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

Would a useful stat be cost of heating per square meter of house space? Ours is a lot. 7p per square meter I think and heating to 18/19 ish but some rooms don’t get that high.

We had our windows replaced But they’re rubbish – the thermal break on them doesn’t seem to work and condensation forms on the bottom. Pretty sure the mitre joints at the corners leak air too.

Think I found a cold bridge in the basement

yeah, there’s obviously a sweet spot, but this changes according to conditions! I guess the whole point of OpenTherm on more modern boilers is that it works all this out automatically

I have fitted outside temperature sensor on ours (crazy they don’t come with them as standard), and it modulates well. But it seems the return / rad temp setting overides things 🤷‍♂️

evidence presented suggests the EPC rating is bollocks…

Our last rented house had on its EPC that the windows were “fully double glazed throughout”. I could squeeze my little finger through the gap around the bit of the window that opened on two of the windows, but it still counted 🙂

@joshvegas don’t tell me that G4 is just sitting rotting away in your manky old basement 😭

basically yeah might chuck it in the skip now i think about it…

@joshvegas if you’re serious I would gladly take it off your hands for up-cycling!

ha.

Its sitting waiting for a raspberry pi upgrade.

Its sitting waiting for a raspberry pi upgrade.

exactly what I’d do with one 😃 👍 Although I’ve had a G5 & G4 Quicksilver sitting around for years but not done anything with them yet 😂

don’t tell me that G4 is just sitting rotting away

What’s a G4?

The very distinctive shaped Apple Mac that’s sitting on his shelf!

What’s a G4?

The only bit of apple tat i’d ever be seen dead with

The only bit of apple tat i’d ever be seen dead with

…and you picked the worst looking one they’ve done! 🤣

yeah, there’s obviously a sweet spot, but this changes according to conditions! I guess the whole point of OpenTherm on more modern boilers is that it works all this out automatically?

From my own experience it adapts to changing conditions very well. No direct experience with opentherm but with Vailants own version…..that I can’t currently remember the name of 😀

A lass at mrs100th’s work has been “frugal” with her heating. Pipes froze yesterday. That’s going to be a pricey money saving exercise.

Water feed under the house has frozen. Just bought a cheap fan heater to stick under the floor to unfreeze it before insulating it. Looking forward to damp and not so cold this weekend.

tried turning the boiler flow temp down as suggested above, house was far colder this morning (13 degrees). I know its supposed to be more efficient but surely if you have to have the heating on much longer its going to be about the same?

No. Efficiency is about heat into the house (kWh) versus volume of gas burned. If efficiency stayed the same, it would make no difference if you burned twice as much gas for half the time. But burning twice as much gas in half the time will be less efficient, so more actual gas is wasted. Similar to how you use more petrol driving at 100mph than if you drive at 50mph, even though your journey takes half the time.

When you turn the flow temp down you are reducing the rate at which heat enters the house. If that is greater than the rate of heat loss, it heats up – and you can burn for longer but use less gas overall. The problem is when it gets cold and the rate of heat loss is the same or greater than the rate of heat delivered by the lower boiler temps. So you then need to turn it up when it’s cold. Modern boilers (apparently) can be WiFi enabled and automatically do this depending on the current weather, it’s called weather compensation.

Our issue is that where our thermostat is on the ground floor in the hallway is the least well insulated part of the house, so it cools down faster. So the rate of heat loss in the hallway is greater than it is in the rest of the house. So I can to set the main temp down to a lower temperature (16) in cold weather like this and the system works better, is on less, and all the rooms with TRVs are the same temperature. So when it warms up, as well as turning the flow temp down I will paradoxically set the hallway temp higher to make sure the rest of the house gets heating.

A lass at mrs100th’s work has been “frugal” with her heating. Pipes froze yesterday. That’s going to be a pricey money saving exercise.

I bet there are more than a few who have done this.

Also – money saving tip: You might find your UPVC windows don’t actually shut properly any more – mine don’t. Stick a piece of paper down behind the seal to find out. You can just stick tape over the gap though, it makes a big difference.

Re weather compensation – I am considering hacking my boiler with a Raspberry Pi to do this, and also turn the temp up when the hot water is scheduled.

Yes and no
More thicker insulation in the arric space, plus a few degrees lower down stairs prob means alot of homes with vented dhw will see burst pipes
Under the house, insulation with t rex tape on the joints will help.
Or farmers use trace heating wires wound round the pipes then insulation on top. Super low watts and enough to keep the pipe from freezing.

Water feed under the house has frozen. Just bought a cheap fan heater to stick under the floor to unfreeze it before insulating it. Looking forward to damp and not so cold this weekend.

happened to me in 2021.

under the slab as well – not because we didnt have the heating on – the pipe was outside the insulated envelope of the house. The main feed into the house was only 3ft down not below the frost line – it was -20 at the time , the diesel in the van gelled and wouldnt start – the coolant in the landrover had frozen – and it did start – albe it with a slipping fan belt as the fan was frozen solid.

the resultant claim was a nightmare – ended up doing the work my self as they were putting schedules of 9 months in place for a new floor/skirting and they wanted to reinstate the pipe under the slab – By digging out the slab no less…. like some sort of mental folks…… i brought it into the house on a different corner under the floor and put it deeper/lagged it.

Currently running our heating 24hrs with thermostat set at 17 degrees.

Working out about £10 a week more than my old timed on-off times, but house feels better. (1920s house with no cavity walls).

