"We don't have the heating on"

[Christonabike37]

Just reading another thread and seen this "we never have the heating on at night" and I've never really understood what it means, but now with energy prices I need to know if its really what people do.

Our thermostat is set at 15 always, in the evenings we up it to 20 for a few hours. I consider 15 off, and 20 on. Is this the same? Or do people just not have the heating on at all, like your house could be 0 degrees? How cold does it get at night? Surely it gets down to single figures most of the time?

18 is too hot for DS. It's different for different people, but I have come home to 13 degree house and DS has not been bothered enough to put the heating on for an hour (set to come on at 17:30 as he was often out after school). At 18 degrees there is a risk he will open a window and then I'm heating the street. Luckily, neither of us cope well with CH heat so it's easy to find a compromise.

I couldn’t sleep with the heating on, don’t remember when we last had the heating on.

20c is on and this is from half an hour before DH gets up which is an hour before me so the house is perfect for me. At 8am it goes down to 9c which is off and stays there until 5 when it goes back to 20c until 10pm. Used to be earlier when the DC were coming home from
school at 4pm
I am at working from home all day and will use a fan heater in my office if it is a particularly cold day without sun. However the house only usually drops to around 18c during the day and not much lower at night.
If there is a cold snap in the darker winter months and the house drops below 18 during the afternoon I dial
it up earlier.

Ah - the women v men issue perhaps raised above as regards different people in the home. I used to give 50 lectures a year all day and time and time again the men would want the heating down or off or air con on and the women would want it warmer (and the same arguments are played out in many houses across the land - I wonder if control of the thermostat is now part of the new criminal offence of "coercive control"?)

I might sleep with the window open and neve rhave heating on at night but int he winter I certainly do prefer to be warm and have worked from home full time since 1994 which certainly increases heating bills.

When we got married we lived in an upstairs flat that had no heating except an open fire in the lounge (early 2000s). In the winter our hallway and stairs got down to 9°c and our bathroom was 14°c our bedroom was about the same. We had a thick duvet and a thick fluffy blanket and getting up in the morning was hard. We borrowed an oil filled electric radiator for the bedroom and had it on a timer for about an hour before we got up. Our open fire ran mainly on pallets we found in skips.

@Xenia I don't know if it's because DS is male or just because he is young and I'm late thirties? Luckily our comfortable temperature ranges do overlap and the price of energy means I turned the thermostat down last January and February. I guess it would be coercive control either way, such as if I set the thermostat to 18 and then didn't allow him to open a window so he was forced to go out for a walk if he was feeling stifled?

I think most people use a thermostat and the heating comes on as it needs to, so no set dates in this house but the thermostat is set to about 18ish, if the temperature in the house drops below that, then the heating comes on whatever the time of year and then clicks off again once its reached temperature. In our case thats morning and evening, anything outside of that time is set to about 15 and again the same case applies

So during the summer months of course its not going to come on because it doesnt get cold enough.

As for why I might not want to spend money on heating but might want a holiday, because that might be my priority, personally I dont want to line the pockets of energy companies, I can keep warm in other ways but I cant enjoy a holiday without going on one

I use a thermostat, but I still turn the whole heating system off spring, summer, autumn. I think that’s normal. In winter it is (was) on a timer, for an hour in the morning and two hours in the evening, on the thermostat. But it won’t click on outside of those set times, no matter how chilly.

I couldn't afford to have the heating come on when the temperature dropped below a certain temperature year round. There could be a window open upstairs and the heating could click on without me realising then I'd be heating the street. Our windows are open all summer and it's difficult to adjust to having the house shut up in winter for the heating to be on.

Unless the weather is truly arctic outside, generally speaking, I do not have heating on at night. I prefer to be on the cool side, and can’t sleep if I’m too warm. I was always told it wasn’t healthy to have the heating on at night! I usually have a window open a bit ,too, unless it’s blowing a gale!

I didn’t mention holidays in the context of expense but in the context of saving the planet.

Oh got you.

