"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?

I tumble dry my clothes in winter.

@category12 we are south west too, no immersion unfortunately but we use the oil heating the same way you do, heating on ever goes on in the winter months and only for a few hours a day.

Generally I turn it down to 15C at night or when we are out at school/work during day. If it's properly cold in middle winter I tend to have it at 19/20C when home or in evening while everyone is having showers etc so we are warm enough. I've got a bit of a drafty house though so can get chilly, but use blankets and water bottles if 20C isn't warm enough at any point.

Our boiler is in our bedroom and it disturbs us if it comes on so we set the thermostat to whatever temperature it won’t click on at.
But when it’s ‘on’ we only set it to 17 (if it’s just me) or 18 (if DP is home) anyway. Our bathroom is in an extension with basically no insulation and it only gets down to low double figures, if your house gets to single figures with it off for so little time you definitely need to look into insulation.

Completely off at night,always have done. We're in Scotland. I often have the bedroom window open too. I didnt realise until MN that people left heating on all night!

same as this

Our boiler broke down 7 years ago. We had it bodged a few years ago and it lasted for a few months but other than that we have no heating, just jumpers and blankets.

Ours is set to 20 in winter and manually switched on as I wfh and my parents look after our youngest in our house, the heating is usually on in the day so 7ish till 9ish. We flick it to off overnight, it doesn't really get that cold with it off we had a small baby though last winter so were pretty generous with it, a normal duvet at night we are toasty anyway. I lived in a house at uni and the heating broke in winter, it was a huge old terraced house, I remember sat in bed with a hat on revising for January exams freezing waiting for the landlord to sort the plumber, that house really was cold without heating on. We had a housemate who was very tight with money (wealthy but hated spending it) she'd sneak downstairs and switch the heating off constantly (when it did work) so we were cold a lot! I really feel for anyone in large cold drafty houses like that, we viewed a beautiful semi detached house with lots of period features and high ceilings but decided not to buy it because of heating it (about 8 years ago), so glad we didn't now, though I was sad I bought a warm but characterless house for quite a while, not so much now!

I couldn't sleep with the heating on. We get our bedroom as cold as we can. Kids are going to be 2 and 3 this winter so we've decided no more heat in their rooms either! It means we can have a total of two radiators on in the house which I'm hoping will slash the gas bill. I've also realised I have the hot water too long. I've bought a jacket for the tank. And we're not going to shower / bath daily anymore. Sink washes in-between! I reckon with all that, we can keep our bills to a reasonable level without adversely effecting our living standards. I hope I'm right!

I've never had my heating on for months as it's been red hot. During the winter I have it on quite a bit but obviously with the price going up I'm just putting it on a few hours a day to warm house up. Would never need it on at night as have duvet and blankets to keep me warm.

Ours is set to around 18 usually. With the time off between around 9pm and 6am so even if it drops below that during the night it doesn't kick in. I hate sleeping in a warm room anyway.

I’d have a headache if I had heating on at night. I have Nest and the eco setting means it will come on if it falls below 5 to stop the pipes freezing. It happened once in the night last winter, I was woken by the radiators clicking on but wasn’t woken by the cold. I love a cold room and a hot bed. Electric blanket, 13.5tog goose duvet and 9 degrees in my room only makes my nose cold.

the multifuel burner keeps the house boiling once it gets going. It’s too hot to keep it in overnight though and the cold night was when I got back late and went to bed without having had a fire.

@Liebig the house feels colder at 19 if it snows than if if doesn't. Maybe it is because it is 19 next to the thermostat but colder elsewhere eg next to draughty sash windows. Also we have waxed floorboards rather than carpet so the wind whistles through on a windy day 😂

We never have the heating on at night. It usually gets turned off at 8pm.

We have electric blankets if needed.

In the south here. We have always turned off the radiators in rooms we do not really use throughout winter. Our central heating is on a thermostat for 19 degrees and it turns on for one hour twice a day- at 5 am then at 5 pm. Sometimes we might manually turn on for a boosted hour when it gets to about 15 degrees. But we were talking about it today and decided to turn the thermostat down to 17 degrees and see if we can get through the winter like that with added layers. Problem is that DS1 has a condition called cold urticaria which is literally an allergy to cold. He gets hives when the temp is low, and cannot be under air conditioning, in the chilled section iof supermarkets etc. The CU support group we are in are already talking about this (it can be an anaphylactic allergy) and have signposted things like very soft children thermals and balaclavas etc. We are in a situation where we are not chooseing betqween heating and eating, but we do need to reduce costs as much as possible. But some people with DS1s condition (plus a load of other people with a range of different medical needs and disabilities) need to have proper heating in the winter. It is an extremely anxiety-provoking time.

This has been debunked many times. From a conservation of energy perspective, why would it use less energy to keep a house warm than than to turn the heating off and warm it up again when needed? It doesn’t.

How do you heat your water without a boiler?

I don’t have mine on in Winter. I keep myself warm with enough blankets. Heating makes me feel groggy, and I sweat shit loads around my period.

How do you heat your water without a boiler?

Our boiler is turned completely off during the summer. As in isolated from the gas supply. We heat our water with the electric immersion heater.

My heating is on for an hour in the morning and 5 hours in the evening set to 18. We use fleece blankets in the living room and my DS has an cheap oodie clone when he’s on his laptop. Not sure how we’re going to reduce usage any further.

We don’t have central heating so it’s pretty easy not to have it on!

We have a log burner but it burns down overnight even if we stoke it up before bed. We have a handful of small electric heaters that we put on timers but other than having the kids’ heater come on for 30 mins in the middle of the night (they’re in a draughty attic conversion with very poor insulation), we only have them on last thing/first thing.

Whoever goes to bed last turns it off here and we have a portable controller so whoever is up first pops it back on if needed just before they get up. Have never had the heating on overnight, once in bed and snuggled up in a duvet with a hot water bottle or whatever haven't found it necessary.

Set at 19/20C 7am until 10pm then 12C at night but if its on most of the day it never goes that low anyway

I've lived in new builds for the last 5 years, I've never known them go under 15 degrees. Our bedroom has its own thermostat and the lowest I've seen it is 16 degrees. Unfortunately it has been over 25 pretty much solidly since July!

Ours is a nest thermostat. It's set to be off totally overnight but then to reach 18 by a designated time which in practice means it does trigger an hour or so before that. It's usually set at 18 or 19 when it's on, we do have logburners to boost the temperature if needed though.