Not putting the heating on – how’s it going…?

@Scotroutes. How far along the ignition cycle is it going?
Shpild be fan on, purge combustion chamber. Perform aps test. Go, yes / no.
Some will then check gas train pressure, connectivity.
Then open gas valve primary ( clack)
And then almpst simultaneously ignition, so sparks across the electrodes above the flame bar.
Ionisation check, magic eye or ion probe, but your not getting that far.

If your sensible remove outer metal cover, usually lift straight up andcwatch, listen, to the foring sequence.
My guess either gas train solenoid or aps, chevk click click with a bj on the silicon pipes.
Or electrode erosion causing weak spark or spark too high for tge flame bar.
I am not registered gas engineer, just inquisitive

Yes it is. Between 15 and 40% more efficient apparently.

interesting. We have electric underfloor heating in the bathroom & kitchen, although never used it (except to test it!). That article seems to imply that it’s more efficient than gas CH/radiators (although couldn’t see they explicitly differentiated between electric and wet underfloor heating?) which goes against my gut feeling!

To be honest though those 2 rooms would be the ones I’m least bothered about (especially as the bathroom has the bypass rad so is going to be warm anyway when the CH is on). Seemingly the only real benefit (for us) of the underfloor heating would be warm feet on the tiled floor (if not wearing slippers!) so nothing but a bit of a luxury tbh.

Are you really suggesting people turn off individual radiators two/three times a day?

We do in winter – it’s hardly a chore! Turn on bedroom radiator before we go to bed and turn it off when we get up etc…

Seemingly the only real benefit (for us) of the underfloor heating would be warm feet on the tiled floor

I would generally agree with you in that regard.

I have wet UFH in the kitchen and living room, both quite large areas. I only use the kitchen heating and only when it is pretty cold. It takes a while to heat up and I leave the thermostat at 20C.

The fairly small upstairs bathroom has electric UFH, which is pretty useless to me, as I would never leave it on for prolonged periods, due to the higher cost. So all it does is make the tiled floor pleasant to walk on.

Any good links to how to balance the system?

Get an Infra Red thermometer so you can see the temp on the go and return pipes to each radiator instantly. The method is very simple and iterative. In a balanced system all the go pipe temps are the same and all the return pipe temps are the same (with all TRVs fully open). You adjust the lock valve (opposite end to the TRV) to increase / reduce flow to each rad.

Optional step 1: You normally have one radiator the furthest from the boiler, for this one you fully open the lock valve. If you’re not sure skip this step.

The method is this: Switch on CH, run round house scanning the temp of all the IN pipes and make a note. Whichever radiator is getting hottest first, restrict him a half turn on on lock valve. Whichever radiator is coolest, open the lockvalve a 1/4 turn. Wait 5 mins and repeat. If all the IN temps seem consistent, move to out flow temps and repeat, whoever has the hottest return temp gets restricted. You’ll never get it perfect, but within 2C will be good enough.

Longest heating was on is 2.75 hours a couple of days ago as the hallway was set to 18 from 8 to 2300 and off all night, it then drops to around 15.5c actual temp in the hallway by 8am the following day and that’s with -4/-5c outside. I’ve dropped it down to 17/17.5 now and this has resulted in a reduction to 1.75/2.25 hours a day. Lounge sits between 20 and 21 c as it has a TV/AV amp and various network devices as well as insulated plasterboard but still drops in temp over night.
House was built in 2006 (extremely poorly) and I have spent a fortune in fixing all the issues so I’m still a little disappointed on the drop in temp over night, I suspect if I switched off the heat recovery extract system it would go up in temp but have issues with humidity due the ongoing airtightness improvements I am making. The heat recovery only works so well with a house that will never be passive standard.

However my parents returned after a holiday a couple of days ago to a house at 4c in the coldest room, elsewhere it was 6c. Frozen pipes too -they were lucky they didn’t burst.

You’ll never get it perfect, but within 2C will be good enough.

Thanks FF, I’m going to try this as I’m sure my rads are all over the place.

I have all my rads turned on to max (there is method in the madness). I have reduced my flow temp down to about 55c. Takes maybe 5 more minutes to get to target temperature. I have tried to set up my heating so the return into the boiler is as low as possible, to make sure the boiler is condensing, utilising as much latent heat as possible.

Stop Turning Off Radiators! (In unused rooms) It costs MORE!

Is underfloor more efficient than rads? I doubt it as you’re always going to be heating the earth to some extent – at least with rads the heat is basically all going into the room.

Unlikely, this was designed in to start with. There’s at least 100mm of insulation, a foil layer and floorboards between the ground and the trays holding the pipes. Wouldn’t think you’d lose very much at all through that.
Think they have a layer of concrete in there too.

