeze? Is this right?
Much appreciated any advice on what to do.
We have been renting a house in London directly from a landlord. There is gas central heating (in the form of radiators in each room of the house). It is on a timer - which comes on in the mornings for 4 hours and in the evenings for 6 hours. Now the weather is warming up, and the house gets really warm / hot inside and there is no fan so the bedrooms can get very hot (we do open the windows but if there is no breeze, it stays hot). I have asked the landlord the following questions, but he was very vague. So, I need help from the forum here, please. Thank you in advance!
1. I know I can turn each radiator down from 5 to 0, but does this mean the gas for heating still on? Our gas & electricity bills have gone through the roof in the recent 2 quarters!
2. I have turned the thermostat in the hallway to 20C, but it only controls the radiators on the ground floor (no heat), and not on the the 1st and 2nd floors. I would have thought the thermostat should control the whole house. Is this correct?
3. I understand that the gas boiler in the kitchen heats the water for both radiators and hot water. There is a timer for the heating / radiators and a timer for the hot water. Should I turn off the timer (manually) for the heating when I do not want the heating?
4. Landlord said when we go away in the winter, we should leave the heating on low - otherwise the pipe will freeze? Is this right?
Much appreciated any advice on what to do.
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Comments
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On the front of my boiler I can turn a knob which either lets me heat just the water or both water and radiators. Perhaps yours has the same?0
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Do you have a control switch either near the boiler, thermostat or in your airing cupboard to turn it off? Often has two switches, one for heating and one for hot water.
And yes, thermostat should control all of them0 -
isleofdogs wrote: »This may be a very dumb question, but we are from Australia - so please be gentle and sorry for the long post! [We have reverse cycle heating & cooling in our home in Australia, and controlling the temperatures is very easy - just set the temperature and the timer.]
We have been renting a house in London directly from a landlord. There is gas central heating (in the form of radiators in each room of the house). It is on a timer - which comes on in the mornings for 4 hours and in the evenings for 6 hours. Now the weather is warming up, and the house gets really warm / hot inside and there is no fan so the bedrooms can get very hot (we do open the windows but if there is no breeze, it stays hot). I have asked the landlord the following questions, but he was very vague. So, I need help from the forum here, please. Thank you in advance!
1. I know I can turn each radiator down from 5 to 0, but does this mean the gas for heating still on? Our gas & electricity bills have gone through the roof in the recent 2 quarters!
2. I have turned the thermostat in the hallway to 20C, but it only controls the radiators on the ground floor (no heat), and not on the the 1st and 2nd floors. I would have thought the thermostat should control the whole house. Is this correct?
3. I understand that the gas boiler in the kitchen heats the water for both radiators and hot water. There is a timer for the heating / radiators and a timer for the hot water. Should I turn off the timer (manually) for the heating when I do not want the heating?
4. Landlord said when we go away in the winter, we should leave the heating on low - otherwise the pipe will freeze? Is this right?
Much appreciated any advice on what to do.
In answer to your numbered questions:
1. There shouldn't be a thermostatic radiator valve on all radiators - at least one should be without and that is usually the one nearest the room stat. If there is one on every radiator, ensure you keep the one on the radiator closest to the room stat fully open.
2. The room stat controls the temperature at the location of the room stat. If the whole house is too hot for you, then you have set the room stat too high. Ignore the actual setting reading (it's only for guidance) but turn down the room stat to provide you an overall acceptable level of heating.
3. If you wish to turn the central heating off completely (and override the room stat which will only call for heat if the temperature falls below the level you set), then you can do that and still leave the boiler to provide domestic hot water.
4. I think the temperature at which water freezes is the same in Australia as it is here in the UK
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On the front of my boiler I can turn a knob which either lets me heat just the water or both water and radiators. Perhaps yours has the same?
Heating had never worked properly - the radiators only heated well on the middle floor, but not ground or top floor (we had to buy 2 portable electric heaters for these floors). And a few months ago the boiler made loud noises, so landlord put in a new (cheap) boiler and had the plumber flushed out the junk for all radiators - and they have been working OK now. The new boiler only has 2 buttons: one for setting temperatures (low to high) and one for on & off. No other button!
Another strange thing is that there are 2 pumps in the house to get water pressures. Every now and then a pump would stop working, and we could not get water pressures and had to wait for a few hours (sometimes overnight) for it to fix itself.0 -
Do you have a control switch either near the boiler, thermostat or in your airing cupboard to turn it off? Often has two switches, one for heating and one for hot water.
