Put your heating on yet

GeForce said:
Incorrect. You are making the assumption that heat loss only occurs when the heating is off. In fact, the rate of loss is proportional to the difference between the inside and outside temperatures.

So the lower the average temperature over the day, the less the heat loss. 19C over 24 hours is worse (more loss) than 19C for 12 hours and 16C for 12 hours (average 17.5C).

The same argument is true of a hot water tank.
Click to expand...

Yup I take the point. It would depend on how your house loses heat though, surely?
 
alx said:
As GeForce says, you can have an almost unlimited number of time blocks throughout the day/night and set each time block's temperature individually.

Mine also has a geolocation feature, so it turns the heating down (to a temperature of your choosing) when I'm not in my flat so the heating isn't on when I'm not there. Pretty neat.
Click to expand...

Technically smart thermostats are supposed to learn temperatures based on you adjusting the temperature, rather than specifically setting a timer. However first thing I did was set a program as well... :p

The auto away feature is useful though, especially if you're out the house for a night or more.

I have mine set to 20 for an hour in the morning, then down to 10 during the day, then back up to 20 from 4:30-11 and then 10 during he evening. That said even on the coldest days (-25) the house rarely drops more than 2-3 degrees over the 8-10 hours each section the house is set to 10.
 
No - I'm not a girl :p

When it actually gets cold I might consider it, so probably early next year ;)
 
dirtychinchilla said:
If you heat up the thermal mass of your building for say, 8 hours a day, in the other 24 hours of the day, the heat will leak out of the thermal mass. The next day, you turn your heating back on for another 8 hours, and it does the same thing. You use x amount of energy.

Instead, you heat up your building to 19C and keep it at that temperature for 24 hours a day. The amount of energy used in this process once the thermal mass of the building has risen to the desired temperature is less than if you were to only heat for 8 hours a day.

I think that basically it's a lot less energy to top up the temperature of the building than restore it each day.

The UK is far far far behind when it comes to heating and energy efficiency. If you went to Scandinavia, which is arguably the most efficient region of the the world when it comes to heating, they use exactly this model along with weather compensation to ensure that the energy used is minimal.

Just see if I can find a link....


http://www.yourhome.gov.au/passive-design/thermal-mass

Seriously, it's the best thing to do, even though it doesn't instantly make sense.

Regarding the hot water tank thing, hot water tanks are very inefficient, firstly. Secondly, although you wouldn't do this in your own home, if you ran a district heating network where you use hot water in an energy grid like we use electricity, you can basically get instantaneous hot water to any location by allowing people to tap off a massive source of water, which in part maintains its temperature through its thermal mass. As you do not design for peak loads, you have an amount of water in the system that could be tapped by say 50% of people all at once.

Why do you think it's not better to keep your water tank hot all day?

EDIT: there's a lot of controversy online about this, but I think this article is helpful:

http://www.thegreenage.co.uk/is-it-...eating-on-all-the-time-or-turn-it-on-and-off/

I'm going to try putting my heating on all the time for a week, and then have it scheduled for the other week, and see how my meter readings work out. Hopefully the temperature change won't be too dramatic.
Click to expand...

I've tried 24 hours a day and AM/PM heating and not noticed any significant heating bill differences.

Only problem is, each winter hasn't been the same so difficult for a real comparison. Though it may not be the same for other houses either, mines quite new and has loads of insulation etc...

I've also tried low temp water in the rads as I have a condensing boiler and trying to pull out as much flu energy as possible. This has not showed any significant bill difference either.

Now I have the rads pumping out the heat so I can hang things over them and dry things :D
 
I got back from Australia just as the weather turned here.
Going from 23-26c to 5-10c was a bit of a shock to the system.

Heating had to go on.
 
Richie said:
Love this thread every year... Its almost like caveman chest beating and the last person to put the heating on is more Alpha than everyone else :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
I don't see it as chest beating at all. I see at as being efficient and frugal without suffering.

I would much prefer to wrap up better, rather than wearing a t-shirt around the house with the heating on.
 
Jez said:
We just leave ours on all year round set to 20C all of the time. It doesnt kick in through summer because it is naturally warm enough anyway.

Im not quite sure why you would turn a system off as such
Click to expand...

Because there's no need for it to turn on (even for a short time) when the temp happens to drop just enough for it to come on.
 
Jez said:
We just leave ours on all year round set to 20C all of the time. It doesnt kick in through summer because it is naturally warm enough anyway.

Im not quite sure why you would turn a system off as such
Click to expand...

This, although I let it drop a couple of degrees overnight. It's come on a bit recently as the lounge has dropped to 18 or so overnight.
 
darael said:
I don't see it as chest beating at all. I see at as being efficient and frugal without suffering.

I would much prefer to wrap up better, rather than wearing a t-shirt around the house with the heating on.
Click to expand...

Same. When I get in from work of an evening I always tend to whack my joggers on, my big warm slipper boots and my dressing gown so am pretty toasty in that!
 
It's not cold enough to light my burner, but I was tempted the other night just for cosy-ness. :)

I vowed not to turn the central heating on until the clocks went back, but it went on a couple of days ago. :(

It's on at the moment, along with the dehumidifiers, whilst I dry the kid's uniforms.

I can feel/hear the £££ being consumed. :(
 
BadMojo said:
It's not cold enough to light my burner, but I was tempted the other night just for cosy-ness. :)

I vowed not to turn the central heating on until the clocks went back, but it went on a couple of days ago. :(

It's on at the moment, along with the dehumidifiers, whilst I dry the kid's uniforms.

I can feel/hear the £££ being consumed. :(
Click to expand...

never seen the point of dehumidifiers personally cost money to buy and operate. heating and ventilation/air circulation should be enough. unless you live in a small studio flat.

wooden flooring and furniture also likes a little bit of moisture.
 
Had a few nights where we've started to think about putting the storage heaters on charge for the first time this autumn, but I'm holding back for now and thinking about buying an oil-filled electric radiator or two.

A few years ago we discovered why our winter electric bills were horrendous during cold winters, whoever connected up the three storage heaters for our landlord did not connect them exclusively to the Economy7 ring, so when the "input" is anything but minimum they will consume up to ~2.5Kwh each during the daytime rate instead of only cheap night electricty! Fobbed off back then. because his nephew electrician did not sound familiar with E7 storage heaters.

So since the discovery, I have had to remember to turn all the heaters off when I get up each morning, ideally before E7 hours finish, but it still means the initial charging from ~2100 is using daytime rate for ~3.5 hours a night (~12.5p vs 5p per kWh)

Raised the issue again recently with landlord and he says it is our responsibility to fix because we changed electric suppliers. Yes, when you change suppliers, they come round your house and fiddle with the ring and E7 mains!;)

Simplest solution would be for landlord to get a qualified electrician to fit manuals timers to each isolation switch by each heater, rather than pulling up floorboards and/or plaster to replace botched wiring job from years ago.

At least used oil-filled electric radiators, we can attach them to manual 3-pin plug timers ourselves to only use E7 and we can take them with us when we move... Hopefully very soon!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom