Not putting the heating on - how's it going...?

1880 stone flat in Southern Scotland. Had the fan heater on in the bathroom for the first time last night, cold when I’m wet but otherwise OK with ajumper.

Similar vintahe house here on the Fife coast, flat roof so limited for insulation options (although it has had insulation put in by raising the roof height)

Managed to not use the central heating so far, although the wood burner has been on and Ive bought my first Dressing Gown.

A) How much are you actually saving?

No idea

B) Is it worth it?

Yes, if nothing else it's making me pay attention to how the house temperature reacts relative to the weather outside which will payback in the long run. That and it's a good reminder to make the most of it's passive heating from the conservatory during the day.

It was <3C and frosty here last night, house is still pleasant. Not quite shorts weather still, but have only had to put a jumper on a couple of times.

If you are with Octopus Energy, they have just opened up there FLIR camera borrowing scheme again for this year.

This is brilliant.

It was <3C and frosty here last night, house is still pleasant. Not quite shorts weather still, but have only had to put a jumper on a couple of times.

As a long term minimal heater putter oner you will probably notice as the Sean goes on it gets worse as the house and soil looses more of its latent heat. Add in the shorter days and and the house drops a lot more December - march. I find it doesn't take much to stop the house dropping below 15 Deg c as long as you get it up to ~ 18deg c one a day.

insulation. Bloody hell its got expensive.

Needing 75mm rigid batts to replace the ill fitting(poor access) celotex between the rafters on the sloping celings and dormers - i need 25SQM at roughly 40 quid per SQM

trying to get some superquilt to make the kneewall devils triangles in the corners of the upstairs wall air tight and stop the movement of air around the existing glass fibre and round the front of the dormers too keep the airflow that is neccesary inside the roof space in the roofspace when the northwind starts blowing .... looking at 3 rolls @120 ish quid

Likewise rockfloor for gluing to the underside of the concrete floor.(cant use rigid PIR due to access issues) - 48 sheets required - 1500 quid.

I had to buy some bog standard 100mm glassfibre for the attic to finish off a bit to 300mm - 25 quid a roll .... i remember they were practically giving that away when i moved in.

sure i can get someone in to foam it up on a government grant - help them meet their target (although then never be able to sell my house) I see the benefit in spending the money over my life time but its a bitter pill to swallow especially for those who don't have the capital available.

- although seeing some of the internal temperatures being quoted - it seems im currently better insulated than most even if it is just a post war corporation farmers semi detached.

insulation. Bloody hell its got expensive.

Yeah I looked at insulating the inside of my airing cupboard. Was going to be about £200 worth of Kingspan! I think I'll revert to £5 Ikea duvets and bacofoil.

Likewise rockfloor for gluing to the underside of the concrete floor

I'd love to insulate under our ground floor, but I've no idea how I'd access it besides chopping a big hole in.

As a long term minimal heater putter oner you will probably notice as the Sean goes on it gets worse as the house and soil looses more of its latent heat. Add in the shorter days and and the house drops a lot more December – march. I find it doesn’t take much to stop the house dropping below 15 Deg c as long as you get it up to ~ 18deg c one a day.

Technically, that would be sensible heat, not latent heat, unless you live in Hawaii or Iceland.

But yes, you're correct it'll feel colder indoors at this stage in spring in March, when it's 3C overnight.

I put the heating on to test that all the radiators heated up OK and then turned it off again.

Me too. I'll probably do that every morning and evening from now til March. Just to test it, you understand

insulation. Bloody hell its got expensive.

Yea, need some celotex/kingspan to do the loft hatch (~120cmx80cm and 60x30cm) and thinking it might be cheaper just to build it as a wooden box and empty a can of fireproof foam into it!

I set the little knob on the front of the tank to 45C, and was worrying it was too low. The actual water is 68C!

Our HW tank has a thermostat 1/3 of the way up from the bottom. I've never actually checked, but I assume the temp at the top is higher....

insulation. Bloody hell its got expensive.

Yep. We have just got permission on roof rails loft conversion and things like the cost of insulation are making the entire thing seem unfeasible, but we need the space. Torn as to what the solution is.:/

Yea, need some celotex/kingspan to do the loft hatch (~120cmx80cm and 60x30cm) and thinking it might be cheaper just to build it as a wooden box and empty a can of fireproof foam into it!

facebook market place seems to be where to find the offcuts and odds and sods of celeotex for peanuts.

No one seems to ever be selling any of the more specialist products ive identified as fitting my needs best ..... silly house design - worth it in the long haul at least.

