I was just exaggerating the time the system would be powered off, the periods I would actually be looking at is at night and when nobody's home. I can't see why having it on low would save more energy than turning it off, but I'm willing to accept that the answer is probably counter-intuitive, as most things seem to be these days...Welly wrote:my opinion of 6 days off / 1 day on would be that in those 6 'off' days are the risks of condensation and frozen pipes worth the risk compared to heating-on-low strategy? I believe the benefits of having a fairly constant condition far outway any perceived savings.
I can't sleep if I'm too warm (my brother is the same, he reckons it's because we grew up in a house with no heating except a log fire and a storage heater) so my bedroom window is open 24/7 (everyone here has those windows that can tip open at the top, it would be possible to open it from the outside eventually but it would be easier to kick in the front door and Scooter would've had your leg off by then) and most of the time the radiator in my bedroom is on minimum or off. Occasionally I do wake up cold but it doesn't take too long to warm up in there if I shut the window and open the door to the rest of the house. If I open the radiator full I run the risk of waking up in a hour sweating.
She tells me to clear snow for the tanker, to go to the next town over to order some oil, to go to the bank to get the money out, she reminds me that I need to pick her up at 12 to go to the clinic and, oh yes, don't forget to have lunch 
So I tell her I can't do all that because the snow is up to my knees and ask her to order it over the phone and use her credit card, just like she did last time. My phone then expires and I set about clearing the snow.
I used the metal snow shovel to break it up and the plastic one to chuck it over my fence onto my lawn (it's down there somewhere). It took 2 hours, the metal snow shovel is now fairly mangled and the plastic one is about had it but I did it! And I didn't cripple myself in the process. 
(Btw Inside the house, which I usually heat to 12 degrees, it was then 7.5, which probably means the heating died last night some time, which also probably means if I had gone yesterday I wouldn't have known about its demise until Thursday, which is when I planned to go next.) So we've ordered 2,000 litres of cheap Russian garbage... sorry, finest heating oil at 4,95Kn a litre (which works out at about 48 pence, it's not been that cheap since I first got here almost 11 years ago!). They promise to call us when they're on their way (we'll see)
The oil came this afternoon, right when I was taxiing a mate to the clinic (but I was prepared for this eventuality and collected him an hour early so he had time to walk the rest of his journey). Got up to my gaff and... some blighter's been along with a mini digger and cleared all the pavements 
Better still, the tanker was tiny, the guy took one look and told me his tiny little pipe wouldn't reach my tank from the pavement so I'd have to clear the driveway off 