Dt78
Its all to do with boiler efficiency
Only do this with a modern, condensing boiler with internal modulation.
The return water temps being very low means a pick up in boiler efficiency.
So running for longer is actually cheaper.
You get the ch system up to say 55c, then use low flow through the rads to get the heat out the water so it returns at say 35c. A modetn condensing boiler then does magic with energy to heat the ch system back up to 55c very very effectively.

money saving tip: You might find your UPVC windows don’t actually shut properly any more – mine don’t

or adjust them properly

The unforseen consequences events costing more than the savings plays on my mind.

It’s a 1920’s house, suspended floor and roof tiles with no vapour sheet. All our timber is absolutely bone dry and in fantastic condition. not showing any signs of needing any investment. Air can get in the roof and under the floor. I’ve stopped the drafts into the bit we live in and insulated the roof to a reasonable standard.

I’m worried that any further well intended insulating projects I undertake will cause still air, eventually damp and end up costing me more than I save just by being a bit cold for a couple of months a year.

Despite all this talk of reduced flow temperatures for improvements in boiler efficiency, bear in mind that at its absolute best, with an optimised radiator system and the most versatile modern boiler, you’re looking at 12% at best, when compared to an un-optimsed install. Most likely best case is closer to 6%. So, don’t get in a massive tiz.

It’s a low cost saving if you can do it though.

Just done a mid month meter read with octopus.
So, for the first 15 days of December i used 63kwh of electricity at £27.97 all in, vat and standing charge incl.
On the gas front its more than i was expecting 283kwh and £33.86.
So £62 or £124 for the whole month with usage rates projected forward at current rates.
I am running a wood burner pretty much daily but the wood is more or less free.

My ch comes on around 5pm then i cycle the boiler on and off for around 3 hrs, so its on for 15min then off for 30min.
Warms the rest of the flat nicely them its off from 8pm till 5pm the next day as most of the time im either working or out and about. Log burner goes on at sundown.

Ours had just kicked in, kitchen has dropped to 14C having been at 18C at 8am this morning. Was nearly -10C in the garden this morning. I filled bird baths with hot tap water at 8.30am and by 11 they had iced over!

I set 15C as the lowest I let it go unattended. If we’re here in the evening, we manually bump it back up to 18 at around 5/6 pm…

EON is telling us we have used £172 worth of gas in the last two weeks since the last meter reading. Considering we never have it on all day only in the mornings and evenings for a couple of hours, I’m miffed. Though it could be an error as they have continually buggered up our last two bills. Our statment is page on page of credits, refunds and debits. It’s all over the place. They have no idea what causes it all. I thought I’d never deal with a company as incompetent as EE, but EON are charging to the top.

“I filled bird baths with hot tap water at 8.30am and by 11 they had iced over!”

Hot water freezes faster than cold water. Because the hot molecules are moving around constantly the body of water will freeze as a body of water, rather than vreezing slowly on the outside surface and slowly penetrating towards the centre, as it does with colder water.

Using the heating a lot this last couple of weeks and the log burner in the evenings. Set to 17 during the day if we’re in and all turned off upstairs as we seem to lose a lot of heat up there. Downstairs stays much warmer. Turn the rads upstairs back on before bed so we have an hr of heat in the morning. The bedrooms are chalet style so sit within the roof. The loft is insulated well but front and rear walls of the house seem very thin and flimsy with a hollow sound if you tap them. We used to have condensation run down these walls before installing a PIV as they are the coldest place in the house due to having triple glazing. The side wall of the house is cavity wall insulated. Any of you clever people know the best way to go about improving the insulation for this type of build?

I’m toying with the idea of getting insulating wallpaper for the colder walls.

9C in the lounge when I got in from work so I’ve put the heating on for an hour, even though I’m probably going out later.

The folk in Shetland with no electricity age getting £30 /24hrs freezing their nuts off, must keep receipts for food made for them to get their money back yet the CEO of sse was paid £4000000 or thereabouts last year and probably a good few others in the company very well paid

I flushed the two downstairs rads, but I don’t think it did much. I did however notice the TRV body on the cold one had gummed up, so I smacked it about a bit which I think freed it up a bit and it was subsequently much hotter.

The other thing I’ve just done is decrease the hallway temps for daytime and increase them at night, so now it’s 16/15C. I think this will lead to less fluctuation in temperature which means the boiler can run for less time so it doesn’t end up exceeding the set flow temp and short cycling.

In news from Tasmania;
We’ve just had our coldest december day on record with a high of 11ºc.
It’s supposed to be summer & I’ve had the heater on.

Hot water freezes faster than cold water. Because the hot molecules are moving around constantly the body of water will freeze as a body of water, rather than vreezing slowly on the outside surface and slowly penetrating towards the centre, as it does with colder water.

Lol

I’ve fixed the short cycling.

The boiler was modulating down to 9kW but that was still a bit more than could be shed by the rads so the water got hotter and hotter until it hit the set temp of about 60C. When that happened, it started short cycling, but the hallway temp still wasn’t high enough.

So I’ve moved the stat (it’s wireless) about 30cm closer to the radiator. Now, it turns off quicker, but it’s within the time that the boiler is able to run full blast. The boiler runs continuously for about 20 mins, but is still off for plenty of time.

It’s an intricate set of variables that need to match up. The stat has a setting to adjust how quickly it turns off and on by changing the temperature gap, but it’s already on +/- 0.5C which is the lowest. Moving the stat has had the same effect as reducing it.

“Lol”

Try putting an ice cube tray full of cold water and an ice cube tray full of hot water in the freezer (at the same time) and see which freezes solid first…

The Mpemba effect. Lots of possible reasons why it appears that hot water freezes faster then cold water