All night heating

givememoney

Has anyone tried leaving the heating on all day and all night at say thermostat setting 19°C as opposed to having it set for 19° C during the day and dropping to 16° C during the night. If you experimented here what was the result?

moneysaver1978

givememoney said:

Has anyone tried leaving the heating on all day and all night at say thermostat setting 19°C as opposed to having it set for 19° C during the day and dropping to 16° C during the night. If you experimented here what was the result?

This may help: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6568868/turning-heating-boiler-completely-off-during-the-night/

JohnSwift10

My thermostat is set at 21 deg C from 07:45 to 23;30 then 18 deg C overnight.

Before that the boiler didn't produce any heat during the night.

Before that the temperature, when it was - 8 deg C outside, would drop to 15 or 16 deg C during the night and take until 10;00 with the boiler on full to reach 21 deg C.

Now it reaches 21 deg C about 08;45 and I have not noticed any appreciable increase in gas usage as what is used during the night is cancelled out by what is not used to raise the temperature from the minimum to 18 deg C and then raise the temperature from 18 deg C to 21 deg C.

born_again

Ours has been like that for years. Given someone is in 24/7

19C daytime 17C night time, might get boosted up if feeling cold for a short while.

FreeBear

born_again said:

Ours has been like that for years. Given someone is in 24/7

19C daytime 17C night time, might get boosted up if feeling cold for a short while.

Similar settings here, except I've gone for 16°C overnight and when out at work. Difficult to guage if it is saving much gas... But I do have decent levels of insulation, so there isn't a massive drop in temperature overnight - 2°C to 3°C drop depending on how cold it is outside.

Reed_Richards

As a general principle turning the heat off at night (with a lower temperature backstop) will save you money.  However when your boiler (or other heat source) tries to heat your house up quickly to the day time temperature it may function less efficiently than when it maintains a steady temperature.  So you could find that the saving isn't as much as you expect. 

givememoney

Yes I'm asking this as our new Vaillant boiler is costing us more than our old one. We are both retired so here a lot in the day. We've set the thermostat to 19.5° to come on at 6.50am then it takes hours to get up to 19.5°if it's cold to say maybe 10.30am. Again We've set the thermostat to go down to 16° at 10.30pm till the morning. Admittedly it is off for 8 hours 20 mins so not using gas, but then on for hours to reach 19.5°. Therefore I wondering if it would be more cost effective to leave it on constantly at maybe 19° and it would take less time to heat the house.

matelodave

We run 24/7 with a set back on the flow temperature rather than on thermostats.

The house doesn't get cold overnight and the heating unit (air source heat pump) doesn't have to flog its heart out to get the place back up to temperature like it does when we let it cool down overnight.

It saves us a little bit in cost as the heating isn't working so hard and the place is warm and comfy all the time rather than getting up to a cool or cold house and waiting until nigh on lunchtime before it got up to temp. 

In the end, you'll only find out what works for you is by trying both scenario's and tweaking the temps a bit whilst measuring and recording your energy consumption.

JohnSwift10

givememoney said:

Yes I'm asking this as our new Vaillant boiler is costing us more than our old one. We are both retired so here a lot in the day. We've set the thermostat to 19.5° to come on at 6.50am then it takes hours to get up to 19.5°if it's cold to say maybe 10.30am. Again We've set the thermostat to go down to 16° at 10.30pm till the morning. Admittedly it is off for 8 hours 20 mins so not using gas, but then on for hours to reach 19.5°. Therefore I wondering if it would be more cost effective to leave it on constantly at maybe 19° and it would take less time to heat the house.

That is what used to happen when I had the heating set like that. 

Now, as I posted, it only takes about an hour, sometimes less.

Try it at 18° for a few nights, you might be surprised that there is not that much increased gas usage, if any. 

givememoney

JohnSwift10 said:

givememoney said:

Yes I'm asking this as our new Vaillant boiler is costing us more than our old one. We are both retired so here a lot in the day. We've set the thermostat to 19.5° to come on at 6.50am then it takes hours to get up to 19.5°if it's cold to say maybe 10.30am. Again We've set the thermostat to go down to 16° at 10.30pm till the morning. Admittedly it is off for 8 hours 20 mins so not using gas, but then on for hours to reach 19.5°. Therefore I wondering if it would be more cost effective to leave it on constantly at maybe 19° and it would take less time to heat the house.

That is what used to happen when I had the heating set like that. 

Now, as I posted, it only takes about an hour, sometimes less.

Try it at 18° for a few nights, you might be surprised that there is not that much increased gas usage, if any. 

Yes thank you I will try it.

JGB1955

We have our heating on at 19C from 07:00 to 22:00.  Overnight it's set at 15C.  It probably only comes on once or twice a year during the night.  I guess a lot will depend on how well insulated your house is.  Our gas usage is around 10,000 kWh and electricity 2,900 kWh per annum.