Heating on low all day- experiment

[User129867588]

Not sure anyone will find this useful as I know we all have different houses and boilers etc, but I trialled having my heating on all day yesterday, reduced my thermostat to 18 degrees and I spent the same on gas as previous day when the heating was on 18.5 but only on for just over an hour in morning and then for 3 hours in evening! Both days the temp on my thermostat after boiler being off all night was 14.5 degrees 🥶

House is a 2 bed semi, mid 1980’s build. Double glazing that’s over 10 years old and some getting replaced soon. House had insulation added but again that was about 15 years ago.

As seen on pictures the main expense on the gas was when heating first came on and then around tea time. I cooked on my gas hob and then all 3 of us had showers and we use a mixer shower connected to boiler for hot water. I’m with EDF on the variable rate.

I’m doing it again today and if it stays around the same I don’t see any reason for me to work in a cold house in the daytime when it costs the same (or just a tiny bit more) to heat most of the day! I can manage with 18 degrees too and still wear a jumper and extra thermals. Last years 20 degree heat is but a distant memory…….

Yes ours cools quickly and heats slowly. But since blocking a few drafts the heating is slower than the cooling

We've already used as much gas today as we did the whole of yesterday though and given the temperature outside is almost identical today, I think the lack of sunshine and not benefitting from and 'solar gain' - not sure if that is the right term - has actually made a surprisingly big difference.

We are in Europe where it's more common to leave heating on all the time. Thermostat is usually set to 19 or 20 during the day and 15 at night. We have colder winters than the U.K. - 3° today and -1 last night, for example. We have tried the on-off technique but it always feels cold and we didn't feel we saved much money.

Boiler is currently waiting to be replaced so we are using a fire and a few electric radiators. If we are both out all day and the fire isn't lit the house is bloody freezing and takes ages to warm up!

I have started leaving the radiators on the lowest setting even when we're not in those rooms because otherwise they take ages to warm up. No significant difference in electricity usage.

@HairyKitty in my experience I don't think half an hour would be enough... you'd use a lot of power heating up from cold and then it would go off again. But it would be an interesting experiment!

I’ve changed my timer to give an extra 30 mins in the night so let’s see what happens

Interesting thread.
We have oil central heating so I can't actually measure.
Large 4 bed 1980s barn conversion which is ridiculously hard to heat up.
Upstairs always warmer than down.
Multifuel stove with back boiler which taps into central heating. I hadn't used the stove for 3 years but have started lighting it some days. Other days i use an oil filled electric heater in main living room which is impossible to get warm with just central heating.

Up until this week Ive had heat on twice a day for 4 hours in total. I set thermostat at 20 but it even if it gets up to temp it plummmets as soon as heating goes off. The temp in morning is 15C after the heating has been on an hour.

This week I changed tack. The heat has been on all day but I turned the boiler right down (not the room thermostat).
The house has been blissfully warm..
Trouble is I have no way to compare oil consumption.

Today is day 5 of my experiment and still going well. No major jumps in the price of my gas. I trialled reducing the thermostat to 17.5 and wasn’t seeing a big change either (house a little more comfortable at 18-18.5 though) The rest of the week and next week will be interesting as temperature won’t be much above zero! I’m expecting my boiler to fire up more in the day

Same here. Did try a degree or two lower but put it right back up, far more comfortable.

It is due to reach below freezing this week, so expects costs to be up, not sure if I want to know by how much!

I've decided to keep at 17.5 on constant the days we are at home and put onto timed the days we're out at work.
Overnight set to 15.
I think this will work for us. I don't want to be at home on my days off freezing 😩

£7 on gas yesterday, set to 18 as a bare min 24/7, and to 21 from 12 til 11pm.

Today so far has been £2 from midnight to 10.30 at 18.

I think I'm going to try turning my bedroom radiator trv off in the daytime and back on a couple of hours before bed.

We joined in with this today after being inspired.

We have TRVs, rather than a room thermostat, and it took us until the heating had been on for 4 hours to get them where we needed them (cooler in the bedrooms and bathroom and warmer in the living room and dining room). Two needed taking apart and fiddling with to get them to work.