And yes, thermostat should control all of them
In the airing cupboard, there is a BG box which (I think) is the timer. It has 2 buttons: hot water on the LHS and heating on the RHS. I can press each button for: off, timed, once and on. So I presume that if I want the heating off, I just press the button to the off position? But, I am not sure if the timer will override it. I have not altered the timer set by the landlord when he lived in the house. On the occasion when I have had visitors staying, I turned on the heating button and all the radiators would come on. But, if I turned on the hot water button (because the water tank is quite small) so visitors could have showers, then the radiators on the middle floor came on as well. So, it seemed the thermostat does not control all the radiators?0 -
isleofdogs wrote: »Heating had never worked properly - the radiators only heated well on the middle floor, but not ground or top floor (we had to buy 2 portable electric heaters for these floors). And a few months ago the boiler made loud noises, so landlord put in a new (cheap) boiler and had the plumber flushed out the junk for all radiators - and they have been working OK now. The new boiler only has 2 buttons: one for setting temperatures (low to high) and one for on & off. No other button!
Another strange thing is that there are 2 pumps in the house to get water pressures. Every now and then a pump would stop working, and we could not get water pressures and had to wait for a few hours (sometimes overnight) for it to fix itself.isleofdogs wrote: »In the airing cupboard, there is a BG box which (I think) is the timer. It has 2 buttons: hot water on the LHS and heating on the RHS. I can press each button for: off, timed, once and on. So I presume that if I want the heating off, I just press the button to the off position? But, I am not sure if the timer will override it. I have not altered the timer set by the landlord when he lived in the house. On the occasion when I have had visitors staying, I turned on the heating button and all the radiators would come on. But, if I turned on the hot water button (because the water tank is quite small) so visitors could have showers, then the radiators on the middle floor came on as well. So, it seemed the thermostat does not control all the radiators?
I would suggest you consider moving.
It sounds like you have got a right dodgy landlord.0 -
In answer to your numbered questions:
1. There shouldn't be a thermostatic radiator valve on all radiators - at least one should be without and that is usually the one nearest the room stat. If there is one on every radiator, ensure you keep the one on the radiator closest to the room stat fully open.
2. The room stat controls the temperature at the location of the room stat. If the whole house is too hot for you, then you have set the room stat too high. Ignore the actual setting reading (it's only for guidance) but turn down the room stat to provide you an overall acceptable level of heating.
3. If you wish to turn the central heating off completely (and override the room stat which will only call for heat if the temperature falls below the level you set), then you can do that and still leave the boiler to provide domestic hot water.
4. I think the temperature at which water freezes is the same in Australia as it is here in the UK
1. I just checked and each radiator has 2 knobs - one for on & off, and one for varying the heat from 0 to 5. When I turn the thermostat controller to 20 or below, the 3 radiators on the ground floor stay cold (I did not touch either knob). But, all the radiators on the 1st and 2nd floors still have full heat come out of them - so I turn their heat flow buttons down to 0.0 -
I would suggest you consider moving.
It sounds like you have got a right dodgy landlord.
The landlord is OK. The house is in a good location for hubby's work (walking distance, saving £ on tube fares) with a good kitchen, except for the problems with the heating. We did find another house nearby with slightly cheaper rent (but it has another floor - more upstairs / downstairs for me, and very narrow rooms), but landlord offered to reduce rent for us to stay. Neighbours (his friends) said he should keep us because we have been good tenants. So, we opted to stay!0 -
If your boiler has settings for "off", "on" and "timed", then quite obviously you want to set the heating to "off" during the summer. I'm not sure what is complicated about this.
Leave the hot water on timed all the time and put the heating on timed during the winter. Make sure the timers are set to good efficiency (e.g. for most people 20-60 minutes of hot water is enough per day, and for most people there is no need to heat the house during the day when no-one is in, or overnight).
As for leaving the heating on low during winter if you're not there...I would say it makes far more sense to just have it come on for 30-60 minutes a day. This would still prevent the pipes from freezing but will be cheaper. It's fairly common for people to think that leaving the heating on constantly is cheaper than having it on a timer, but this is basically an old wives' tale that is proven wrong with physics.0 -
If your boiler has settings for "off", "on" and "timed", then quite obviously you want to set the heating to "off" during the summer. I'm not sure what is complicated about this.
Leave the hot water on timed all the time and put the heating on timed during the winter. Make sure the timers are set to good efficiency (e.g. for most people 20-60 minutes of hot water is enough per day, and for most people there is no need to heat the house during the day when no-one is in, or overnight).
As for leaving the heating on low during winter if you're not there...I would say it makes far more sense to just have it come on for 30-60 minutes a day. This would still prevent the pipes from freezing but will be cheaper. It's fairly common for people to think that leaving the heating on constantly is cheaper than having it on a timer, but this is basically an old wives' tale that is proven wrong with physics.
OK, all make sense. Will experiment with changing the timer settings for both heating and hot water - maybe this will help to cut down our gas & electricity bills also.0
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