Just to continue the water temperature discussion from the weekend.......I said I'd lowered the HW to 40'c and the CH to 50'c ( at the boiler via illuminated dials), got nervous after talk of legionella and cold water out the taps, not worried about stagnancy (sic) as wife and daughter both shower in the mornings and I do so in the evening. Wife stubbornly has all room stats set at 5'c ! So I decided to do a few simple tests, borrowed a decent thermometer from work and this is what I found......water from all the hot taps (upstairs and downstairs sinks) issues at 48'c. Water in the showers (measured using the overflowing jug technique) also issues at 48'c at the highest setting. Water from the cold taps issues at 20'c before dropping to around 15'c . Sink taps are hot enough for hand washing, the showers at 48'c are uncomfortable on the naked body I found 45'c was as hot as I could stand, I think children would find it too hot. How come, I thought so like Molgrips I had a poke about round the small cylinder and sure enough low down out of sight is a thermostat which looks to be set around 55'c. This poses the question who or what is controlling the temperature of my water. We are in Yorkshire and enjoying the challenge of holding the bills down for as long as possible. To be fair this is a very well insulated house and we can make use of a fire if the evenings get too chilly but at the moment it's a fleece and a blanket over her legs on the sofa for telly watching.

I rigged up two thermocouples on the in and out flow pipes from the boiler. Seems to be at most 9C difference between the two when it's not on maximum output. I've noticed that turning it down from full to the second highest pip does reduce the flame (judging by the sound) but the flame can't go any lower, so it just reduces the point at which the burner turns off.

However, the gap between when it turns off and on seems huge, about 20C. Presumably to prevent the boiler cycling on and off all the time. But it feels a bit too much I'd say - I wonder if it's adjustable?

Good vid on legionalla. Your tank doesn't need to be as hot as everyone says. I'm going to set my water temp low so I can set my boiler temp low, then use a timer to bring the tank up once a week using my off-peak leccy.

This poses the question who or what is controlling the temperature of my water.

I would have thought that it's the tank thermostat as the boiler would have no idea what temperature the tank is at without a temperature probe in the tank.... Which I doubt it has.

We've given in; an hour on a morning and an hour around tea time. The morning hour would do me, but there's only so many layers it's reasonable to expect my wife to wear in an evening 🤣

My heating is still not on but WFH today in a jacket with a rug over my knees. I think the log burner will be going on this evening as I have three hours in a stable to look forward to this afternoon and I'll be pretty cold by the end of that.

So on the back of some of the comments on this thread I have turned down the dials on my combi boiler. Not sure how much effect it will have but I will keep an eye on my consumption.. There are no useful markings on the dials other than a wedge shape indicating "more" the further clockwise they go so it's trial and error I guess.

I have got the water at 50C (I may further reduce it if poss). The rads are not as hot to the touch it seems but that's about as scientific as it gets without buying something to check the temps. I don't know if having the rads cooler will just mean the heating is on for longer and therefore negate any saving to be had by running them cooler...🤷‍♂️Again, trial and error I suppose....

I don’t know if having the rads cooler will just mean the heating is on for longer and therefore negate any saving to be had by running them cooler…

No. Watch the videos. The efficiency gain from running cooler is more than the extra time they are on.

The efficiency gain from running cooler is more than the extra time they are on.

Condensor boilers only get the gain from the condensing as a certain temp range and it's always lower than the max setting.

Condensor boilers only get the gain from the condensing as a certain temp range

I read recently that the heating flow return temperature needed to be 57 degrees or below for a condensing boiler to enter its condensing phase, which is where it is most efficient due to latent heat absorption.

Twiddling knobs for the sake of it is probably not that useful.

Laser thermometers are about 10 to 15 quid. Get one and the test your own flow and return primary pipework.

It also bears pointing out that the colder it gets outside the more a low temperature system needs to rely on larger emitters to meet the heat loss of the structure.

If your radiators are relatively small and it gets cold, you might need to turn your flow temperature up to increase ∆T into the house.

The advantage of weather compensation with a smart boiler is that it will do this for you, all the time, to keep itself in the most efficient burn.

Heating on in the morning now with the occasional evening and I finally caved had to swap my shorts for joggers from about midday onwards when WFH.
I've been in long trousers in the evenings for about a week though.

Its been below 15deg in the house here in the South Cotswolds the past few mornings. At least another few weeks before I allow any heating.

Is this going to be a fight to the death? With the last couple of posters sat at their computers with coats and fingerless Scrooge gloves insisting that it's fine and they can go another few days, as the snow starts to settle on the roof..

