central heating up-date

[atypical_boro]

It will be in the boiler menu, it's something like preheat hot water just have a browse around. If it's on it keeps some water hot at all times ready for use but it hardly saves any time but costs a lot to have on

Also as it is a combi boiler, make sure your water and hot water are not set too high. You can adjust the knob and then see how it impacts your hot water tap temp and radiator temp, many have eco settings on the dials. My girlfriend used to run a boiling steaming bath then add loads of cold water to get it the right temp as hot water was set to max on boiler - waste of money. Just reduce temp and then try furthest taps to make sure they're getting hot enough.

Save 9% in gas use, by turning down the 'flow' temperature

Running the your heating system at a lower 'flow' temperature can save around 9% on your gas use, Jo explains why and how to do it

www.theheatinghub.co.uk

TRV's can be had for £8-12 each but prevent you earning up spare bedrooms etc or roooms basically heating up costantly, without them you basically demand heating to each unlocked radiator. With them, that rad will close off once temp is achieved reducing the energy use of your boiler. They'll need fitting but will last for many years and change how your heating works. We didn't have them in our old house and the heating was either off or on and you either locked the rad shut or it was on, again huge waste of money for spare rooms and the like where you can set to frost or 1.

Likewise having your thermostat in hall, if that says 17.5 so boiler fires up as you've got it set to 18, it'll stay demanding heat. If you have thermostat in a habitable room like living room, when that room is at temp it will stop demanding heat and turn off

OK cheers, we do actually have TRVs now I think about it but they are all basically set to the highest cos we use most of our rooms quite a lot. Obviously this could be a cause for our expense though.

We've actually got it set to 17.5 in the hall, obviously 17.5 wouldn't be warm enough in the lounge for example though.

 

[gramercy]

“Just find it crazy how much different it can be for 2 similar households”

It is quite a range like.

Obviously well insulated modern houses will be more efficient to heat.
But there shouldn’t be too much of a difference between old and new buildings on electricity costs should there?

Like others we both WFH, the tumbler gets used pretty often, as do the oven and dishwasher.
I’m currently sat next to a tank of 200 litres of water that’s kept at a constant 25 degrees.
We’ve not really changed our usage too much since the prices went up, I mean I’ve always been careful and turned off lights when not in a room etc. but we’re using stuff if we want / need to and it’s costing about £4 a day for electricity.

 

[ThatFragranceGuy]

OK cheers, we do actually have TRVs now I think about it but they are all basically set to the highest cos we use most of our rooms quite a lot. Obviously this could be a cause for our expense though.

We've actually got it set to 17.5 in the hall, obviously 17.5 wouldn't be warm enough in the lounge for example though.

That's why you need it in the lounge because you don't sit in the hall, so your house is being heated based on the temp of a colder room like a hallway. You'll spend most time in the lounge when heating is on so that is where it should sit. You can get wireless ones

If your lounge is set to 18-19 and it hits that, your heating will click off until temp drops... in the hall it might not get to 17.5 so it may just fire 100% of the time

You couple that with trv settings to give some rooms less heat. All ours are on 2-3, except spare room and dressing room which are on 1 as we don't need them to be hot. Thermostat in lounge as that's where we spend our time hence what the heating works towards.

Some details:

Numbers & temperatures​

The numbers on the valve roughly correlate to the room temperatures below. When the room drops below these temperatures, the TRV will allow hot water to flow into the radiator:

• 0 = Off
• * = 7°C
• 1 = 10°C
• 2 = 15°C
• 3 = 20°C
• 4 = 25°C
• 5 = 30°C

A fully functional TRV will detect the temperature of the room and automatically adjust the amount of hot water in the radiator accordingly.

During the winter, you should really set your TRV to 2 or 3 and leave it. If you go into a room that's cold and the radiator is burning hot, leave it alone and don't turn it up to 5. Let it do it's job and allow the TRV to heat the room accordingly.

(If you're away for a long time in winter, set your TRVs to * so that the rads will come on for a short while if the temp gets below 7°C)

Use TRVs properly to save money​

If you turn a TRV up to 5, basically you are telling it not to stop letting hot water into the radiator until the room reaches a very very high temperature (around 30°C). If the temperature drops below 30 degrees, water will be hot allowed into the radiator.

This is unnecessary as you rarely need the room to be that hot and it also means you lose any savings you may have otherwise made on heating bills because the hot water will be constantly flowing.

The best way to use thermostatic radiator valves is to decide on a comfortable room temperature and set the number on the TRV accordingly.

Regularly changing the settings on a TRV is not recommended and will undermine their money saving qualities, which is one of the main benefits of installing them in the first place.

