Central Heating

skim

researcher wrote:

I leave my heating on for 24 hours per day! You might think I'm crazy but I neither like a hot house or living in an igloo - the thermostate is set at 15 c and the heating only comes on when its quite chilly and only ever comes on at night in the winter when temperatures are way below freezing. When we sit down in the evening we tweek the thermostate to maybe 18c - or put one bar on the gas fire on. The benefit of this is that the house never gets cold - much of the cost of heating a home is bringing up everything to an ambient temperature - when it's there it doesn't cost much more. But neither does it get overheated - which is bad for your health.

Making sure you have heat reflectors behind all radiators maximises the heat you produce - and sufficient insulation ensures it's not wasted.

makes total sense to me - I have the heating on all the time too during winter but on the lowest setting possible & it keeps the house just right & the boiler isn't going full blast for hours trying to get the house up to temp.

JAMIEDODGER

i turn my heating on1st oct and off 1st apr. when its on i have it on constant and adjust temp with the thermostat...my heating bills have always been consistantly low

newfunk

We try to leave ours until November, but the house we live in is like a cave, and gets so cold, so usually its on In October, although I had it on a week ago...I usually have it on from 6-9am, and 4pm until 11pm..I pay by DD so its evened out over the year. Costs us £20 a month!!

Pooky

In years gone by it's been on when cold enough and off when warm enough - used to set the time for coming on at 6 and off at 8.30am then on at 2.30 untill 7pm, then we'd light a fire in the evenings if we needed it.

Working from home now with little ones I'm guessing it's going to have to go on next week as it's really quite chilly here today. Will set it to come on at 5am until 7pm at a lower temp tho and see how we go, can't sleep with the heating on at night - like to have a window open or I get all stuffy.

Will be a bit of a try it and see with the cost this year but a necessary evil with little ones around.

black-saturn

I never have mine on during the day unless it's snowing outside and then only for an hour. I switch it on at about 4pm or when I get cold. It hasn't been switched on now since about May. At the moment I'm getting away with putting an extra jumper on or thick socks. I'm usually very careful with the heating. If it's on it's only on for a couple of hours. I have a combi boiler so I make sure I do all the hot water tasks like the washing up or having a bath when the heating is on so the boiler doesn't switch on again just for water. My heating bill averages out at about £5 per month and were not often too cold.

Cheapskate

Mine's not on yet, but if it gets cooler this weekend it will go on. I might try this idea of having it on most or all of the time, just a little lower & see how much gas it uses. (Found a way of working out how much gas I use over a week.) We don't have it on high anyway, as there are fires in the 2 dowstairs rooms.
Over last Christmas & until this May we had a coal fire in the dining room - wonderful heatwise, but coal is really expensive here & it's a bind to start up when you come in from work. If I wasn't at work, we'd have kept it, but it got too much, more's the shame.

halloweenqueen_2

Have put the heating on for an hour for the last two evenings, we never have the heating on overnight as i think I'm married to a snowman! I do hate the cold and used to be a bit reckless, but since the cost of heating has gone up I'm more aware of it and I'm the one that turns it off. I got a little thermometer when I switched to powergen and its very surprising when you feel cold that it goves the temp as ideal -I don't put the heating on, just a fleece!
I do spend a lot of the winter in my conservatory, have got an elec hifi there but we bought a solar powered/wind up radio and its great!Not to save elec but we sometimes go places where we can't plug a radio in so its now dual purpose!

MATH

Finally got the boiler lit after 12 hrs on and off trying! Still getting my plumber mate round to quote for a new one cos I can't risk 12hrs of no heat in the depth of winter. Now the sun has come out and I'm boiling so turned it back off again.

I'm surprised how many of you leave your heating on overnight. I've only done this on a couple of occasions when it has been bitterly cold and have had a terrible nights sleep and woken with sore eyes, a sore throat and stuffy nose so I always turn it off an hour before I go to bed. I don't like it on in the day either cos I get too hot doing me jobs so I time for a couple of hours in the morning for showering/getting dressed and then back on about 2pm for the kidz finishing school.

The rear of our house has a conservatory which catches all the morning sun so I find leaving the doors open lets the heat into the rest of the house at night I shut them to stop the heat escaping.

tootles_2

We have our heating on, it comes on at 7am and goes off at 9.30pm, but the thermostat is set at 19 just now so it only comes on when the temperture drops below this, as it get colder I will set the thermostat to around 21 - 22 and it will stay like that for the rest of the winter........ having said that if we have a really cold spell the heat will be left on constant , we are both over 60 and realise that we need to keep warm, we pay our bills by direct debit and it runs out at around £15 per month through the year which I think is reasonable.

Austin_Allegro

My rent includes heating, so I don't worry too much about it. It goes on in October and goes off in April. The only thing I miss is my heated towel rail - this time of year my towels go a bit musty!