Lol. No challenge without heating on in terrace house in east Kent yet. Even OH hasn't complained. Bigger challenge is resisting long leg wear on the morning cycle commute to work.

sat at their computers with coats and fingerless Scrooge gloves insisting that it’s fine and they can go another few days, as the snow starts to settle on the roof..

Were you in my house last year??? 🤣

Bought a digi thermometer. Its currently telling me that my living room is 16.9° which is OK, but the humidity is 68%. I'm fairly sure that's a bit high??

Woke up 10 minutes ago, room thermometer says 13deg…. Caved. Heating on for the first time this year. Nice and toasty in bed but the thought of being up and about in a cold house does not fill me with joy.

At the risk of invoking the spirit of the 4 Yorkshiremen you were lucky ! Growing up in the 60s our house didn’t have fancy things like central heating , an open fire in the kitchen diner that our dad 😬 used to light on his hands and knees using newspaper ( I don’t think it was rolled up 😉) because of a kink in the chimney flue all the smoke would billow back out into the room ! No heat in our bedrooms ice on the windows made you hurry up and get ready for school ! The one ( bloody) luxury they gave into was to put an electric wall heater in the bathroom. The only problem with that was as it was about 6 ft up all it heated was the ceiling 🙄 I still remember the sensation of standing up in the bath with the top of my head all toasty frantically hurrying up to dry myself before I lost the feeling from the neck down!
When we got married we had a choice in our new Wimpey home £600 extra would either get central heating or a garage ! We opted for the soft option of warmth 😬 Dad said “ I don’t like central heating it’s a dry heat “ it’s funny whenever he came over he’d forget himself and say how cosy it was 😬😬😬😬😬
Try telling the young ‘uns that today guess the rest 😉

Most I’ll wager are southern based and live in well-insulated houses.

yes, let’s continue with predjudice or jealousy. I dunno some people.

Amazing how houses make a difference. We are outer London set to 18 at night and 20 during the day, unlike others the heatings been on/off regularly over the last week. The thermostat is in the hall I’m going to stick my head unit on the coffee table where we sit and see what the real temp is in the living space.

Mrs K with all the disadvantages of being Afro Caribbean, having Lupus and Cranes disease is feeling the cold and wearing her electrically heated Gilet.

Tested ch last night for 15mims, was expecting to have to bleed the rads but no, all good.
Still weeks away from running it of the timer, but will fire up the wood burner if it drops to single figures outside.
South Coast so always warm, even if the riding isn't so hot.

South Coast so always warm, even if the riding isn’t so hot.

I wouldn't go that far but its certainly an advantage at the moment. We have so far limited CH to a couple of short top up bursts and lit the wood burner one day at the weekend. We are helped by my office being in the loft so stays warm and wife's in the spare room which seems to heat up fairly well as she has the door closed.

Heating goes on when it's cold. Had it running for a short while for the last month. Set at 17ish degrees. Heating off by 6:30pm but I'm still sleeping on top of the bed covers, as usual. Daughter and wife feel the cold. Son sleeps with window wide open.

Mine's still off although it's been pretty mild here (Bristol), hasn't dropped below 17c inside that I've noticed yet. Have swapped from shorts to joggers and have a hoodie on until about 11am, thermal socks are great to.

but the humidity is 68%. I’m fairly sure that’s a bit high??

Par for the course in a UK autumn/winter. You won't get your house any drier than it is outside without heating it. But you are generating your own humidity as well by breathing in the house and washing etc.

This is one of the reasons why you need heating on even if the temps are tolerable, the humidity goes up and you get damp - towels don't dry, etc.

Other half had enough of a cool house yesterday, not helped in part by builder in and out of the door and any heat we did have escaping. It wasn't on for too long. Annoying as not really that cold outside yet.

South Coast is cheating. We're in a 1920's detached in an urban South Coast setting.

Thermostat set at 19, heating hasn't kicked in yet to my knowledge, if it has it's been so fleeting it's escaped my attention.

All these northerners thinking the south is the Mediterranean is hilarious.

Thanks for brightening my day!

It was close last night, I let myself get cold after riding home from work and was struggling to warm up. Wife told me to stop whining and the heating wasn't going on til November now!!

Joggers and hoodie on, hood up, curtains closed and a hot chocolate sorted me out!!

Yeah my wife got cold at work, and was pretty cold all evening despite blankets and hoodies and all.

Blimey, just had an email from bulb that due to usage, credit and the Gov contribution they are putting our DD down from £240 to £214 a month.