 

[Vzzzbx]

I took meter readings this morning and i can see from my little spreadsheet that I've used 61.98 of Elec and 17.69 of gas so far this month (I used 101.12 of Elec and 13.51 of gas in total last month).

I'm trying to use the boiler as little as possible as it started leaking water last week, and i need to wait a bit before i get it serviced/replaced. :|

 

[ThatFragranceGuy]

To add to the above of your trv are set to 5 and all rooms are used, that means bedrooms are heated constantly even though they may already be at temp which is why a 3 is more appropriate. A bedroom should quickly heat up especially if you close the doors, so it doesn't need to demand hot water constantly to retain that heat, you can easily end up with rooms much hotter that way as the trv is never ending the demand and if the thermostat is in a cold room it'll probably demand the heat.

This leads to a cycle where your boiler is probably always on because thermostat in a colder room and all roads are wide open

20c (setting 3) should be fine especially if you are setting it to 17.5c in a cold room. Any spare rooms or whatever set to setting 2 as they'll still go to 15c and have some warmth

 

[Redwurzel]

Central heating is on all the time now, but at a relatively low temperature - keeping house at 18 degrees, in the evening push up to 19 degrees - BG have put the monthly payments up to £154 a month for all energy which seems about right. Now officially in fuel poverty category. The £400 from the Government helps a lot, but that is likely to stop in March.

Food shopping was a bad experience yesterday some prices have really shot up of late - seems a lot worse than the 1970s to me.

Examples in the last 6 months:

LIDL digestive biscuits 31p to 45p (up 45%)
LIDL 2 layer yoghurt 32p to 49p (up 53%)
LIDL small milk (568 ml) 55p to 95p (up 73%) - equivalent to £1.75 per litre

Our overall food bill must have gone up 25% in the last 12 months. Unlike fuel, I fear food prices tend the stay at the higher

At LIDL I bought 4 bottles of fully branded Czech Bud 5% alcohol beer for £4 (1.35 litres) take off £1.28 of UK duty and 20% VAT and its around £2.18 or £1.64 per litre. So the beer was cheaper than the milk (ex. Taxes). The beer also came in expensive glass bottles.

Went into ASDA yesterday

Newspaper (ok FT for Budget analysis)
Punnet of Grapes
Toilet blocks small
2 boxes of mince pies

total around £10.50 - I could not believe it, I asked them to double check.

Posters on here complain about £25 for a seat at a championship football match (2 hours live entertainment).

 

[BaronSmoggie]

avoided putting it on yet?

Down to 6 degrees here in Bristol, possibly coldest it's been up to now. Got tempted to put it on the other day but withheld and find tolerance level for cool air has risen. Wood burner on in the front room and no one seems to be complaining. Clothes take 2 days to dry, though, and I'm not looking forward to a really cold snap. The joys of modern Britain.

Was 2.5C the other night and it kicked in automatically. Thankfully we had new windows in September which has helped mitigate some of the cold. Log burner is on the calendar for next year. Especially in light of the govt saying gas prices will be high for a decade. **** that nonsense.

 

[Redwurzel]

Hi BS

Ref New Windows - did you replace double glazed wiondws with newer ones or non double glazed windows?

 

[Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret]

Have only put the heating on a couple of times when I'm freezing my **** off. Stick it on for an hour. I'm lucky in that I don't feel the cold much. Other than in the morning when it's too cold to get out of bed.

Got loads of black mould in the house this year and I'm wondering if it's because I haven't had the heating on. Would have thought that mould would grow through putting the heating on rather than leaving it off mind.

 

[Bristolboro]

Well, I've kind of given in a bit the last few days and put the central heating on in quick blasts. It really is quite grim being in an unheated house this time of year, or maybe it's just a state of mind? feels chilly but it's not going to kill us. I like the cold air when I'm in bed as well.

The psychology of it all. Interesting.

 

[ThatFragranceGuy]

Was 2.5C the other night and it kicked in automatically. Thankfully we had new windows in September which has helped mitigate some of the cold. Log burner is on the calendar for next year. Especially in light of the govt saying gas prices will be high for a decade. **** that nonsense.

Wood isn't cheap either and you will still need to use gas for the rest of the house. Plus need to have somewhere dry to store it

TikTok money-saving guru's verdict on wood-burning stoves

Many people will be hoping to save cash using a wood burner this winter

www.leicestermercury.co.uk

Great for aesthetics and they do look class but I don't think they're money saving be gas even at these prices. You can scavenge wood but it needs seasoning still.

