Average Room Temperature 10 Degrees

Martico

Trickle vents are good to maintain airflow in the house, but if the house is a bit leaky anyway then closing the vents at super-cold times won't bring the place crashing down. Just be aware of humidity building up if you keep them closed all the time

peter3hg

My windows have two trickle vents each. When it is very cold I normally have one on each window half open to allow some ventilation. During more typical winter weather I have one fully open.
This seems to give enough background ventilation.

ripplyuk

How long does it take to drop to 10°C? That’s what matters. I heat my house to 18°C in the evenings and when I woke up this morning, it was 7°C. 

My house is similar to yours, a 2 bed end-terrace but mine is a council house so wouldn’t be well-insulated. I’d expect a new-build to hold the heat for longer. 

ComicGeek

With new build houses, a large proportion of heat loss is due to ventilation rather than conduction through walls, floors, roofs etc. A poorly built new house, with lots of air leaks, can lose heat really quickly. A house with low thermal mass (ie timber framed houses with stud internal walls, timber floors etc) will also loss heat much quicker than a house built from brick/blockwork - but will also heat up much quicker with the heating on.

My 30 yr old house doesn't have great insulation in a couple of first floor rooms with areas of timber frame walls, but even then only drops from 18 degrees to 13/14 degrees over night (from 7pm to 7am) - that's with some internal surfaces of the walls dropping down as low as 7 degrees at the moment. Dropping to 10 degrees in a new build suggests either minimal or missing insulation, or excess ventilation or air leaks.

ProDave

Just to dispel some myths, my super performing, well insulated, every eficcient house is entirely timber frame, not even a brick skin on the outside.

katkatmachine

Hi guys. Thank you all for your comments. Ive read them all again and I now understand that it’s important to check the starting time and temperature first and how long it will drop and how much the drop is. So we’ve monitoring the thermostat. Our start time is at 3pm today (the same time I posted this thread). The room temperature at that time was 15 degrees. Now it’s 8pm, it’s been five hours and the room temperature is 14 degrees. So it only dropped 1 degree. We are still checking to see how low it will get. We haven’t turned on the heating yet since 3pm. 

We don’t really jack up our heating to 18 degrees or higher as we are comfortable with 15-16 degrees. I will keep checking the temperature if it will drop even more. But right now 1 degree drop after 5 hours is alright I think. 

katkatmachine

Also forgot to mention, the thermostat is not set automatically. We just turn it on when we feel like it. Once it reaches 15-16 degress we turn it off. 

LegallyLandlord

The vents do help with mould though. It’s good to have ventilation, although not necessarily open 24/7. Did the rest of the house feel cold? The temperature might not have dropped so much in the rooms without the air vents

bouicca21

My block of flats is just under 60 years old.  Cavity wall insulation plus double glazing with trickle vents, but I have the transom in my bedroom open a crack to prevent condensation.  I heat the flat to 18 when I’m in during the day. It falls to about 15.5 when the heating is off.

katkatmachine

Hi guys. Update again. 

Starting time: 3pm yesterday, 15 degrees temperarure
Now: 9am today, 12.5 degrees
Duration: 18 hours, 2.5 degrees drop
Heating was switched off the whole time

Now I am relieved that it looks like there is no problem with the insulation. We will be opening the vents again, as many of you advised, it helps with the moulds so we will open the and monitor again how the temperature will drop. 

We will also pump up the heating now to 18 degrees for health purposes and maintain it to 16 degrees. But we will check how long it will take to drop to 16. 

The living room downstairs is sitting at 10 degrees. Yes, it’s cold but we’ve never really turned on the heating in that area. I remember the last time it was on was two weeks ago for just 2-3 hours. We don’t use the living room that much, probably just during dinner at night for about half an hour so we don’t see the point switching on the heating. 

Also going forward, we will set now the heating automatically as it may be more economical rather than turning it on whenever we wanted. 

Thank you all again for your inputs. This really helped us understand how the heating works.