Wasting money heating one room?

L_a_y_l_a

Hi, yes, it's one single supplier, I do think the fan heater and washing machine and dryer not being used efficiently don't help, but their gas is higher than it should be.

I just don't have the kind of knowledge that heating engineers or some astute consumers like you have, my costs have always been low but I was never cold, used my dryer, etc.

Thanks, MSE, and you all, I have also been directing a friend to your help, because her utility company is refusing to take down her DD, jumped from £70 to £400, but consumption hasn't increased. Not a doubling or tripling, and she has oil on top, it's impacting her family terribly. £900/month total. Crippling her, even though she is well paid, but I cannot speak for her either, she wants to do it herself.

Incidentally, my recent move, DD was to be set at £192/month, I know prices have gone up, but the hassle I had to get that down was unbelievable.  I had to demand again and again they took my readings (new build so no previous history here). Time will tell how much mine will cost, but I think the £35/month I paid for approx 16 years might be double. I wasn't cold, used my dryer, etc, and I used to accrue large overpayments at £50/month. I honestly cannot imagine how a lot of people could have coped with the utility company, I was on the phone for nearly 2 hours, and I nearly couldn't. The company just kept repeating the average, but that was an estimate based on much bigger properties nearby. They knew that was the case. It really gave me an insight to how terribly difficult it is, it's worse than before. They want it all online, but there was no way online for me to get it changed.

L_a_y_l_a

It does appear that the boiler is running full pelt, the fabric of the building is cold, never gets heated, the heat drains even from the warm room, as the fan heater doesn't really get 2nd room hot, but it costs them doubly more, on the boiler and on the heater.

That's the thing exactly, I could not get my head around it, they're worried, they're not poor, not really frugal, but not wealthy either.

It feels like they're burning money on that one room kind of scenario, which isn't working.

So I guess I wanted to ask both for them, and for others, in case perhaps people try it thinking one room is definitely right, but then find it might not be. It could be, but I just couldn't get my head around the actual cost difference between opening up the radiators and not.

BUFF

It's understandable that heat will drain from the 1 heated room out to the unheated rooms.
It's also understandable that the boiler should run flat out for say the first hour or so from cold but you would usually expect it to modulate down after that on anything remotely modern (say 2005>) - how are you judging that it is running flat out all the time?

can you say what make/model of boiler they have & rough age? do you know what flow temperature it is running?
similarly for controls (programmer/room 'stat etc.)?