not to put central heating on? How long can you last?

[peonyflower]

Have to admit we are relying on a woodburner in sitting room and range in kitchen but rest of house is feeling 'fresh'.

Anyone up for a miser's challenge? How long can you last without putting the central heating on?

We can't afford it either GreenGables, but I get sick of seeing threads boasting about who can last the longest. Our temperatures here last winter got down to minus 10 and this year we can't afford to turn on the storage heaters. It's no laughing matter here either, believe me.

Sorry Twinkle. I've not been around enough to know what's going-on in here for a while.

...I have found the virtues of wool, far out-weigh it's itchiness! Hot Water Bottles are like chocolate and port!

I have the heating on for an hour in the morning and in the Evening. I live in Edinburgh and I don't think it is that cold yet.

Where do you live Twinklemegan?

TCF - about 3 hours north of you.

No I agree it's fairly mild at the moment - we did get a very cold snap a couple of weeks back though. But this house is really draughty, we're in a very cold and windy spot, and the storage heaters are sooo expensive to run so we are worried for when winter really sets in. Plus our electricity charges went up by over 30% in September.

We had storage heaters in our old flat Twinkle, I was told that oil and fan heaters are cheaper to run, I don't know how reliable that information actually was. But, at least with a stand-alone heater you can have more control over when it is on and when it is off.

hmm...we don't have a fire of any kind nor a lovely range or aga in the kitchen....so have been using heating a bit...but probably not even an hour per day....we just snuggle under duvets or dress in many layers...
does that count?

GG - yes we've spent some time working out the best solution to this. Our solution is to use one storage heater in the study/bedroom (we've moved in there to sleep for the winter). That costs about £1 a day to run. Then we have a portable gas fire on in the lounge - again about £1 a day. DS has a mini oil heater in his room just on in the evening and first thing in the morning. The rest of the house is unheated (including the bathroom - brrrr).

If we had all three of our storage heaters on downstairs it would be costing us nigh on £100 a month just for them and to be honest, apart from the one in the study the others are just too smalll to be any use at all. They might raise the temperature by one degree so it's just not worth the expense. The calor gas heater at least keeps the sitting room fairly toasty (well about 15 degrees which is toasty in this house ).