On a personal note, our gas, electric, phone, broadband, 1 mobile was 100 quid this month. End terrace 2 adults 1 10 year old!

On a work related note my colleague seems to think having the fan heater on all the time is acceptable. It’s 27C in the office FFS and the heating is on! Doesn’t want to listen, when we ask her to turn it off!

There’s at least 100mm of insulation, a foil layer and floorboards between the ground and the trays holding the pipes

unlikely its as little as that . when we did our extension it was minimum 150mm kingspan or equivalent

Quite possibly, my BiLs extension was 200mm.
The neighbours was half refit and rebuild (taking out ~25 year old UFH and replacing) and half new build (with UFH in a newly built structure). So there were somethings that i would guess weren’t 100% to code, or didn’t need to be. Also, half the ground floor is over a newly dug basement.

The method is this: Switch on CH, run round house scanning the temp of all the IN pipes and make a note. Whichever radiator is getting hottest first, restrict him a half turn on on lock valve. Whichever radiator is coolest, open the lockvalve a 1/4 turn. Wait 5 mins and repeat. If all the IN temps seem consistent, move to out flow temps and repeat, whoever has the hottest return temp gets restricted. You’ll never get it perfect, but within 2C will be good enough.

Interesting, the method I followed was similar but instead you just worked from the one that got hottest first to the coldest (i.e. from the boiler to the furthest point), and adjusted each one in sequence.

Your method sounds a fair bit quicker as you’re effectively doing them all at once.

As I said though our house seems wierd as it only ever gets a 10C differential. Even while warming up (i.e. when you’d expect it to be maxed out) the differential never goes above 12.

Considering that actually, I should make sure the hot water and first hour or two of CH don’t overlap, otherwise it’ll be pumping cold (<60C) water through the coil in the HW tank!

So I think with us we’ve now seen the impact on gas heating with the new prices / colder weather.

4 bed detached house – late 80’s build so cavity walls but no insulation in then. The loft has maybe 100mm insulation but I’m in the process of topping that up with another 200mm to get it a bit better.

Pre price cap rises we paid £150 for both gas and electric combined.

Just had the latest bill as £140 for electricity and £199 for gas for the 12th Nov-12th dec. Ouch!

We’d stayed off the heating at all pretty much until mid Oct. Now we have it set it 17.5 degrees working from home. Occasional blip to 18 degrees if we’re feeling fancy. Overnight it’s down to 15.5 degrees.

Last winter we wouldn’t have thought too hard about sticking it up to 21 degrees but that would cost a fortune now. Working in long sleeve top with long sleeved sweatshirt or hoodie plus a down gilet over the top most of the time. Just learning to live with more clothes on / less heating.

Not going to be much fun when the energy subsidy is turned off from the government – a couple of months before the mortgage fixed rate runs off July / aug sort of time 🥶

Pump flipped upside down, took about 90 mins because I had to go to B&Q to look for new washers, and they didn’t have any of course. So I put the manky old ones back with lots of silicone grease and they seem ok so far.

Boiler controls now work as expected. Setting the dial to 60 degrees means it throttles back as it gets close then runs at low power for ages and eventually turns off at 65, back on after a few minutes. I need to figure out if I am at risk of short cycling now though. Bubbles also disappear immediately whereas before there were always bubbles trapped in the pump because it was trying to pump them downwards and they kept floating back up.

It ran for ages after I fitted it because the house had dropped to 13C

In a balanced system all the go pipe temps are the same and all the return pipe temps are the same

I don’t think it’s that simple. You don’t necessarily want all the rads to be at the same temperature.

Some rooms have more heating requirements than others e.g. our kitchen because it’s on the ground floor of a 3 storey house and it has big glass doors and possibly some draughts.

We have a single thermostat controlling the whole house, which is in the hallway. If the hallway heats up before the living room is up to temperature, then the living room stays cold. So I’d ideally like the living room to heat up, then the TRVs will shut it off and divert more heat to the hallway which should be the last one to warm up so it can shut the whole lot off.

Then there’s also the question of flow speed. If you have a decent modern boiler it will be adjusted automatically but we don’t – our pump only has three settings. The lower you set the flow the greater the difference between flow and return of the boiler, but also the greater the heat lost out of each rad because the water is in there long enough. If the flow is too high then the water isn’t in the rads long enough to cool down so your return temp is too high so you risk not condensing. If your rads are balanced the way you want them you can turn them all down to reduce the flow in the entire system. It will result in greater temperature differential at the boiler though and that should not be too great. In my case the manual says not more than 20C and it’s generally 15C now. Before I turned the pump the right way up it was often 18-22C but then the burner was on full blast nearly all the time.

