Darling MNHQ, please could we have an expert about efficient use of central heating?

[PerkingFaintly]

Before I stick my head in an oven* reading all the misconceptions and misunderstandings about what is most efficient.

There are people putting themselves through real suffering trying out completely hopeless ideas to cut bills, and costing themselves more in the process.

*which would be shocking waste of gas

(Apols for inadvertently starting dupe thread in Q&A topic.)

Thank you. We'll put our thinking caps on too...

That would be so helpful. I work from home and have been sitting under a blanket with a hot water bottle. Just waiting for kids to get home before heating is on. Be really useful to know some stats about it all, including how not having heating affects condensation and mould.

Definitely a great idea, we are an all electric house with economy 10.
Our heaters can take in on the economy 10, but can also be used independently. I seem to use the "over-ride" more.
I know I should probably take meter readings daily to figure out which is more economical.....

I have examined the meter and previous readings. It’s looking like £5 a day although fingers crossed not jinxing myself there! 😬

If the price is acceptable then I don’t think I will be experimenting with turning it off. We had it on very early as was all set up to be automatic and when I touch the external walls with radiators they are physically warm (have the pipes chased and think this is helping) so I don’t want to rock the apple cart.

but yes will report back next week for a full average.

If you did experiment, you'd need to consider outdoor temps as well. No point doing one test-day during a cold snap and the other during a mild week.

Yes thank you. That’s true.

Might just have to make it my Friday night thing. And if it is more than I think then we will have no choice but to start experimenting.

Just reading another thread about the condensation and mould though and it’s giving me terror. I remember my last house, took us forever to sort the condensation issue as we couldn’t heat the house enough because the condensation kept the temperature low and there was no way out. We had to purchase a log burner there just to pump heat for a few weeks and reset.

Terrified or returning to that! It’s all very sad 😔

Guide to the most efficient settings for a condensing boiler:

www.theheatinghub.co.uk/articles/turn-down-the-boiler-flow-temperature

That whole site has excellent advice and guides. Founded by a chartered surveyor who went into the heating business, so understands the issues.

More of their guides here:
www.theheatinghub.co.uk/mission

Vid on boiler temps, for those who prefer to watch:

Download on same: www.theheatinghub.co.uk/sites/default/files/2022-09/Save_up_to_8_percent_on_your_gas_bills_with_a%20_lower_flow_temperature.pdf

The thing is you may need several experts.

An architect who specialises in energy efficiency is one, but also probably someone to talk about energy/boilers/bills etc.

Ooh, and someone like the Energy Saving Trust (that's Scotland, not sure if you have that in rest of the UK).

I did this. Turned boiler down on the heater bit to 55. But then my boulder didn’t heat the house up properly. After 4 hours, it was still 16 degrees in my house. So I’ve turned it back up to 70.

Yes, the key thing, as they say, is to suck it and see. You can just increase the flow temperature again until you find what works for your particular house.

There's quite a gap between 55 degrees and 70 degrees, so if you felt minded you could experiment with 65 or 60 degrees. But only if you felt it was worth the effort to you.

People's mileage will vary.

Don't know if the folk running this page might either supply a panel or have the contacts?

m.facebook.com/groups/966754150512356/

Okay so after lots of testing it’s not £5 a day. It’s 12.50!

Have conducted various experiments… (We are actually using two boilers as mid renovation. So our house is basically in two halves - one side we live in and one side we sleep in).

Turned off the living side overnight, and the sleeping side in the day and viceversa. So essentially equivalent to heat to time needs rather than constant. Used £14 and still was colder than usual so that was a fail.

Turned the flow rate from 75 to 60 on the good new boiler. House did not heat enough so boiler clicked on continuously. Used £14. Can’t do this one the other side as old boiler.

Turned it up to 65 again. House is reaching temperature but need to compare over a few days whether the more constant clicking on and off is using more.

I think really 12.50 with two boilers and 2500sqft is not actually that bad. We have six chimneys so just purchased chimney balloons. We also have a few leaky doors which we are replacing later this month and a number of the windows have no dressings so we are loosing more heat there.

So conclusion for us is cheaper to heat 24/7 with a thermostat auto controls.

That’s a good idea. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that. I’m not being sarcastic, I actually didn’t think of that! Think I was in a mood about it not working so just turned it back up in a strop. I’ll try 62 tomorrow

Hi everyone,

We're sorry about how long this has taken us- but we're pleased to announce we are running a Q&A with fuel poverty charity National Energy Action on all things energy related, including how to maximise your home’s energy efficiency to make your money go as far as possible without compromising your health or wellbeing.

The Q&A is open now for questions and you can find it here. National Energy Action will be answering questions on Thursday 9th Feb, 12pm - 1pm.

We hope you find this helpful, and that it will tackle some of the many misconceptions about efficient central heating usage.

Thanks,
MNHQ.

Thanks NicolaDMumsnet, hope it's a good one.

Bumping this to remind people the Q&A's this week.

Looking forward to the Q&A - but I've never seen a Q&A thread attract so many random posts that have nothing to do with the topic 😃

You're right - for some reason the Q&A thread has become a bit of a magnet for random posts from new joiners. Most odd. We're going to remove all of the rogue posts so the thread's more readable.

And, just as you delete them all, another one comes along!

Just to say, we've cleaned up the thread by now, ahead of tomorrow's Q&A.

Special thanks to @PlaitBilledDuckyPuss for redirecting all of the newbies to the correct topics to post in - that was very kind of you. We've mailed them all as well by now. We hope you don't mind but we've removed your redirection posts as well as all of the rogue posts, just so the thread makes sense!

If anyone else has any further questions for our experts, please hop back on the thread. The Q&A is from 12 - 1pm tomorrow (Thursday)

Looking nice and clean now @JoMumsnet - fingers crossed for no more random questions!