Central Heating

Callisto

MATH wrote:

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 agree with you there Math. Having the heating on through the night gives me an enormous headache and sore eyes. Only tried it once, never again! Surely it has no real effect anyway as the duvet is keeping you warm, so you are just wasting the heat?

In this house the heating is set to come on in the morning about half an hour before we get up and it switches off after 2 hours. Same in the evening, it comes on for a couple of hours. Obviously when it's colder and we're at home, we have it on pretty much constant during the day, but it goes off before bed. We have been using the central heating now for about 2 weeks, but it's not my house... we're staying with my boyfriend's Mum at the moment. Had I been given the choice I would probably have waited until October to put it on!

researcher

squiggles wrote:

What are heat reflectors????? and are they expensive,anyone please.

I make mine - I cover cardboard with silver foil and attach to the wall behind the radiator. All the heat that would normally escape through the wall will reflect back into the room!

You can buy them - but I've no idea of cost.

squeaky

The only ones I could find were either very expensive or were up for auction (new) on ebay starting at 99p...

..time to start flattening out boxes I think

apprentice_tycoon

tootles wrote:

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.

Just curious to know what other people are spending on gas used just for heating and hot water, we spend £20.00 per month on direct debit through the year and I think that we may be being a little extravagant, what does everyone else pay?

taplady

apprentice_tycoon wrote:

Just curious to know what other people are spending on gas used just for heating and hot water, we spend £20.00 per month on direct debit through the year and I think that we may be being a little extravagant, what does everyone else pay?

I dont think you're extravagant as we spend £30 a month for central heating and hot water :eek:
got nothing else on gas.perhaps its me who's extravagant!!! lol

GreenFingers_2

I control my heating via the thermostat in the hallway. The timer thingy for the boiler is always set to ‘On’ as opposed to either specific times or Auto. Then I turn up the hallway thermostat to about 18 degrees or in the colder parts of the winter I turn it up to 20’ish degrees. This ensures my hovel stays quite warm all through the colder months. :rolleyes:

When spring arrives the thermostat gets turned down to zero so the central heating does not come on.

It is important when doing this that your thermostat is of good quality and can measure down to parts of degrees and is wired correctly. Some cheaper models are only accurate to plus/minus a few degrees which clearly isn’t good enough for us MSE’ers.... :rotfl:

The hot water heating is slightly different. I set the temperature setting on the hot water cylinder to 60 degrees and the Hot Water setting on the timer to ‘Auto’. This ensures a constant supply of hot water with minimal gas usage – i.e. Coldish water takes a lot to heat up, hottish water takes little heat energy to keep it hottish. How scientifical is that – lol.

Helen_from_yorkshire

Re heat loss - I was always told never to have a shelf above your radiators, or worse still, radiator covers as these prevent the heat from the radiator going into the room. Hope this helps people save on their heating bills.

squeaky

apprentice_tycoon wrote:

Just curious to know what other people are spending on gas used just for heating and hot water, we spend £20.00 per month on direct debit through the year and I think that we may be being a little extravagant, what does everyone else pay?

My DD with british gas (set by them) is £25 per month, though this does include cooking.

Thing is... I'm currently £92 in credit!!

That means I'm actually using at around £15 per month.

Every time my credit reaches £100 they refund it - then we start the merry go round again. Each time I've asked them to reduce it to a level closer to actual, they do. For about two months. Then it creeps up again.

I know I'll use more in winter, but not a great deal more. Bar stewards are earning interest on MY money!

wallet_2

our monthly dd £30 gas - hot water, heating & cooking.
we have condensing boiler and it wakes up at 6am dips its feet in the house and works out how much time it can snooze for before it wakes up properly to get house to 21deg.
it turns off 11pm but we virtually never touch the thermostat - it decides when to come on itself and that is always comfortable in shirtsleeves. often it will fire up for just 2 mins at a time. it aims to give steady temperature.

we are lucky to have cavity insulation and therrefore think it better to NOT have foil as the wall behind will act as giant storage heater.

savingpennies

Is it worth getting cavity insulation. I've been looking into the cost of this but are there any drawbacks to installation?