Energy myth-busting: Is it cheaper to have heating on all day?

In answer to the question "Should I have the gas fire on in the living room, or all the radiators in the house?"
You said "There is no one answer for this. It's highly dependent on the heating system you use, and the usage in other areas of the house."

I used to work for British Gas and was a member of a small team that was trained as "Energy Experts". The advice we were given was that it was actually cheaper to heat the whole house with gas central heating than it was to heat just one room with a gas fire, with the added benefit that when you left the room you did not feel cold as the whole house is the same temperature.

JDogg wrote: »

I used to work for British Gas and was a member of a small team that was trained as "Energy Experts". The advice we were given was that it was actually cheaper to heat the whole house with gas central heating than it was to heat just one room with a gas fire...

Probably true for my Mum's semi - where she has an efficient boiler and an open gas fire which appears very inefficient.

JDogg wrote: »

I used to work for British Gas and was a member of a small team that was trained as "Energy Experts". The advice we were given was that it was actually cheaper to heat the whole house with gas central heating than it was to heat just one room with a gas fire, with the added benefit that when you left the room you did not feel cold as the whole house is the same temperature.

Not unreasonable with a normal sized house. A modern boiler would be 90% efficient. An open gas fire would be 50% and it would suck air out of the house at a faster rate. When you heat just one room you're still heating the rest of the house as the insulation is in the house walls and roof, not between rooms. Consider you heat one room and it is 0C outside. The heated room will be 20C but the rest of the house won't be 0C will it? So heat from the one room must be leaking to the other rooms otherwise they'd be the same temperature as outside.

orrery wrote: »

It is a useful technique, though.


I'm trying to train my Mum to leave the heating on 24/7, take the thermostat to bed and turn it down to 18. In the morning, from her bed, turn it up to 20/21, then leave it in the hall all day, taking it back upstairs at night. Similarly, down to 18 if she leaves the house.

Hi

However, if the heating system is balanced to provide lower temperatures in the bedrooms than in the main living areas you may find that the rest of the house overheats and the cost of your mum's energy rockets .... worse still, if the bedroom has TRVs and they are set lower than the controlling unit then the system likely won't cut out until some parts of the property are unbearably warm! ... it depends on whether the thermostat is actually the controller, or just a remote display, but you really need to consider what the effect on your mum's bill will be if it's not setup properly!

HTH
Z