How do you manage your central heating?

[Bailes1992]

I've finally got the central heating in my house working well. When I got here it was utterly useless, in fact borderline pointless. After flushing the system out, getting the boiler serviced, replacing the central heating pump and changing some of the rads for twin rads it's actually very good, it just needed a bit of TLC. I also fitted a new room stat on the landing as the one that was here had been bypassed and was sat on the floor in the wardrobe in the bed room with live terminals on show!

Now I tend to leave the heating on as it's winter. During the night or the day when we are out I drop the temperature down to 15°c and when we are in I bump it back up to 20°c.
The other half is having ago at me constantly for 'wasting gas'. She waits until the house is freezing cold, puts the heating on until the house is like a bloody sauna the then turns it off again.

Now I'd have thought my method was the most efficient way of keeping the house warm but she can't see my point of view. I'm convinced that she things that if the central heating switch is on then it's on all the time.

So out of curiosity... how do you lot manage your central heating?


Bailes.

[D4B]

I do exactly the same as you,

likewise they don't seem to understand exactly how the thermostat works either....

[Rolebama]

I leave it on set at 5 degrees when we are out for any extended period, as it is enough to stop the house and pipes freezing.
As to the thermostat, we have a wireless one which works everywhere in the house. It, along with the control box, was only a few quid more than a hard-wired setup.
I would like to get my hands on the fool that 'invented' the waxstat with a pin on the radiator valves though as it seems I am forever on my knees freeing them off.

[Welly]

I've worked in the HVAC industry for 20 years and although I still experience wildly differing opinions through lack of understanding here's how I manage:

I use a programmable digital room stat, located in the Hall downstairs, typically when I go downstairs on a cold winter morning the temperature will be 16 deg C on the stat.

The first 'on' programme sets the temp to rise to 18 deg C......then onwards to 19 deg C at around 10:00am...then finally rising to 21 deg C at 15:30 in time for people arriving home from school and later work. It stays on 21 until bed time where it goes 'off' under a night set-back minimum of 7 deg.

Keeping a home 'warm' all day is an efficient way to keep comfortable and control condensation. Once the internal fabric of room is warm (the walls, furnishings, floor coverings etc) then it takes little energy to maintain it. Home owners who let the house go cold during the day will see the boiler working flat out for hours in the evening and burning a lot of gas.

Condensing boilers are most efficient at low return temperatures but this benefit gets lost when the boiler is firing for long periods so having the boiler cycle on/off generally through the day is efficient.

Thermostatic rad valves should be used to control individual rooms (if you shut the frigging door ) and a room stat should be located in a cool area; not overly busy and away from hot areas like the Kitchen and also where the stat can 'see' a Radiator with no thermo rad valve fitted.

All of the above works well on a well-sealed and well insulated house, my heating bills are not really worth worrying about.

[Doggy]

I run my boiler for two 40-minute bursts a day, one when get up and a second, much later event timed to coincide with when Mrs Doggy and the cavaliers rise from their slumbers.

The rest of the time, the woodburner does everything - I have an inset solid fuel boiler stove that I manage to feed with free timber packaging waste nearly all the time. My combined leccy+gas bill is roughly 2/3 that of my daugther's next door - she has a condensing combi boiler and is only at home in the evenings, so my strategy seems to be working.

[steve_earwig]

We burn wood here, so a room stat would be pointless The boiler is "set" (by means of the air and mix valves) to run at around 80 degrees, meaning that at present it+s 22-24 degrees in here. If I set it any lower the boiler quickly fills with soot/tar.

The design of the boiler is such that it turns the pump on once it gets to about 72 degrees (according to the built-in thermostat). It also has a 80 litre hot water tank in it. What happens when you fire it up is it gradually rises to 72 degrees, turns the pump on, which cools the boiler down, which turns the pump off- With the water tank the boiler has a fair bit of inertia and takes a while to warm up again, then it turns the pump on again and so on until it reaches an equilibrium at around 80.

The old boiler did run away once, when the air valve stuck upen and we didn't notice until the boiler had got to over 100 degrees and was making scary "ping ping" noises, so it's always important to check it when we do anything to it (lighting, loading wood etc.)

What happens in effect is, when it first starts up, the radiators will get hot and my wife will ask me to check the boiler, which I do. Then the thermostat will cut out again, the radiators will go cold and my wife will ask me to check the boiler, which I do. Then the pump will cut in again, the radiators will get hot and my wife will ask me to check the boiler...

The other bit I enjoy is when I come in from wherever and ask if she's put any wood in the boiler "No, I didn't go because the radiators are still hot." Go out, find the fire's gone out and the pump just clicked off. It's a good job I don't drive the car like that....

Up at my house the heating runs on oil, I've actually just been up to clean it up and give it a test (all ok). The thermostat is set at 10 degrees constant because nobody's there most of the time. I had it on less before but the workshop the boiler's in got so cold the (cheap garbage Russian) oil waxed and blocked the burner.

[benczuk]

I used to do "on in the morning and again in the evening" but working from home it proved ineffective as I need the office to be a constant 20 or my hands start to get cold and slow my typing.

When I moved to an on all day at 20, off at night the bills did drop (a little, though that was in an old drafty hole). So I would recommend the constant temp all day approach, at worst you will be warm all the time, at best your bills will drop.

[Captain Jack]

I work from home a lot as well, so keep the heating on all the time at 19C. It's a simple click on/off thermostat in the hallway - none of fancy programming...

My "office" is +24.8C according to my weather station thingy on my desk

No gas here, so reliant on oil, which is thankfully relatively cheap these days.

[Welly]

My Office at work is at least 23deg, it needs to be when your sat at a pooter doing FA, sorry I mean 'working'.

[lozz]

our c/h is more or less on 24/7

cost's around £70ish aweek to run. (combi)

Recently/We had all the walls filled, some free grant thing that there giving out,, makes abig difference but still..her indoors wants the c/h on 24/7

[lozz]

anyone got one of these fitted? link http://www.ecovisionheatpumps.com/

any good?

[steve_earwig]

We don't have one but that's one of the possibilities we were offered to go with the solar panels, it's all to do with the feed-in tariff thing, the more ecojunk we have, the better the rate we get for the power we produce. I did look in to them though, I'm not sure what figures they're using there but I suspect they're ignoring basic things like winter, I concluded they'd take years to pay for themselves.

[Welly]

I don't know how they can sell air source heat pumps as being 'renewable energy' it's a bloody refrigeration unit

They use outside air as part of the refrigeration heat-transfer process it cools the refrigerant prior to it being compressed into a high temperature liquid again. Cheating a bit really to say you're 'using' any free thermal energy available in the air, it has negligible affect really, it's just a part of the process.

Biggest problem with Heat Pumps is that the max flow temp is around 50 deg C so cannot be used with a conventional system of Radiators and Hot Water Cylinders, it works best with underfloor heating only.

[steve_earwig]

No gas here, so reliant on oil, which is thankfully relatively cheap these days.

How much is it there? It's 5.09Kn (52p) a litre here just now, which is amazing. Thing is I need a top up but I'm wondering if I should fill the tank while it's cheap (that'd be about 3,500 litres). Last time I bought some it was almost a quid a litre with the exchange rate...

[Welly]

Oil is mucho cheap atm, they're practically* giving petrol away now.

Haven't the Americans found eleventy twelvety bazillion gallons of oil under a carpet somewhere and are kinda saying they'll 'be fine thanks' for oil for xxxxxx years?