How do you heat your home? Anyone horrified at the price of oil???

[multitasker]

It's not even that cold yet but I seem to want to turn the oil on more often these days. We recently got a pot belly stove installed which is wonderful and it heats that end of the house really well. How often do you have your heat on for and at what temp?

Hi,
We too have oil - no gas to the property.

We also have 2 x open fires and a Rayburn ( that works off oil)

When I am at home in the day I rarely put the heating on - I tend to have the rayburn ticking over and light one of the woodburners. I do wear thick jumpers inthe house - no t.shirts for us in mid winter!

I do not have any little ones at home - both a t school - if I did I may have to switch the heating on though in the day.

I am in the process of having another ethical debate with myself though.

Until last year I never had a tumble dryer and always used airers. Unless the heating is on one load will take up to three days to dry without heating - so what do i do?

Not use the dryer but turn the heating on low to ensure the clothes dry in 24 hrs - or leave the heating off and use the dryer to part dry the clothers so I can air dry them in 24 hrs? - big dilemea for me here!

I too am a fan of the big jumpers!!

And my 3dc are all at school until mid afternoon so I sometimes put the heat on for an hour after that. I try to live ethically and instil in my dc why.

I've never had a dryer and find my big clothes horse does the job just fine - it may take a couple of days but its fine.

I wonder too not just about the rising cost of oil but what we or our dc generation will do for heating fuel in the future when the oil reserves start to dwindle.

We have gas central heating and 2 open fires. I'm a big fan of jumpers but we have to keep one room much warmer than I like because dd is quadraplegic. When she is at school the house is cold but I noticed that our heating bills have rocketed since she was born. Disabled people can't get cold weather payments like elderly can, however poor they are. Roger Berry MP is trying to change this so please ask your MP to support cold weather payments for the disabled.
We heat the living room and the dining room. No heating upstairs. When dd is home the living room has the radiator on during the day. Fire in the evening. The dining room fire goes on about 6 ish cos that is where the computer is.
Clothes are dried over an airer and yes, it takes ages. ds's uniform is dried at the weekend when one of the radiators is on. I do make the kids wear clothes longer than average. I see no need to change jumpers/t-shirts/trousers daily. Cuts down on washing too

we have an open fire.

It keeps the living room toasty but every other room is freezing.

We all have two quilts on our beds

We have no heating upstairs, and two crappy coal effect gas fires - only 28% efficient according to Mr Energy Efficiency who came round t'other day.

We just wear big jumpers and have hot water bottles. Fire goes on for half hour in morning while dd gets dressed and maybe for a bit in the evening, but because we have no double glazing its very hard to keep the heat in. Previous house had a woodburner which was fantastic - heated whole house (was tiny cottage) and we ran it off wood that we found in skips.

I am typing in fingerless gloves brrr

Needmorecoffee - that is so not right - you should be able to get cld weather payments for your DD.

I live in an old cottage which is not the easiest or cheapest place to heat. We have stone floors in some rooms - and not the type with underfloor heating as it is plain earth under ours {grin]. We are lucky to not live on a tight budget and could, if we wanted to, have the heating on all day BUT we activly choose not to waste resources. Over the years we have got used to living in a "cooler" house than the majority of our friends/family and actually find many peoples houses overbaringly warm. I would rather wear warm clothes than sit in a t.shirt with the heating turned up on a winter day.

we too have 2 quilts - and hot water bottles - So cosy.
My DC dread going to inlaws overnight as they can't sleep because it is too hot!! - they are moaning already about having to go next weekend!

Dull question...but how do you all dry towels and bedding??? - am struggling with this dilema - see earlier post!

We have oil central heating and our house is woefully under insulated and the boiler is about 30 years old. So at the moment we are spending a blardy fortune on oil.

I keep the heating on low all day round otherwise the house is far too cold - even with 3 layers on.

I can't stand an overhot house though. MIL has her house like a furnace, so I only wear a tshirt round hers in midwinter.

Oh, and what is a pot belly stove? What power oes it run off? Can I have a pic/link please.

We are doing the kitchen soon and don't have mains gas.

we have a coal fired back boiler. So the fire needs to be roaring to have the radiators heated.

Soon to be changed for a wood pellet stove and solar panels.

Wood pellet stove uses compressed wood shavings left over from saw mills etc. Solar panels will heat our water in the summer when the stove isn't on.

We could have gone for oil, but figured the price is only going to go up and up, plus it's not very eco friendly.

Wood pellets are getting more and more popular in the UK, so the pellets will get cheaper.

Plus we got a 1/3 off grant for installing a green energy system

Installation in a couple of weeks - can't wait for hot radiators without shovelling coal!!