Well I suppose to try to answer that, perhaps people have afew things they weigh up and feel if they cut down in one area it sort of helps balance it out.

I just dont need to!
I live in a sunny, warm area and my house is well insulated.
When it starts to get chilly -end sept/ oct then I put on extra layers and we might light the fire.
No martyrdom or spike sitting.
I do find it immensely strange in the UK that everyone wanders around half dressed and then moans they are cold no shit sherlock
Family not from the UK and only children need to be told to dress warmly not grown adults.

Does anyone have a good recommendation for warm trousers for in the house? Joggers that are thick and warm not too expensive

Layers are your friend. Leggings under loose trousers.

I got OH some trousers a few years back, they are like chino fabric with a fleecy lining, he wears them cycling because he gets cold in plain jeans, but they are perfect for the home as well

I wouldnt be seen out in public with him other than the cycling though, they are terribly ugly!!! But they do the job, I got them on amazon but cant seem to find them now

Right lots of you are going to get mad at me. You do not need heating on in the middle of the night.

When I was young we lived in an old draughty terraced house. We had heating in the living room only. The water was heated by a back boiler from the one fire in the house. My parents brought up three of us in this house all of us born at home. We had ice on the inside of the windows some days. We had an outside toilet which sometimes froze over in the winter.
I think me included in this have got used to walking around our nice centrally heated homes in thin t shirts. I didnt die from hypothermia nor did any of my friends who lived in similar houses. We wore thick jumpers and socks. We didnt have nice thick duvets just blankets and eiderdowns to keep out the cold. I wouldnt like to return to those days but I think we could be a lot more careful with our heating.

Uniqlo have fleece lined sweatpants. Very warm.

www.uniqlo.com/uk/en/product/heattech-pile-lined-joggers-439093.html

21 in lounge in winter off if wood burner lit warms the whole place we open all the doors. Constant hot water from air source heat pump, and underfloor heating never on in summer, never noticed the bills but I suppose we had better buck up this winter and see what’s happening.

Our stove heats the whole house if the room that it is in is kept at around 40-45 degrees.

We have ours at about 18 at night, it’s a big old draughty house and on the depths of winter if it gets too cold then it’s hard to heat back up during the day, but that’s only when it’s really cold,the rest of the time it’s off totally during the night.

Ours has been off completely since April.

When we have ours on in winter we have it on a timer for an hour in the morning (6.30am), then an hour and a half at night (6pm - 7.30pm, when we’re doing DS bath and bed). We may reduce that this year depending on costs/level of cold.

I’ve bought us all thermal underwear and we’ll wear that in bed under PJs.

If your house is insulated and you don’t have windows open then your house shouldn’t drop more than 5 degrees c in the night once heating goes off.

Our thermostat is set to 20. If it falls below that when the heating is on (during its timed session) the thermostat would ensure it went back on again if it had gone off (not sure if it does or not as we’ve not lived here that long). It wouldn’t jump back on by itself at midnight, no, because of our timer setting.

Keeping it on throughout the night will bankrupt you, and is unnecessary if you stay under thick duvets.

We have a hive. It auto sets to 7 degrees but the house is only 10 years old so rarely gets below 16 in the winter - It obviously doesn’t cool the house as we don’t have air con but on the schedule, “7 degrees” is classed as “off”.

We ‘boost’ to 21-23 degrees for an hour or 2 in the evenings and set a 1 hour timer for 23 degrees each morning (in winter) - we have 2 kids under 2 so the house needs to stay warm.

In the summer the house is too hot. It’s currently showing as 26 degrees. The nursery hasn’t gone below 29 degrees since about June. Lots of cons about new builds, but heat retention is a huge pro in the current economic climate.

Last winter had CH on twice, will be the same this coming winter. I can afford the heating but am so angry about the cost that I'm refusing. I wear layers, have lap blankets etc. I'm lucky, I'm in a well insulated house, so although in the frozen north I genuinely did not feel cold, and I'm elderly. I've never had overnight heating on, why would anyone? My worry is for the 85+, those with young children, those in draughty homes.