Frozen pipes. Owt I can do?

Am i the only one who has a running battle with my wife regarding the main thermostat. Every day i have to reduce it to just below 20C. She would have it on full throttle if she had her way

Yeh…gf gets cold in the evening, cranks up the thermostat to 27 degrees or so, then I get home from work at 5pm next day and turn it back down to 20 as the house is too hot. Or 18 if I'm feeling mean. A few hours later, it goes back up…

Discovered the other day that the gf had set the timer last Autumn…central heating programmed for 6 – 8am, then 4 – 8pm. So boiler turns off at 8pm, gf gets cold, turns up stat but boiler has already shut down for the night 🙂 Just checked and its still on 20, so I guess she adjusted it to turn off nearer 10pm.

Oops, double post.

Are you suggesting your house stays at a 20C ish when it's 5C outside without any heating? Do you run around a lot inside to keep it warm?

Actually my house stays at around 12 degrees without heating when it's 5 outside (neighbouring flats keep me warm it seems!) but no, the point was that his "protection" overriding stat is outside and set at 5 degrees, in the UK its <5 degrees for a LOT of time and durin gthe winter often 24 hours a day. The internal stat may be at 20 but when the room warms up the thing turns off, an external stat won't do that, it'll just keep heating 24 hours a day despite it being any mental temp inside.

Washing machine worky!!! Hairdryer on the feed pipe AND the feed inside the machine. Hot water down waste and boiling water in drum.

Is it beer-o-clock yet?

Its only at 5C atm to ward off the chill. Once things settle down again i will reduce it to 0c.

I know you will ague that just leaving it at 0C will achieve the same purpose but i figure that a bit extra on the heating will stop any possibilites i havent considered and its only a week or so.

Once again, sorry for suggesting an alternative guys. I know it doesnt go down well to go 'against the flow' of some opinions on here

Ah, the collective wisdom of STW. Frozen pipes this morning, was just about to post a thread when ho-hey! there's one there already. Have just spent the entire day blasting the hairdrier at various points for hours on end. Finally, having removed the boxing from around the shower tray and the cistern feed and then moving into the kitchen to remove a section of kicker board, gave a joint in the pipes a blast and five mins later a whoppee from SWMBO. All this might sound way OTT but our cottage is 250 yrs old, the bathroom is in what was a lean-to downstairs and apart from an aged multi-fuel we have three storage heaters. The plumbing is ad-hoc to say the least. We had a problem with rats a year ago and the rat-man put poison down in all the places where I was applying the hairdrier today, there's a faint whiff of warm rat poo in the bathroom but at least we have water. BTW our house is normally 10c which we all like and just wear pullies and slippers all the time. Feels much healthier though whether it is I don't know.

@TheLittlestHobo

Yes even after 4 years of living in the house she still can't differentiate between what the thermostat does and what the Central Heating Timer does.

We go through it at leats once a week…Same as closing doors to stop drafts and turning lights off when you leave a room.

Its now Sunday(well, early Monday morn!)
After a bath on Friday, it wouldn't empty, frozen pipes.
So i panicked a bit and then asked google what to do,
which led me to this site!
So the easiest option for me was to crank up the central heating, i figured a night or two of it on round the clock would be cheaper and less hassle than burst pipes!
Anyway, it worked! Pipes now unblocked!
So, thankyou ever so much for the advice,
Angie

This thread demonstrates just how badly the average British abode is insulated (and what utter wimps you all are with one exception). If you insulate well, enough heat comes up from the ground to stop the place freezing. The temperature of water coming out of your cold tap gives you an idea of the ground temperature a metre down. If your pipes are freezing when it's over 5°C in the house you need to invest in insulation and lagging.

Actually… what this thread clearly proves is that even google recognises the collective wisdom of the STW massive 🙂