Is anyone else’s house freezing?

[OneCyanHiker]

partly a question and partly a whinge (sorry). Our house is really struggling to get to temperature and hold on to it in this cold spell. Mornings are awful! We spend like £5 a day just on gas

What sort of house is it? £5 doesn’t sound much.

£5 a day is not a lot to spend on gas if you have a big house.

If you have an older house it will be relatively inefficient.

If you are not prepared to spend more you have to move to a heat the person not the room strategy.

It’s a small 3 bed 1930s semi. We don’t heat it constantly but we’re not really strict about it either.

Yes, freezing. I blame the weather.

@GasPanic you should swap names with the OP 😀

Might not help you now, but what is your insulation like? Think of where heat can be escaping. The loft is often a big one. What do you keep your heating at? Ours is always at 14 as a minimum so in an evening knocking it up a couple of degrees makes the house feel warm quickly. If you’re turning it off completely during the night then I can see why it may take ages to heat your house up in a morning. But I’d agree that £5 a day on gas during winter months doesn’t seem that bad.

We are spending 5/7.50 per day at the moment, have the heating on most of the day as wfh.

What type of boiler do you have?
If it's a condensing, turn the flow temperature up. It will be less efficient, but you might need the higher temperatures in the radiators while it is so cold.
I'd also say you might need to spend more than £5. We've been on around £8 for the past few days.

I just accept it and wear lots of clothes and an electric blanket

Thanks everyone. This is really reassuring. It will probably be more than £5 today and yesterday. Meter readings haven’t come through. We set to 12 or 13 minimum and than 18 to 20 when it’s ‘on’. Feels like a real struggle to get to temperature and as soon as it’s back to 12/13 setting, feels like the temperature drops quickly. We’ve been supplementing with thermals/ fan heater/ keeping curtain drawn

I have to heat my house constantly at this time of year, if I drop it down too far at night it always seems to be a little bit cold and not really ever at a comfortable temperature. On a cold day the smart meter would show £6/£7 used and I rarely put it above 18 degrees so not particularly hot either.

Can you get any insulation work done?

Brassic this morning. 1920s house, single glazed...costs a fortune to heat.

I have been recently a lot on Zoopla.
Do you by any chance, like 70% houses I saw there, have radiators by the window and longish curtains?

Have you checked your loft insulation? You should have at least 20cm of insulation to prevent losing too much heat through the roof.

Do you have lined curtains and foil behind your radiators? Do you tuck your curtains behind the radiators so the heat comes into the room? What are your exterior doors made of?

I feel you op

I'm going to look at the temperature on the radiators on the boiler later as the radiators are all on full but it just seems to take so long to warm up so I've just stuck it on permanently 20 during the day and 18 at night as dh works nights so is coming home stone cold.

I work from an outbuilding which is all electric so I'm getting through around £65 a week in electric at the minute and gas around £30 ish so the big bills are coming but I refuse to be cold so I will scrimp elsewhere to cover it

Sitting here with a hot water bottle, under a blanket, wearing a scarf.

It was minus 5C here last night and 0C now but sunny.

We have a medium 2 bedroom house and are spending about £3 a day on gas at the moment.

£5 for a bigger house sounds about right.

All these tales of being cold are another reason I won’t be buying any kind of Victorian, period or solid wall property. Give me EPC A or B !

I was just thinking how cold my house feels.
I will switch mine on before my kids come home and leave it til I go to bed around 11pm. That period of time say 10 hrs run time costs us around £6.

Mine drops to ridiculous temperatures over night and it’s a brand new build. Not even been in it a year but I can’t have the heating on around the clock.

We have thermal curtains. The radiators aren’t being curtains but some are behind furniture (with a 30cm gap). We have loads of loft insulation (did that ourselves and over bought on the thicker layer). The floors must be our worst. We’ve got loads of rugs but can’t cover every inch. My sisters in her first year in a new build and she said the temperature drops only a few degrees over night

Blimey - we're spending £9 - 10 on gas alon a day at the moment (Victorian single glazed) and that's not even with it on all day!

You mean it loses all the heat overnight? That shouldn’t be the case with a new build.

They will not be as efficient from behind furniture either unfortunately. We used to swap part of a sofa because of this. In winter the part with back was in one corner, the giant footstool part by radiator and vice versa.
Do they heat up properly as well? If not all heated up, bleed them.

While insular is obviously the best, small things like this can help.
We also changed our rads because they were desperate underperforming. Change to bigger BTU made MAAAIVE difference and ww dis not even buy the expensive ones.