I have one of those cheap eBay thermometers, and I taped the probes to some woodworking clamps to attach to the pipes – works a treat.

Re hot water I have set mine to work at different times to the heating

Not going to be much fun when the energy subsidy is turned off from the government – a couple of months before the mortgage fixed rate runs off July / aug sort of time 🥶

I think the hope / wishful thinking is that the cap will run out after everyone’s turned the heating off again. Then there’s another ~9 months before the heating goes back on for things to hopefully return to some sort of normal.

Saying “the cap is ……” is fairly meaningless as for most people they probably use 80% of their gas in 20% of the year so it really only matters what the cap on gas is Dec/Jan/Feb.

there’s no way underfloor heating is 40% more efficient than rads. a boiler may run a little more efficiently with a lower flow temp, but there’s no other efficiency to gain – heat has to go somewhere.

additionally electric underfloor heating would be more expensive regardless (even if it was 40% more energy efficient) due to the cost per unit of elec vs gas

there’s no way underfloor heating is 40% more efficient than rads. a boiler may run a little more efficiently with a lower flow temp, but there’s no other efficiency to gain – heat has to go somewhere.

I think 40% is a high claim.

However, I think the efficiency comes from the fact the heat is spread evenly around the whole room and you are not just heating a small area to quite a high temperature and relying on convection to spread it through the room.

there’s no way underfloor heating is 40% more efficient than rads. a boiler may run a little more efficiently with a lower flow temp, but there’s no other efficiency to gain – heat has to go somewhere.

15% from the boiler seems achievable (relative to an averagely badly setup system not the theoretical efficiency), add in 10% losses through an uninsulated floor that would need to be upgraded for UFH and you’re then in the middle of that range?

Seems like a cherry picked number though as it’s equally very inefficient heating up a concrete slab that’ll store heat all day if you’re only in the house for short periods. In an extreme example. jumping out of bed, putting a jumper on and going to work uses 100% less energy than any other option. And it’d be a sliding scale from that, to a fan heater in one room, to CH, to UFH. Whereas if you were in the building 24/7 then an electric fan heater would cost an absolute fortune.

Just did a count we have 17 rads and 2 towel rails. About 2/3rds with Trvs. Going to take ages twiddling all those knobs!

I’ve done a non scientific test of the tails, the big rads flow tail is as hot as the other rads, but its return is luke warm. Its a triple column rad, seems to be the same temp all the way up and I checked for air and non came out. Could the return valve be faulty or something blocking the return pipe? I hope its not the later as its under quite alot of concrete…..anyway of finding out. Plumber who fitted says the system needs balancing hence me having a half arsed go at it without much success

Some of the older valves don’t seem to want to move. Is it a matter of a bit more welly to turn, or is it some older valves never shut off (some of the rads are from the 50s at a guess)

Then there’s also the question of flow speed.

Don’t go casually adjusting the flow speed on older Grundfos pumps. In my experience they can be a bit temperamental as the starting capacitor gets old and they may not start every time on lower speeds. It’s not dangerous (your house won’t get warm) but your boiler may not like having its overheat stat and every compression fitting inside it tested.

The speed adjuster is a little bit of bent copper that bridges two electrical contacts and is also prone to making poor connections. If the pump doesn’t start one day but isn’t seized, you can just put a bigger bend in it with some needle-nose pliers and fix the problem.

I’m amazed by a number of things in this thread.

1: how warm some people choose to run their houses
2: how cold some people choose to run their houses (i know some don’t have a choice.)
3: how quickly some houses cool down
4: how slowly some houses heat up

I’ve been running the woodburner a bit more than usual this week while its been really cold, on the days we run the woodburner, it cuts the gas consumption by 60%. I’ve yet to work out the cost of the wood vs cost of gas.

3: how quickly some houses cool down
4: how slowly some houses heat up

This has been quite eye-opening for me, comparing the efficiency of housing/heating systems. Had the heating on about 4 hours today and it’s not been above 14 degrees, and it’s only 3pm… It’s about 8 when I get up in the morning. I know others who run the heating for no longer than 4 hours a day and it’s about 17 degrees all day.

there’s no way underfloor heating is 40% more efficient than rads

Hmm, again lots of factors. Floor is dead cold in our kitchen which makes it feel far colder than it is, because of the void under the floor which seems to be well ventilated. The rad is at one end, and the cooker is at the other end so you spend time in the coldest spot. Underfloor heating might not be 40% more efficient in terms of heat transferred into the room but if it spreads it about better I can see you’d end up using much less.