We're getting one of theses:

Lucrezia wood pellet stove

It is expensive I know. My parents have an oil-fired aga and central heating. The aga heats water too so it's quite good and they can get away without the CH most of the time, just relying on the aga and a wood-burner in the sitting room... but even so the cost of a tank of oil has shot up in the last year or so.

Hmm - solar panels.....would lOVE those. Unfortuantly the council disagree with us. As we live in a grade 11* listed building there is no way EVER we will be grated the necessery planning permission to install in our roof.

Wood Pellets are interesting - do oyu know if I could burn them on my Multifuel burner?

Although our wood for the past 3 years has been free curtosey of dodgy trees in the garden!

No idea about whether your stove would take pellets, but it might be worth a phone call to a supplier? They create hardly any ash - we've been told we'll need to clean our ash tray maybe once every 6 months!!

We're in a National Park, but we haven't done anything about planning permission as the panels fit whatever regulations they're required to stick to. They sit on clamps on top of the existing roof and look like a velux window.

The National Park are thankfully very good about green energy and had previously agreed to give us some uncultivated land to site trenches on when we were looking into geothermal heat pumps.

A heat pump ended up being just too pricey for a residential project. It would have fine if we were doing a new build because we could have been mega insulated, but we're in a wooden house and it just wasn't suitable in the end.

So pellets and panels it is!

I find other people's houses way too hot. When my MIL visits I catch her truning on radiators. She even complained that the downstairs toilet was freezing and moaned we should heat it. Errrr, its only used for peeing, it has 3 outside walls. total waste of money heating it and not very green. But then she doesn't believe in 'green' issues. Her house is like a greenhouse and I end up in t-shirt all flushed red cos I'm not used to it.
Today we haven't had the neating on so I have vest t-shirt, long sleeved t-shirt plus jumper (and trousers socks etc) so I'm fine. There's a fire in the front room cos DH is in there with dd. As she has no movement and can't shiver we have to make sure she is kept all warm.
I think that cos we're home all day and home educate the other kids we might have bigger fuel bills. I do sometimes feel guilty cos disabled and green often don't go together
On the beds we have 13 tog duvets plus 2 blankets each in the winter as upstairs is really cold. I pop in hot water bottles before we go to bed! Nothing like climbing into a freezing bed and trying to warm it up. Mornings involve pulling clothes into bed and lying on them to warm them up

I have a neighbour who runs her oil all day at a low temp - someone told her it was more efficient that way than turning on the heating sporadically, I'm not convinced - but then they are loaded with no real environmental concience. The stove we put in is a Morso - Danish I think, and it gives out fantastic heat. Ofcourse the room it is in is hot, the adjoining rooms are warm but further away is obviously cooler. Still, I'm glad we put it in, it will mean less oil usage. I'm thinking one hour in the early morning, another mid afternoon and another at bedtime. Most of my family think our house is cold - I wonder is it healthier than too warm a house?

We replaced both oil boilers (two houses) last year and have cut our energy use by 40%! The govt even gives you a grant. Though you will still have to pay about £3k each. Tis worth it though.

Did you replace them with an alternative heating source or new oil boilers?

LPG.

Not got a choice to change.

There's no mains gas out here and this is a rented place.

I have ceased being horrified at anything.

I am about a thousand years old.

Wooly jumpers all round then...

New oil boilers We could have had LPG but we had an oil tank which was new blah blah blah.

Expat, you are the perfect age and wonderful

Re the tumble dryer/airer and CH debate - I hardly ever use my tumble dryer but since we signed up with a 100% renewable supplier i feel much less guilty about it when i do. We worked out from their tariff that it would cost us about 10% more than our old supplier but in reality our direct debit payment has gone down - perhaps because of other energy saving measures we are taking. See Good Energy

We've been looking at wood pellet boilers - currently have oil (no gas here) but try not to have it on much. We have a solid fuel fireplace in the living room so currently burning the wood trimmings from the garden at weekends to heat the living room during the day. Have also been considering solar panels for summer hot water (neighbours have them so shouldn't be planning problems). Would love to have a turbine too but no ideal place to site one away from the house and there are a lot of issues with attaching them to the house.

How expensive are the wood pellets boabsmum? And do you have to have an enormous load delivered? (Mind you we already have a massive space taken up with coal/wood for the living room fire). Do you have the type of boiler which you fire up once a week and the hot water is stored in a heat tank or something more like a conventional system?

On the drying question, we've just started using a dehumidifier - much less energy than a tumble drier, and it makes SUCH a difference. our house has a tendency to damp, so drying washing indoors in winter is a bit of a problem anyway, and the nappies can take a while to dry - the dehumidifier is wonderful for this. An alternative perhaps.