House taking ages to heat.

[OnNaturesCourse]

I don't remember having this problem last year...

We turn our heating down to about 15 at 9pm, then it's off from 11pm until around 9am. (off being set at 10 to avoid frozen pipes)

Got up this morning and the house was at 12 degrees (fine, I've seen it at 10.5 some mornings last year!) Turned the heating on at 10am and now, at 1345, the temp has only reached 17. I have it set to reach 18.5. From memory it used to take 1.5 hour to fully heat up last year as it used be set to come on before we woke.

All the rads are piping hot, windows etc all shut. Kitchen door shut (draughty in there) boiler flow temp is set at 65, which is the most efficient according to the handbook and hot water temp is 55 as it always has been.

Could it be worth bleeding the rads once the system is cool later? Didn't think they needed it if they don't have cool spots etc.

What else could I do / need done?

Our outside temp is 3 just now, but again I've seen it colder last year and never had this issue with the house heating. Also we had our roof replaced and loft insulation redone over the summer so I actually thought the house would be warmer this winter.

65c is a fuel efficient temperature but it does take much longer to heat the house than with it running at full pelt.

It sounds quite normal to me. I reckon our heating warms at 1-2 degrees per hour, so 6.5 degrees in under 4 hours seems in line with that. I would think it's hard to heat it that amount in 1.5 hours. Doesn't explain why last year seemed different.

I am now pondering if cold me last year has whacked the rad temp on the boiler to full plet. It was serviced recently so I wonder if they have turned it back down.

I wonder if keeping the house warmer at night would be efficient - seems a waste when we are tucked up in bed with hot water bottles.

I think there are too many factors to know the best strategy for you. For us, keeping it warmer overnight works better than trying to heat up a colder home. So, I have a hive system and I know that between 10pm and 6am we had the heating on for 45 minutes to keep it above 17.5c and that it would have taken far longer than that to get it up to that temperature if we had let it fall further overnight.

This would look like a good news story for us if I didn't suspect the heating is actually waking up my youngest in the night and I'm ready to revert back to letting it fall for the sake of a good night's sleep.

We have found that the thermostat on the wall in our lounge needs to be turned up several degrees warmer than the temperature we actually want. Otherwise the radiators just sit there being tepid for hours on end instead of actually getting hot.

Maybe try leaving the thermostat at 17 or 18 tonight and see what happens.

I have been playing around with my boiler temp the last few days. My finding were with heating on for 4hrs to heat house to 18 degrees (large cold 4 bed semi) with boiler set to eco at 68 degrees it used 37kw

I then did the same thing the next night but whacked the boiler on full heat 80 degrees (and this was last night so freezing) the house heated up so much faster and when I checked my gas usage it was 40kw.

So sod having it on eco!!

I really wish my hand held smart metre unit still worked so I could monitor it.

My heat still hasn't hit the set temp. By the time it does it'll be time to put it off.

We turn the heating off at night too because the boiler is in the kids room and quite noisy in the middle of the night plus DP has bad sleep apnea which causes him to sweat/run hot when he's sleeping as his body basically thinks he's working out. Having the heating on even at 15 has seen us waking up in soaking bed 😳

Might trial it tonight and turn the bedroom rads off, cat who sleeps downstairs night be thankful. If it wakes the kids tho it's definitely going back off lol.

Another option I guess is to go back to the timer to have it heat up a little bit from 5am onwards or so maybe.

Regardless I'm cold and spending money for what feels like no reason.