Heating is on but still freezing....... (long!)

[warmsummersday]

Hi. We have an old house and rubbish windows (OH wont buy new ones.) In the summer we had our heating system cleaned as termometers put on each rad. Our heating bills have always been massive, last winter £300!

The past couple of weeks have been really cold, I have been setting the heating to come on for 4 hours in the morning and by the time that is up the house is only 17 degrees! Someone suggested leaving the heating on continuous which I have been doing and once the house has reached 18 degrees it's alot easier to keep warm. OH is worried I am using too much gas and the bill will be loads but to me it seems more economical to keep the ouse warm and then top it up when it drops. Also our system doesn't allow you to turn off the hot water so it's also heating that up all the time.

I hope I make sense! I am very limited to when I can get on the internet but I will be back!

Thanks in advance.

"we were told it costs more to keep warming up to the temp we wanted rather than keeping it at a constant temp"

Sorry, but I don't see how that can possibly be correct. The warmer your house the greater the heat loss. I think its one of those myths that we would all like to believe because we don't like cold feet!

That's a good idea sparky, I'll look into that (although we do have a fire when it's really cold, wouldn't the balloon bring soot down with it?)

We got a nice new carpet and that solid foam underlay in the front room last Christmas and you're right, it def makes a difference there. In the back room we have laminate, so the floor's OK, but we also have draughty French windows - there's always something else!

warm front have some grants which if you qualify can help lots. We had free CH installed a couple of years ago with them

MMJ velvet door curtain I found another one which was wider but I can't rememeber the name of the site atm.

Wendy - i think the idea is that the chimnneyballoon thing just sits up the chimney, then when you want a fire you just bring it down. I don't know if it would bring down a load of soot, but yur chimney really shouldn't be that full of soot anyway (don't you dust up there?) - get the chimney sewpt first if you're worried. We sweep ours once a year, and we burn logs (weekends only, if it's cold).

We've just invested in a couple of chimney balloons to cut down on heat loss. Will let you know if they work.

Thanks everyone.

I am finding that if it drops lower than 18 degrees it's really hard or the house to warm up and takes hours. I just don't know what to do for the best!