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Original poster

Best use of thermostat

14 replies

heidihigh · 21/01/2022 07:25

We moved into our house last year and it seems to lose heat so quickly! We have hive heating on a schedule so the heating comes on in a morning and again when we are due home from work, and the rest of the time it's off (on a frost protect so will kick in if the house drops below 10 degrees)

I am sick of being freezing in the house! It regularly drops to about 12 degrees during the day and so takes an absolute age to get to a comfortable temperature in an evening. Would it be massively inefficient to set the thermostat to something like 16 degrees so it doesn't drop below this or would this mean the heating was constantly on and being extremely environmentally unfriendly plus costing a bomb? Or is it more efficient to do this than spend hours and hours every night trying to get up to about 18 degrees?

OP posts:
dementedpixie · 21/01/2022 07:31

How long is the heating on for and what temperature is the thermostat. Mine is on from 6-10am and 5-10pm. If I feel cold during the day I can boost it too.

Original poster
heidihigh · 21/01/2022 07:50

On from 5-7 in morning (we leave just before 7), then again at 3-5.30 (in around 4/4.30) and back on again at 8-10. Can also boost the heating but its always cold when we come in despite the heating usually being on for about an hour and a half before we arrive

OP posts:
Original poster
heidihigh · 21/01/2022 07:50

Set to 20 degrees during those times

OP posts:
Cornishmumofone · 21/01/2022 07:54

How well insulated is your house? What's the loft insulation like? What kind of windows do you have? Tackling those might save you money.

Knittingmamma · 21/01/2022 08:00

I was advised by a gas engineer that it is most efficient to set the heating to say 16 or 17, then turn it up when you want it warmer. Otherwise the boiler has to work so hard to warm it up to 20 for a couple of hours and never really gets there.

trumpisagit · 21/01/2022 08:02

We have ours on with the thermostat regulating it. Set to 16 most of the time and turned up if we're chilly.

MorganSeventh · 21/01/2022 08:04

The only long term answer to this is insulation, check what you have especially roof and windows. Keeping the heating on 16 will cost more and use more energy. It might be more efficient, there are conflicting accounts online about this, but even if so, efficient use of a lot of gas, is still going to use more gas overall than inefficient use of a smaller amount. It's easy to monitor this if you have a smart meter. The days when I have heating on permanently at a lower level use about ~30% more gas than the days when heating is used at certain times for a higher temp.

MorganSeventh · 21/01/2022 08:23

@Knittingmamma

I was advised by a gas engineer that it is most efficient to set the heating to say 16 or 17, then turn it up when you want it warmer. Otherwise the boiler has to work so hard to warm it up to 20 for a couple of hours and never really gets there.
Yes, I am a bit dubious about this because I have found when you ask a few more questions they can't really define what they mean by efficient. What they seem to mean is that keeping the heating on constantly at a moderate temperature is more effective at keeping the house warm, but not that it is more efficient, ie that you use less energy for the same temperature. What it seems to mean in practice is that if you use more energy by having the heating on constantly then the house will be warmer.

(I sometimes wonder if there is confusion with driving where rapid acceleration and deceleration uses more fuel than a steady speed over a set distance.)

I guess it might vary from house to house with draft proofing and insulation, but if the OP has hive then I think that has an energy meter incorporated so it's very easy to try one approach and then the other and compare the two days.

ItsSnowJokes · 21/01/2022 08:25

@heidihigh

On from 5-7 in morning (we leave just before 7), then again at 3-5.30 (in around 4/4.30) and back on again at 8-10. Can also boost the heating but its always cold when we come in despite the heating usually being on for about an hour and a half before we arrive
Why don't you just leave it on from 3.30pm - 10pm? It's seems silly to let the house cool down again between 5.30-8 to then have to heat it all back up again 2 hours later.
amyboo · 21/01/2022 09:06

Our house isn't massively well insulated either. We're currently renovating the ground floor and we're doing cavity wall insulation as part of that work which will hopefully help.

10 degrees is freezing! I was always led to believe that it's better to keep the house at a decent temperature even when you're not there, so the boiling doesn't have to work so hard/use so much gas to get it warm again. So we heat to 20oC from 6-8 in the morning, then again from 16.30-22.30. Overnight and during the day our thermostat kicks in if the temperature drops below 17oC.

If your house is losing so much heat either a) you have a seriously under insulated house (ours isn't great but the temperature rarely drops below 16oC except on very cold nights); or b) it's not getting warm enough to begin with. What temperature do you get up to when the heating kicks in during the evenings?

Namechangeforthis88 · 21/01/2022 09:14

Does the boiler "work harder"? I suspect, and I'm no gas engineer, that is simply on or off. It's on if the thermostat says the temp is too low, and it's off if the thermostat says it's at temp or above. If anyone knows different, I'd love to know the truth.

We moved in to a house with cavity wall insulation, decent windows and not a lot else. I paid a guy to come and whack insulation all over the loft. I don't really care what the payback period is, we're warmer and we're wasting less heat. Also replaced the roof of a crappy dormer window, heat reflectors behind radiators on external walls, thick curtains or thermal blinds.

Namechangeforthis88 · 21/01/2022 09:15

Forgot to mention - look at the energy performance certificate that must have been done for the house sale. If you can't find it you can get a replacement, I rang the gov helpline about energy saving and they e-mailed me my EPC. That should tell you what your house needs most.

amyboo · 21/01/2022 11:11

Well yes of course it doesn't "work harder" but I mean that it would be running full pelt for the whole time trying to get the heat up. Whereas if you keep the house a bit warmer it doesn't need to run for as long to get the temperature up. It can just cut in for a bit to keep it steady. We switched to gas (from oil) last year and that was what out gas fitter told us anyway....

trumpisagit · 21/01/2022 16:46

All epcs are available online:
www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate

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