Not sure what to think of that….

Not sure what to think of that….

Whilst Shell have done the exact opposite for me, in that despite credit balance; govt payment etc, they are increasing my DD from £145 to £186, but did state this is not including the govt payment which they use to reduce the DD they actually take.

Ours has been on and off most of the day, I've been draining down all the old filthy ink black water off the system, then once it's fairly clear, in with inhibitor and boiler silencer. Just finished now, so boiler on circulating all the additives. We have a header tank so easy to add chemicals.

Heating is still off, we do put the wood burning stove on in the evenings.

Also, I'm confused...it's not difficult!! In the spirit of educating myself I have been reading lots of 'helpful' pages and watched a few YT vids with heating bods (all UK). They all mention the debate about reducing boiler flow temps etc and that the magic number often quoted (apparently according to a building reg) is 55 degrees and that this will be the number displayed on the dial; display etc on your boiler for the heating side of things - combi boiler.

I have a 6-year-old combi boiler, no thermostat on the wall etc, just controlled by the dial on the boiler and the TRVs on the rads. I have a 1985 house in the NE of England that faces SW at the front and NE at the back where the living room is. Even in the 'depths' of winter if I had the boiler temp (as per the display) set at 55 we'd melt. We usually have it set at 40-48 degrees max.

So, am I doing something wrong? Am I not understanding how my CH system works? Admittedly I hate being too hot. Maybe it's just my internal thermostat that's to blame. Mrs fazzini likes it warmer than me, but still above 50 degrees as set on the boiler will then complain it's too hot! PS - no heating on here yet. 😂

As for boiler temperature, eco setting on ours is generally fine but doesn't really cut the mustard on the coldest of day where the outside temperature doesn't go above freezing, it takes far too long to heat the house up.

Have you ever balanced your heating system?

I spent a bit of time doing this a couple of years a go, I reckon it helped keep all the rooms more evenly heated.

https://heatable.co.uk/boiler-advice/how-to-balance-radiators?gclid=CjwKCAjw7p6aBhBiEiwA83fGutYImDYPq693-uKMerf37iOKyRM8lW9fUsOaO87M8dxDzTgRNQInABoCW1kQAvD_BwE

Calderdale here, three bedroom semi, albeit with a loft conversion to make a fourth. Heating not on yet but on days like this, blue sky and strong sun, it warms up like a greenhouse as we have massive windows, as low as 12” high sills. Conversely, big areas for heat loss when it does turn proper cold.

I WFH in an empty house so have bought a 900w fan heater for my tiny WFH office, the rest of the house can freeze…and then get through around three logs an evening on a wood burner in the lounge if chilly.

Throws, blankets and big slippers issued to the family.

Holding off for as long as possible as Scottish Power put my DD from £106 to £296 overnight, despite the KWH usage tracking from last year is way way down. They’ve also credited the energy payment back to the bank, rather than the account, which probably gets them out of adjusting the DD.

So, am I doing something wrong? Am I not understanding how my CH system works?

No. Lower is better. By the sound of it, your boiler and pump are new enough to work together to slow down so that it supplies the right amount of heat to the radiators based on how their TRVs are open.

This poses the question who or what is controlling the temperature of my water.

I would have thought that it’s the tank thermostat as the boiler would have no idea what temperature the tank is at without a temperature probe in the tank…. Which I doubt it has.

That thermostat may not be linked to the boiler, or is just linked to the immersion - depends who put the system together. It took me, an experienced plumber and many hours on the phone with Vailant to figure out the system for my house.

Kryton57
Full Member
Blimey, just had an email from bulb that due to usage, credit and the Gov contribution they are putting our DD down from £240 to £214 a month.

Not sure what to think of that….

same here - did you also get the pdf file that showed you were now going to be paying even less per kwh than before - i really can't figure that out!

So, am I doing something wrong? Am I not understanding how my CH system works?

Yes

55 is the temperature of the water coming out of the boiler, not the temperature of your house trying to be achieved. As it circulates, it cools and re enters the boiler at (for example) 40 degrees. Below 50-55 and you ar risking nasty things building up in the pipework. So leave it there and adjust your TRV's down so that your rooms reach a comfortable temperature. Remember that one Rad needs to be fully open because if all TRV's close pressure will build up in the system.

Below 50-55 and you ar risking nasty things building up in the pipework.

The CH circulation water will be full of Fernox etc (or rust) and as it's a closed system, it's pretty mute if something wants to grow in there - you're never in contact with it.

Which reminds me, can't recall when I last topped up the Fernox....