Advice on how to handle- dds housemates at uni want to out heating on overnight

[Thethingswedoforlove]

How can we convince them that it really isn’t cheaper to keep the house at a constant temperature?! They want to have it on at a ‘low’ temp of 17 degrees! It’s a huge house with 6 people and most students don’t even have it on during the day let alone at night. I’m at my wits end. How can we afford that bill? I told her that she should say that those that want it on overnight need to pay and she won’t pay a share of that but clearly that is a bit confrontational and doesn’t lend itself to harmonious living. How can we convince them?! It is utterly nuts. Some are saying things like my dad knows about heating bills and it is def cheaper etc.’

Even 17 is quite cold. The bill isn't going to be much between 6.

I think the temperature needs to be above 5 degrees to stop pipes freezing.

I live in a draughty listed Georgian building with single glazing. My heating is set to 21C when we are home and 16C at night and hours when no one is here, and set to frost protection mode if we are away. It has never come on during the night because the temperature stays above 16C as it takes more than 8 hours to lose 5 degrees.

@BourbonsAreOverated this is a very good point which I have also made dd aware of.

The temperature your thermostat is set at is not the actual ambient temperature a lot of the time.

To stop your pipes freezing you need to not let the temp go below a certain level. If it freezing wherever they are laid then chances are it will be warmer than that inside you house. So depending on the location of your thermostat it might be 10 degrees inside the house but -2 under the floorboards/in the loft

So you set your heating to come on at say, 14 degrees to make sure the pipes don't drop below freezing.

Our house is old and very cold plus the boiler is on it's last legs. We have the heating at 14 degrees overnight and usually 18 degrees during the day. I get migraines if the heating comes on during the night so it suits me to have a cool bedroom but even so, 18 degrees overnight is on the high side.

You're very welcome. I wish it was simple it would make a lot of housing and decarbonisation policy much easier!

This. Your best defence is the large number of people.

I used to live in a HMO which was run by a batshit woman who insisted the house had to be heated to 23 degrees C or we would all die. Apparently she had read this somewhere on the internet.

It wasn't helped by the fact that she insisted on keeping some of the windows open because the house got "stuffy".

The bills were enormous (but not so bad when divided by 6). Eventually the whole thing was stopped by the landlord because the boiler blew up because of the sheer amount of heat it was delivering. I think it just basically blew up after being on continuously for an entire winter.

My key takeaway as mentioned earlier from all this is a) you can't really change peoples behaviour when you live in a place with many people you just have to put up with it and b) that people when they find out how much stuff costs will try to do a runner leaving the person whose name is on the bill up the creek. So you don't want to be that person (with your name on the bill).

If you try to enforce rules that people aren't happy with, they will probably just go and get electric heaters for their rooms and plug them in. And those will cost 4x as much for the same power output.

Our thermostat is set at 12 degrees at night. It would have to be very cold for it to kick in.

I've tried this theory out by monitoring the cost. I can confirm that for my home that is totally incorrect! Yes the temperature dropped in the night (whilst I was in PJ's under a thick duvet), but the efficiency of my boiler balanced by the total time it was clearly off for, meant it was MUCH cheaper to let the heating go off.

I'm not convinced this isn't just a urban myth.

@GasPanic you are right. Some good lessons learned on this thread.

We can move our thermostat around the house.

It is set for 14 degrees overnight. Dh once accidentally put it in the conservatory and the cold temperature in that room meant the heating blasted all night in the rest of the house (well until I thought wtf and went to investigate)

In the well insulated dining room I could have it set at 18 degrees and it would not come on at all.

The hall (it's usual location is a happy medium.). Its set at 14, rarely comes on overnight but does for a short amount of time on freezing nights like last night.

@Blisteringlycold i think the evidence presented by @HarrietteVane is that this conclusion is true for some properties but not for all. And I guess I don’t have the info for dds house to know which is true. But they can monitor it themselves…..and possibly find out.

If they have a thermostat that turns the heating off when the set temperature is reached, 17 C is quite low and it will probably be off more than it's on unless the house has really poor insulation or the thermostat is in a drafty location like a hallway and the rest of the house is actually warmer. But in reality, it's impossible to say what's the 'best' way to sensibly run the heating in this house without knowledge of the type of heating/thermostat and insulation.

But there's no danger of frozen pipes as long as the thermostat includes a frost protection setting, ie it will kick in if the temperature drops below a low temperature like 5/10 C, which in reality it's not going to unless it's single glazed, without insulation and not heated for days.

17° is baltic. I don't even think my boiler would kick in if my stat was set that low.
Normally I switch mine off at night as pp have said if your in bed it doesn't matter if the house is cold.
However, I've got a baby who frequently wakes me in the night and then due to all the wake ups I might be up and down to the loo and to get a drink so lately I've been leaving the stat set to around 18° -19° just to keep some of the rads warm. Not all the rads in the house are on though to be fair.

But more specifically to the op's situation- in a house of 6 people there's a good chance that virtually 24 hours a day at least 1 person may be awake at any given time.

I agree that you mustn’t interfere but 17 is really not that low - I’m working from home today and the house is hovering between 16 and 17. I have got an extra layer on and I have had the heating on for a couple of hours but, for a healthy individual with access to hot drinks and who can move around regularly it’s not devastatingly Baltic! If I wasn’t saving money I might have it a bit warmer but not vastly more!

Probably the best thing to do TBH.

We use to have no overnight heating but our gas heating worked out very low for a house this size and the electricity bill huge - so are trying heating overnight - DH also had a more fuck it attitude this winter.

So far not huge difference in bill - I think it because of drying washing better so don't have to use electric dryer as much as gas is cheaper than electricity. We are planning a new gas boiler which should be even more efficient and washing should diminished as kids move out so that will change calculations - so far though not huge difference for this house and our lifestyle. (Also had fewer colds and asthma issues but can't say for sure that due to warmer overnight house or coincidence.)

I don’t know what temp they have it on during the day. I just know that 17 was the suggested overnight temp.

My house is pretty cold at night. If it's very cold I leave the heating on (when I have heating - sigh...)

@wombat15
Oh really thanks.

Damp can affect how cold 16-18 degree feels. We has a very damp rental with baby and 18 degree in that house was freezing.

18 degrees in current house is pleasant.

@Comefromaway

My thermostat temperature regularly says 17 when the heating is off.

Is that ok?

Also, it’s very difficult to study : stay motivated when very cold

@BlueSky2024 agree. But this is for the night not the day or evening. And dd tells me that none of them are in the habit of ‘pulling all nighters’ to get work done etc.

IME students tend to be up in the night more than the day tbf.

Half of my family really feels the cold and it makes them utterly miserable and uncomfortable. Their preferred thermostat setting is uncomfortably tropical. The other half of us (me included) will have bare legs through winter and wild swim.

You often see discussion of what an acceptable temperature is for a house but it's not only dependent on the house insulation but individual needs too. I was far too old when I started to realise how differently we all experience temperature.

It's hard being a frugal student with housemates who leave everyone on and running. That was me once upon a time. 17 seems low though.