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

I do wonder how long we will hold onto ‘old’ houses that are inefficient.
While they are building shoddy hen boxes crammed onto featureless estates I’ll hang on to my 1920s house thanks! 🙂

I’ll hang onto my solidly built 30’s semi, thank you, I really don’t want a cardboard house with a handkerchief for a garden. So what do you recommend we do with with those ‘old houses? Especially when they’re semi’s?

The double glazing does need an upgrade, and better radiators in most rooms, but not affordable at the moment. I’m about £350 in credit at the mo’, I put the heating on the other evening, ‘cos it felt a bit chilly, but only after replacing the batteries in the Hive thermostat, which had died and I hadn’t noticed…

MIne has come on on the thermostat a couple of times recently for short periods.

Turned the boiler off to prevent the hot water coming on whilst I worked in the rads. Turned it back on and it’s dead. Hope it’s just a PCB fault since there are refurbished ones still.on eBay for £50

Nothing yet. House still at about 19def c from solar gain most of the day / night on the south side of our island.

^ sleep on it and check things again in the morning that it’s not something silly

It showed this fault.last time I worked on it but it went away quite quickly. It’s a flame detection fault allegedly.

Is that not the safety thingy for if the flame goes out?

My boiler often takes a couple of goes to light.

Is the pressure in the system right  ?

Yeah there might be some sort of priming procedure you need to do to get the pilot flame back on.

Is that not the safety thingy for if the flame goes out?

Yes, it checks itself to see if that’s in order before it tries to light. If not it immediately displays the code.

Yeah there might be some sort of priming procedure you need to do to get the pilot flame back on.

Pilot flame? How old do you think it is?!

Had the old heating on a few times. I put it on ideally just to take the chill off the house while watching tv, but then end up falling asleep in the chair, waking up several hours later to find the whole house is 25c.

That isnt going to bade well come bill time 🙁

Engage one of those bods who do an EPC rating on houses when they are put up for sale?

they don’t really do much at all and make loads of assumptions do they not?

Can you not get an app for your phone that gives and infra red image of the property to see where you are losing heat?

Can you not get an app for your phone that gives and infra red image of the property to see where you are losing heat?

Does your phone have an infra red camera ?

Pilot flame? How old do you think it is?!

You know what I mean 😛

Anyway, I’ve not had the heating on since last winter… my theromostat/hydrometer is now reading about 17.5 degrees, and high 60’s for relative humidity, at night time.Recent damp rainey weather not helping.

Daytime its more like 18-19c and high 50’s RH.

So it’s getting to the point I might put the heating on for an hour or two mid evening, but only with a target temp of 19c.

Pilot flame? How old do you think it is?!

Our 30+ year old Stelrad/Ideal boiler has a pilot light. I love that boiler because it’s really simple to work on and you can still get parts for it.

they don’t really do much at all and make loads of assumptions do they not?

DEAs are bound by a formalised methodology dictated by something called RDSap. Its an attempt to benchmark inspection standards to the same level across the UK and make individual home energy assessments viable at a sensible cost and timeframe. They’re audited pretty heavily and continuous surveying is required to maintain their accreditation.

RDsap stands for reduced data standard assessment protocol. It’s a truncated version of a set of bespoke tools that assess a buildings energy performance by each individual component and the full sap process is highly detailed and complex. RDsap mandates assumptions in the survey to make this much less onerous and reach about 95% of the accuracy of full sap.

Professionally, they’re as variable as anyone else.

Sitting in a 150 year old stone building in Calderdale, comfortable in a t-shirt and cotton hippie pants at 00:45. This month’s gas/electric bill was £44. I wouldn’t even consider putting on heating at the tail end of the warmest September in human history. I think a lot of it is acclimatisation; I work and play outdoors and am constantly amazed how many clothes people can keep on when I’m too hot in a t-shirt.

I have put my heating on a few times just to make sure it works and the switch doesn’t get clogged. Can’t see us needing actually heating of the house for a while yet, although I have in the last week started using a duvet on the bed rather than just a thin sheet.

I have put my heating on a few times just to make sure it works

Always worth checking this now, rather than waiting until it snows finding that its broken.

Also, if you pay by direct debit, its worth checking what balance you have on your account. If its excessive either reduce your monthly DD or ask for a refund.

I do wonder how long we will hold onto ‘old’ houses that are inefficient.

The answer is a nationwide insulation programme.  I live in an 1870s building.  With a lot of work and money I have insulated it as well as I can given its a listed building in a conservation are and an important building for the character of the area.  Made a huge difference to energy usage

Ach we had 30c on Tues and Weds. I planned a bbq for Friday and it was freezing (22c) – we had to have the fire pit going. 🙂

19c with a 40kmph wind today so the fleece is on!

Nope not needed it as yet, bedroom window is still open too.

Boiler ok again this morning..?

Couldn’t get the big rad I fitted to heat up, eventually bubbles have settled and now it’s only warm not hot. There are.long runs of un lagged pipe in this house which causes problems for the rads on the bottom floor.

Did you balance the new rads?

Of course, balancing rads was the very first thing I learned about on my obsessive journey towards optimising the heating 🙂

Well you seem not to have flow to that radiator so how can it be balanced?  Maybe a bit of debris? valve jamming?

Thinking about it: the hot water comes out of the boiler and up 2 floors to the airing cupboard where the two 2 way valves are, then back down to the ground floor where the heat requirement is greatest. That’s a shit design.

Was the rad in there working properly before?  If so then occams razer says its something you have done.  did you use PTFE tape on the rad connection?  could be blocking flow.

Ours has been on timed but only if the house drops below 17. Good time to ensure everything works before you need it.

We had hot radiators in June when we discovered the motorised valve had failed. Genuine part was only £24

Always worth checking this now, rather than waiting until it snows finding that its broken.

Good call. Testing now…

[ edit: all good… I think I need to dust though ]

With the outside temperature all over the place at the moment, it’s hard to tell how well the improvements I’ve made are helping. My hallway Nest stat reads as 19.5 at the very lowest reached so far, now sitting at 20 / 20.5 without heating. I’m hoping we can delay heating for a while yet. I can’t improve the house any further without knocking it down and rebuilding to near passive standards. The biggest issue is lack of solar gain during the winter. Angle of the house and neighbour’s property really put a stop to that so it’s out of my hands. Positive to that is in the summer it protects the house from excessive high temps.

It’s usually late October or early November for us these days with the delayed Autumn and Winter that we now seem to always have, but I’m not looking forward to the cost of heating oil this year.  It seems to have stabilised at 80ppl which is MUCH higher than any price we paid prior the invasion of Ukraine.  I think the most we’d paid prior to that was 47ppl.  So it’s new normal seems to be settled at DOUBLE the previous high price.  That’ll be us looking at £880 (1000l) to get from November to early March.  £1000 with the boiler service.  Ouch.

Is fine balancing actually necessary if you’re running TRV’s of any flavour? Barring the house having sat at in anti-frost for a week they should control everything and will balance out eventually anyway.

Even with trvs preferential flow will still occur

Yes, it still is. Rads closer to the boiler see higher pressure and their water will be hotter so they’ll output the most heat. Then water will flow slower to the more remote ones and the water will be cooler before it gets there as it’s been through a longer length of un insulated pipe.

By restricting the flow through some rads you force more through others so you can direct heat where you want it. We need the most heat on the ground floor so the upstairs rads are almost fully closed. However you can also adjust things so rooms with TRVs heat up first and then the room with the thermostat in it starts to get more heat only once the other rooms have turned their TRVs off.

I have put my heating on a few times just to make sure it works

Our boiler heats the HW every day, so it gets checked every day!

The only CH component which isn’t tested is one motorised valve (which has a mechanical over ride and you can change the motor un 10 mins without needing to drain the system).

The answer is a nationwide insulation programme. 

Seems a bit extreme. Wouldn’t it be easier just to insulate all the houses instead of the entire country?

Well did another burn tonight and the hallway rad got pretty warm so I guess it’s working now.

I may but some X400 cleaner in it just to make sure.

That’ll be us looking at £880 (1000l) to get from November to early March.

We are electric and wood heated with the house only heated in the evening up to 18 degCby wood with electric on towel rail and kids bed room and spend that much so that doesn’t sound bad.

The answer is a nationwide insulation programme

The thing is insulation needs to be coupled with ventilation/ extraction so it’s not quite the simple job of just insulation.