I’m now looking at new rads for the living room. £90 each and 4x the heat output, that should help let me run at cooler temps. It’s unlikely to be cost effective this winter though. And by the weekend when the cold snap is over, it also probably won’t be needed. It was 1C all day today which is exceptional for Cardiff.

Effect of being in a cold room – 21C v 10C; the podcast link is worth listening to.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63602501

There have also been many articles recently by medicos/scientists far better qualified than me – and most posters to this thread – saying that 18C should be regarded as the minimum indoor temperature for residential properties; 18C = 64.5F

From the Centre for Sustainable Energy…

Below 13° – If your home is this cold, it may increase your blood pressure and risk of cardiovascular disease.

14-15° – If your home is this cold, you may be diminishing your resistance to respiratory diseases.

18° is the recommended night time bedroom temperature.

19-21° is the recommended daytime temperature range for occupied rooms.

See also 1, 2.1 and the conclusion (pg27) in this report…
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/770963/data_sources_to_support_local_services_tackling_health_risks_of_cold_homes.pdf

I would say the facts are clear. There are also reports on the effects on mental health from living in a cold house.

3: how quickly some houses cool down
4: how slowly some houses heat up

This.

As a former domestic energy assessor I’m kinda on top of this stuff anyway, but I’m used to seeing KW heat losses and U values.

Seeing people saying my heating runs for 4 hours and gets to 14 degrees makes it somewhat less abstract.

I’ve turned my boiler flow temp down to 47 degrees and thought it was slow because it takes about 45 minutes to get to 18 degrees from and overnight 15!

How can that advice take account of what people are wearing?

19-21 seems pretty high and imagine most houses have only been able to achieve that since the mid to late 20th century.

If you’ve got warm clothes on then I don’t really see the issue of being at 16 rather than 21.

Seeing people saying my heating runs for 4 hours and gets to 14 degrees makes it somewhat less abstract.

I’ll add that the house is double glazed, all windows closed, no drafts, and insulation in the loft. I can imagine people living in much worse.

Temps have been sub-zero for over a week though, as low as -5.

This has been quite eye-opening for me, comparing the efficiency of housing/heating

Me too. I thought our house was utter garbage but compared to some others, clearly not. 1980s cheap build, but could be so much worse. I think back to being a kid at my mums, an Edwardian terrace, and dread to think what it would cost to heat that 6 bed monster now 😱 even our first house built in 1925 would be awful, it had no loft insulation or cavity wall insulation.

I might whinge about costs but I’m lucky. Not as lucky as some – I’m definitely not ‘well off’, certainly, but certainly a damn site luckier than others. I told my employer we shouldn’t be claiming expenses for Xmas team stuff we should pay ourselves, and get what we would have claimed, donated by our company to one of our charity partners. None of my immediate colleagues agreed (most earn more than me). Saddened me no end. I’ve donated what I ‘spent’ to a local food bank.

Just in response to another point, I wear shorts all year round unless in the office. Not cos I’m willy-waving (I can’t find it at the moment it’s a tad chilly), geet hard as owt, or virtue-signalling, it’s comfort. If I was walking a long distance I’d wear long troos, but I have medical condition and I’ve found air-flow helps. You know what, let folk be who they are, judge a little less, and you might just be a tad happier/less of a knob/more content… <delete/add as applicable>

Pre central heating, most houses had open fires; get one of those going with internal doors open and most of the house warmed quickly.
Every (?) house had curtains in all rooms other than kitchen and bathroom; some had heavy weight for winter and lightweight when temperatures rose.
I’m sure that the science underpinning the links I posted is robust.
Being static in a cool room when layered up does not prevent the body temp from falling; try it – extremities will gradually become cold as the body tries to maintain core temp.
You think 19 – 21C (66 – 70F) seems pretty high for occupied rooms?
Agree – in summer.
I have no problem with cold weather but have enough common sense to be aware of the science and act accordingly.

Madame has been on a jolly in Germany over the last week so I couldn’t be bothered to fire up the wood burner just for me initially. It started at 18 and lost a couple of degrees a day (frosty nights) until the weather warmed up and it stabilised at 12°C. At that point I had a burn which took it to 14 and today it was 17 outside so I opened up the whole house which got it up to 16. Madame is home in a few hours so the wood burner is roaring getting it back up to here acceptable range. Quite pleased with how slowly it cools down.

I was in a 280 odd year old house today seeing friends, proper blue blood toffs.
Abso-bloody-lutely freezing everywhere but the kitchen.
No thanks. With that money, I’d be in Kenya with the rellies from December to March on their sprawling estates.