We don't have a smart meter, but had read the meter on 1 Dec, so averaged out the daily use (just under 6 units per day; not yet converted into kWh). At about 4pm, when the heating had been on since 6.30am, we'd used 5 units. I've not checked since the heating went off at 7, but can't think it would be above 6 units.

We've gone from 1 hour in the morning and 5 in the afternoon / evening, to 12.5 hours' heating (flow rate about 60°).

Tomorrow will be a better test, as the TRVs are now set properly.

I also tried this yesterday and instead of just having the heating on from 7.30am to 11am, then 5-10pm I had it only all day at 18c. Only cost 60p more. Was lovely not to feel so cold all day. Going to keep an eye out in to make sure it stays that way, I can afford the extra £18 a month if it does!

Well I tried leaving my heating "on" for the grand total of one day and I won't be trying that again.

Detached three bed house, fairly large... Had heating on as usual yesterday, set to about 18.... Put it down to 14.5 before going to bed around 11pm.

Woke up this morning, went down at about half 8 to check the usage from midnight to 8:30..... £4 worth of gas used. Crazy.

My house can easily drop to 12 overnight, but I didn't expect it to take 4 quid to keep it at 14.5.

At the moment I feel like I'm paying through the nose to be cold instead of freezing. Calculated that my bathroom heated floor costs about 15-20p an hour to run... Tempted to only have that on and spend the day in the bathroom barefoot. At least my feet will be warm.

We've been putting ours on at 7.00 am now. It's up to 20 and takes an hour and a half to heat the house. Then it goes down to 15 for the day. The temperature in the house stays at about 21 until about 5 and we have one last burst at 20 again for an hour. Then it goes off for the night. It's now 9.30 and the house still feels really warm. No idea how much this will cost.

It seems like we’re getting mixed results but glad to hear many are trying. It’s worth it just to know.

Looks like Martin Lewis has been talking about this in the news today! Some of us are proving him wrong. I’m not sure if my house is prone to condensation!?! I do get a lot on the windows in the mornings and have to wipe all windows down, but I don’t keep the heating on at night so that could be why

Martin Lewis article

That doesn’t sound right, unless your house got extremely cold in the night. Can you check hourly usage between 11pm-8am?

i put the heating on for 30 minutes this morning (it heats very quickly) when I got up to heat the house. Was 12.5 and went to 15 but the time I left. We did the same this evening. All windows and door closed. Leave the cooker doors open once finished cooking. It’s working okay so far...

Not sure how accurate hive is but according to the app my heating was running for about 15-20mins every hour to maintain 14.5.

The numbers seem to make sense... that's about 3 hours in total the heating was on, my boiler costs about £1.20 per hour to run, and the £4 actually included the standing charge.

My usual cost when putting the heating on 17/18 for 1-2hr bursts throughout the day, totalling 5-6hours, is about 6 or 7 quid.

Tomorrow I'll try setting the thermostat to 17/18 from 9am til 9pm and see how that goes. I reckon it'll take a good 3 hours to get to the stat temp, so that'll be about £4.... Let's see if for the remaining 9hrs of maintaining 17/18 degrees costs no more than another £3. Doubt it.

@silverback That makes more sense, thanks for the info. Will be interesting to see what happens for you tomorrow. My temp has already dropped from 17.5 to 15.5 since 7pm this evening so I’m glad to be in a warm bed

We all have covid so I'm not being cold !!!! the ch comes on at 7.30 and is on for 12 hours at the moment. The thermoset is set at 18 . Sometimed I turn it down to 17 . We are in bed or on sofa with duvets. I live in a 2 bedroom semi detached 1940s semi with double glazing . My smart meter is telling me it's costing me 7 pounds a day for energy. The oven was on for 40 minutes . My budget is 7 a day which means my bill in March is going to be about 650 ! Which is cheap compared to some

Down to 9 fucking degrees in the house this morning, have no choice but to have heating on all day. 😭

Hope you all feel better soon. Do you get billed quarterly? I’m with edf and review is twice a year. My next one is in February

9?? 😱 mine was 13 and it took a lot longer to reach 17.5 this morning so will cost more for sure

I kept the house running at 17.5c overnight, which required 45m of heating (with boiler flow running low) from 10pm to 6am.

8 degrees in mine this morning. Put heating on at 9am....

2.5hrs / £3.50 later I'm at 14, and slowly and expensively still climbing.