 

[BaronSmoggie]

Wood isn't cheap either and you will still need to use gas for the rest of the house. Plus need to have somewhere dry to store it

TikTok money-saving guru's verdict on wood-burning stoves

Many people will be hoping to save cash using a wood burner this winter

www.leicestermercury.co.uk

Great for aesthetics and they do look class but I don't think they're money saving be gas even at these prices. You can scavenge wood but it needs seasoning still.

Agreed, but what ***** me off is that other forms of energy generation are still tagged to gas prices, even renewable per unit costs. How is that even fair? So, I'll take it out of the equation and do my own thing.

 

[Lightweight]

Wood isn't cheap either and you will still need to use gas for the rest of the house. Plus need to have somewhere dry to store it

TikTok money-saving guru's verdict on wood-burning stoves

Many people will be hoping to save cash using a wood burner this winter

www.leicestermercury.co.uk

Great for aesthetics and they do look class but I don't think they're money saving be gas even at these prices. You can scavenge wood but it needs seasoning still.

The headline figures used in that article are the worst case scenario( buying the logs in the most expensive method).
£7.50 for 7kg.
Whilst i can buy 200kg dumpy bag for £80, using the figures in the article this would equate to £214 ( almost triple the cost.) In fairness he does highlight this later in the article.
Wood is easy to scavenge on walks for free ( e.g. Tees barrage, side of Yarm bridge, friendly tree surgeons, councils and local woods) and if you manage your storage correctly you can season the wood easily enough ( I use a 2 year method - wood I scavenged this year will be used starting January 2024).
You obviously have to have storage but these can be made easily enough with minimal cost.
I have not bought wood for the log burner for 11 years and I live in a residential area using scavenged wood.
Maybe not for everyone but certainly easily doable if you have the inclination and are fit and able.

 

[atypical_boro]

Broken £20 on the smart meter today (dual fuel). Oh f*ck.

 

[Cuthbert]

Have only put the heating on a couple of times when I'm freezing my **** off. Stick it on for an hour. I'm lucky in that I don't feel the cold much. Other than in the morning when it's too cold to get out of bed.

Got loads of black mould in the house this year and I'm wondering if it's because I haven't had the heating on. Would have thought that mould would grow through putting the heating on rather than leaving it off mind.

If the walls are cold, you'll be getting more condensation on them. The moisture is what mould likes. Putting the heating on raises the condensation point of the walls, so keeps them drier and mould free for longer. Dehumidifiers help, keeping the air drier, so less condensation at lower temperatures, but obviously there's a cost to buying/running them.

 

[ThatFragranceGuy]

Have only put the heating on a couple of times when I'm freezing my **** off. Stick it on for an hour. I'm lucky in that I don't feel the cold much. Other than in the morning when it's too cold to get out of bed.

Got loads of black mould in the house this year and I'm wondering if it's because I haven't had the heating on. Would have thought that mould would grow through putting the heating on rather than leaving it off mind.

Is the mould on the window frames? If so it's likely condensation from not enough air circulation which if not wiped away and cleaned regularly it will turn into black mould. Various ways to get it off from dedicated products like mould magic to putting bleach on toilet roll- will be videos on YouTube

Need to tackle the source though which is damp air or actual damp in the walls if it is on walls

 

[breakthewallsdown]

Tried something different last night and left the thermostat at 16, woke up with only 50p usage.. Had it set at 18 for an hour while kids got ready for school and me and missus for work and used an extra £1

Half the price of yesterday having it set to 18 straight from 10 for 2 hours

 

[Fat_Dragon]

Tried something different last night and left the thermostat at 16, woke up with only 50p usage.. Had it set at 18 for an hour while kids got ready for school and me and missus for work and used an extra £1

Half the price of yesterday having it set to 18 straight from 10 for 2 hours

Are you on Economy 7 tarrif where the night rate is cheaper? Also in the morning you will have turned things on like lights, kettle, shower etc…

 

[ThatFragranceGuy]

Tried something different last night and left the thermostat at 16, woke up with only 50p usage.. Had it set at 18 for an hour while kids got ready for school and me and missus for work and used an extra £1

Half the price of yesterday having it set to 18 straight from 10 for 2 hours

I think for most people the price per hour of heating being on solid is probably about £1 or close to that, so that's about right if it was on for 2 hours straight

Yesterday was a much colder day however with frost outside so need to keep that in mind when comparing

 

[r00fie1]

Turned the fridge down from 4 to 2 which has reduced my over-night usage from 30p to 16p. [7 hours].
Its a fridge / freezer - so the freezer part operates as normal.
Its cool enough to keep food safely.