Stupid heating questions

yorkshirepud87

I'm sorry if these have been asked, I searched but couldn't find anything! Also I know they are probably pretty stupid, so forgive me!

We live in an old stone house, with high ceilings and a cellar - its generally quite a cold house. I have draught-proofed every window and door and we have an energy efficient Worcester boiler and the thermostat is in the living room.

My first question is would it be more efficient to leave the heating on constantly at 18 degrees so that the house is always comfortable, rather than having it off and needing to then turn it up to 22 degrees in the mornings and evenings to get it warm quickly because its icy cold!?

Also if the thermostat is set to 18 degrees will the heating only come on when the temperature of the living room falls below this?

And finally, with combi boilers is the hot water always on, or does it just make the hot water as and when required? I don't know how these things work! When i lived at home we had a water tank and we just flicked a switch to put the water on before washing the pots or having a bath and once the hot water was gone it was gone, we had to wait for the tank to fill up again x

yorkshirepud87

Might be worth adding that we have a gas fire in the living room too but we barely use it. Although occasionally we have opted to have the fire on instead of heating the whole house. Again, is this efficient? Would it better to just always have the heating on at a low but maintained temp? x

closed

been asked hundreds of times, the answer is no, the longer you have it on, the more it costs, and it's very wasteful to heat a house when asleep or out.

set your timer for it to come on earlier if it's not warm enough in the morning

if 18 is comfortable for you, there is no point setting it higher.

depends where the thermostat is, if it's in the living room, it will turn of heating for the whole house when the living room hits 18 - which you may or may not want, especially if using the gas fire.

heating one room with a gas fire is cheaper than heating a whole house

combi boilers have a small water tank built in, the word combi is often misused as an over arching term for condensing boiler - some have tanks built in, some heat on demand, some have tanks internally or externally. The way to see if it's heating on demand is to listen to see if the boiler fires up when you turn the hot water on