Heating temperatures?

[Lottie4]

Just as a matter of interest, I wonder what sort of temperatures others keep their heating on and for how long? Our old boiler was either on or off heating at whatever temperature it felt like - usually around 18-21c in the lounge and I had it on 3x daily for a couple of hours each, but now we had a lovely new one with a thermostat and programmer I can perhaps have it at a lower temperature but for longer.

We keep ours on 16 (or 18 in the snow) on constant through the proper winter. No rise in bills either. If anything it was cheaper as the boiler wasn't always firing up.

We have a programmable thermostat, which allows you to set different tempeatures at different times of day. I set overnight temp at 16C, morning at 20C, daytime when unoccupied at 16C, evening at 22C (for some reason e feel colder in the evenings), away on holiday at 10C

At the 16C and 10C settings, the heating will very rarely come on, as the house stays reasonably warm from the morning/evening heating, and from solar gain if sunny. In exceptionally cold weather though, it will prevent the house getting uncomfortably cold. We use TRVs in almost all rooms, and set the bathroom one a bit higher (but it will only come on when the boiler is running). The timer is set to warm up half an hour or so before getting-up and getting-home time.

knocking a few degrees off will save a useful percentage on the gas bill.

bbvioand when-set

18-20 degrees, on twice a day 6am till 10am and 5pm till 10pm. Will boost it during the day if needed and if I feel cold may put it up to 21/22 degrees for a short time.

P.s. its off overnight even in the winter

Well ours is on 14-15, but it is in a cold part of the house (hallway by double glass doors), so actually the rest of the house is maintained at c.19-20 degrees

We have our storage heater on minimum just now and it's maintaining a temperature of 16 to 18 degrees in the living room which is positively tropical compared with past years in this house. Seems to be constant at the moment regardless of outside temperature. We put electric heaters on low in the bedrooms for two or three hours either side of the kids' bedtime.

If we can keep the same temperature throughout winter I'll be very happy. I do understand that with any kind of heating it's cheaper to keep it on low all the time.

no it isn't

How so? If your house is well insulated the warmth builds up instead of reheating from cold all the time. Makes sense to me anyway, and someone on another thread a while back was quite adamant about it.

Doesn't matter to me, I don't have a choice!

on another thread only yesterday I was quite adamant about it too.

I don't want to look obsessive by typing it all out again

Clearly it depends on whether you're in the house during the day or not. DH and DD are so we would keep any heating on low all the time I shold think. I guess that if you get too cold by trying to keep the heating off then you're liable to crank it up higher to compensate and end up using more?

Yes, if there's someone at home all the time I would leave it on for comfort. Especially old people or those with bad chests or porr circulation. I'm told healthy babies are very resilient though and have evolved to live in hot or cold climates.

That's a different question from the cost one.

Our previous house was arctic all the time even with the ancient storage heaters on. Probably because they were so darned expensive we could only afford to run one of them. DH will vouch that all day in a house that's 12 degrees is not much fun at all.

I think it also depends on the type of fabric - you hinted at that with reference to lower or higher U values. We've got solid granite walls and once the house gets really cold - which happens quickly if we let it - it literally takes days if not weeks to build up the warmth again. Hence if we had central heating we would be keeping it ticking over very low all the time.

save up for insulated dry-lining next time you're going to decorate a room. It only needs to go on the external wall. Made of plasterboard bonded to a layer of rigid insulating foam.

Well we're kind of doing that, but we're putting mineral wool behind the plasterboard. Not sure if it's quite as effective but it's certainly been making a difference. New double glazed French doors replacing the old single glazed picture window that was like an opening to a freezer have made a mahoosive difference. And we had insulated board, as you say, put in the combed ceilings when we made bedrooms upstairs and those rooms really hold the warmth now. They still get cold quickly but they warm up quickly and stay warm with the heater ticking over on absolute minimum.

We're getting there! I don't mind too much paying through the nose if we're warm. Paying through the nose while shivering and getting chilblains is just rubbish!

mineral wool is slightly less insulating than rigid foam, and is not a moisture barrier so you will need to use foil-backed plasterboard (or you will get condensation behind it). Otherwise OK.

Doing the loft is the most effective and cheapest thing to do (current standard is 250mm/ten inches of quilt)

If you have a suspended timber floor with a ventilated void under, you can put fibreglass quilt between the joists. But you have to get access, either by crawling underneath, or taking the floorboards up. A good job to do when other renovation is going on. It is labour-intensive so better as a DIY job than paying somone. Luckily the modern fibreglass is available in a finer, treated version that does not shed dust and fibres.

Yep the loft was done along with the foam backed plasterboard and it's made a real difference. We have a concrete floor and have just installed laminate. We doubled up on the insulating foam layer underneath and it's alot better. Would have loved to try proprietary floor insulation or underfloor heating but both were too expensive. Still the floor is not freezing cold anymore.

We used foil backed plasterboard in the kitchen but not elsewhere in the house. There's a void between the mineral wool and the actual wall - about 9 inches IIRC. I think when I looked into it all we summised that foil backed board wasn't essential. Were we wrong?

You really know your stuff. Do you work in the trade?

Totally agree with piglet regarding heat losses at higher temp. differences being greater than at lower ones - simple thermodynamics that (ie: it's a long established fundamental Law of Physics). Just wanted to add that the heat you put in to 'bring the house back up to temperature' can never exceed the amount you loose by maintaining the house at a higher temp (again an unarguable thermodynamic principle) and would only equal it if a house suffered no heat loss whatsoever (ie it was perfectly lagged, which is of course impossible to achieve).

There are some advantages to maintaining a constant lower temp though, one is comfort of course, but another is a reduction in the amount of condensation that come with fluctuating temperatures.

I only have our heating on in the evenings when it's cold enough to need it set to about 17. Our house has high solar gain and we have a woodburner that we run instead quite often, so we don't need it all that much. We have ridiculously low gas bills but do suffer a lot of condensation.

piglet tell me more about the insulated dry lining. What make do you use and where do you get it from?

I worked for a long time in the electrical industry, but for some reason plumbers and sparks seem to get along. I've picked up quite a lot about heating (and some about drains). And of course I can hack open floors, and patch plaster walls.

I don't do plastering of walls and ceilings. I shall enquire.

They sometimes call it Thermal Board and prefer "Kingspan Drylining Board" They fix it with Dot and Dab, which is a method of using plaster to space it evenly and stick it to the wall, but am amateur might do better to screw it. A pro plasterer would do it faster and more evenly. As it has a plasterboard fair face you can give it a plaster skim which looks better, is more durable, and is easier to decorate.

It is available in various thicknesses. As ever, the thicker ones are better for inulation. The ones used in a loft conversion are fairly thin, because most of the thickness of insulation goes between the timbers, amd the board goes over the top facing the room. Building regulations will define the thickness you need in a loft conversion.

Kingspan is a premium manufacturer of insulation boards, there are other cheaper ones, but I've noticed the building trade prefers Kingspan. They sneer at polystyrene.

You would order it from a Builders Merchant or could probably get it from a heavy side DIY shed like Wickes which is more aimed at the retail market.

update

Kingspan K17 is for dot and dab fixing, K18 is for screwing to the wall. You can get a special long fixing to suit. It's not a job I've done myself.

thanks!