They’re wired a bit different though 😅.

Turn on bedroom radiator before we go to bed and turn it off when we get up etc…

do people normally heat their house at night? I wouldn’t be able to sleep with the heating on

Seems like a cherry picked number though as it’s equally very inefficient heating up a concrete slab that’ll store heat all day if you’re only in the house for short periods.

Properly designed UFH isn’t heating up a concrete slab though. It’s heating the floor tiles, and the material it’s encased in. Maybe 30-50mm of material. Then you’re effectively into 100-200 mm of insulation.

Slap it down on top of an old school concrete raft, with all the insulating properties of a Barretts built house, then you’re on a whole different calculation. It’s like trying to convert an existing 80’s build into a proper passivehaus, never going to work.

However, I think the efficiency comes from the fact the heat is spread evenly around the whole room and you are not just heating a small area to quite a high temperature and relying on convection to spread it through the room.

If you’re in the position of needing a log burner, get one of the circulating fans on the top, either a sterling cycle or peltier.
Mines pretty much halved my log consumption and means the whole upper storey of the house warms up when it’s running, rather than superheating a column of air immediately round the burner.

18° is the recommended night time bedroom temperature.

19-21° is the recommended daytime temperature range for occupied rooms.

I’d be doing a daily wash if my house was that warm, i’d be sweating continuously. Bedrooms are usually about 16 degrees, and the ones in permanent use are in the (semi) basement. Living space/upstairs is between 16 and 18.

do people normally heat their house at night? I wouldn’t be able to sleep with the heating on

There’s an easy solution to this: just pretend all those pennies £££ you’re counting are sheep. Voila!

Being static in a cool room when layered up does not prevent the body temp from falling; try it – extremities will gradually become cold as the body tries to maintain core temp.

Don’t worry I’ve been trying it for several years! So I’m well aware that you can sit in front a computer for 7 hours and be fine at 16 degrees.

I read that pdf you posted. It just seems to say that 18 degrees is a threshold for the over 65s and those with health conditions.

There is a link on the first page of it to the evidence and that doesn’t seem to contain the 18 degree claim. It also makes it clear that it’s cold houses in the context of poverty. I imagine it is hard to work out what proportion of negative health outcomes is due to poverty and due to living in a cold house – the two are clearly correlated.

At the back of the evidence report in a section titled areas for further research it does mention the 18 degree number but only in the context of ‘Uncertainty remains over whether the current guidance (21°C for main living room and 18°C for all other occupied rooms of the home) should be directed only at vulnerable groups or the population’. It goes on to say there is a lot of uncertainty about whether the interventions studied were increasing the temp of the house or just making the people less poor which in itself increased the health of them.

Obvs I’m not suggesting sitting in a cold damp room full of mould is a good idea. But there is a world of difference between someone who is already in poverty sitting in a cold damp house and a stw middle class IT manager putting their thermostat at 16.

5 bed, 3 storey, 20 year old detached house, high area in south Lanarkshire. Currently -7 outside, last night was -10.8 on our outside thermometer. A few of us in all day, between my working from home, wife and teenage sons, school, work shifts etc. outside temperature hasn’t been over -3 for days. Heating is on a Hive and is set to 18 at night, 21 by 9 am and then creeping up a little through the afternoon to around 22.5 by 6pm, back to 18 for 11pm. It’s set on ‘at temp x by…’.

It’s nice to feel comfortable, and our heating is never switched ‘off’, rather it’s Hive controlled all year.

We are in a fortunate position to be able to afford it, and being a fairly modern house with new windows etc it doesn’t take a huge energy amount to heat in the summer, but right now it’s around £25 a day all in gas and electric, which is a bit scary. From May to September it’s more like £8 a day.

do people normally heat their house at night? I wouldn’t be able to sleep with the heating on

Yes but only to 12*C. It’s been -10 this last week, it’d be pretty uncomfortable by morning if we turned it off completely.

Bloody hell, that’s about £6.5k a year!

Worth noting that in a setup like ours having the thermostat set at 16 doesn’t mean the rooms you are in are at 16. Our thermostat, like most people’s is in the hallway, and in our case that’s quite a bit colder than the rest of the house. Setting the thermostat to 17 means the living rooms are about 20.

I have had to turn my flow temp up to about 60C. The living rooms with TRVs had all shut down, and at lower temps the hallway rad (which is reasonably large but single layer) couldn’t emit enough heat to warm the hallway to 17C when it’s -2C outside. The boiler was then short cycling as it had more or less reached a steady state but one that was lower than the stat temp. So I’ve lowered the stat temp and raised the flow temp so now the stat turns off.