Central heating controls

We did and it was! We just turned it up during the day if it got really cold! That was before we got the hive. Our house is open plan, old and cold!

In our 'real' house we have the central heating totally sussed but where we're living just temporarily we can't get to grips with this ancient and temperamental boiler. We shiver all day and melt by night!

Whether it is more efficient to keep the heating on all the time when it is cold depends on how well your house is insulated. The better the insulation the less cost effective it is.

morethan I think it was moneysavingexpert that had some info on the economics or keeping heating on or using a timer.

M0nica are you sure you don't mean the other way round?
If you had (mythical) a perfectly insulated house that lost no heat you would turn on the heating, the house would heat up and then stay at a steady temperature until you open a window or door to let some of the heat out. Therefore "leaving your heating on" would mean that the thermostat would only turn it on when you opened the door and the temperature dropped.
If you were trying to heat the opposite (a tent? a greenhouse?) the heat would leave almost as soon as you had generated it. Therefore if you went out for two hours and left your heater on you would have just wasted all the heat you paid for while you were out.
So if you are living in a nice new flat then it is absolutely fine to have your heating "on" all the time. If you are living in an uninsulated detached 70s bungalow it is going to cost you a fortune.

If you live in an uninsulated home please get in touch with the "Warm Homes" scheme , my Sister can't believe the difference .
We had to move out of our old kitchen years ago because of the cold , but recently had to move the kitchen back in there > marvellous Builder put insulation in the cavities and insulation boarding on the inside and now it is nearly the warmest room in the house

Like apricot, we have rarely had to have our heating turned up above 15 or 16 in the four years we've lived here. Whether this winter will be any different remains to be seen.

Yes aggie a bit of insulation makes a huge difference.

There are still ways of getting funding to improve the energy efficiency of your home if you are on a low income. Most of these happen via energy companies. The "obligation" is the amount of money that energy companies are obliged to spend on energy efficiency measures.
These apply to home owners and sometimes to private rental properties as well.
There are also some other grants available - see the phone numbers on the Which link below.
Also worth checking out if your boiler is very old or if it breaks down.

One of the problems in the UK is that some homes are very hard to improve in terms of energy efficiency if they have design features like : lack of cavity wall, lack of easily insulated loft space (e.g. dormers, flat roof), lack of mains gas.

My sympathies to those of you who cannot afford to heat your homes to a comfortable level. The recommended level, particularly if you are sitting around a lot, is about 20 deg.
I tend to feel guilty about having the heating on all day with just me in the house as it is not very energy efficient (30s end terrace). My top tips are to wear 2 layers on your legs (thermals/long johns make a huge difference) and thin layers on top. A silk scarf around the neckline makes a big difference (I get mine from charity shops) and the cosy sheepskin indoor boots my son gave me are a godsend.
If I am just sitting in one room I tend to close the door and use a small fan heater with a thermostat.
Oh - and close your curtains - upstairs\unoccupied rooms and all rooms at nightfall. Close internal doors too so that warm air from downstairs isn't heating the spare bedroom.
www.gov.uk/energy-company-obligation
www.which.co.uk/energy/creating-an-energy-saving-home/guides/insulation-grants/

In our last house, a 1930's semi, we took up a offer from British Gas to have our house insulated free of charge. They did a survey, which was fine, and a date was fixed for the work. When the firm that British Gas used to carry out the work actually came to do it, they refused on the grounds that BG had not told them we had an extension with a flat roof on two sides of the house. "we're not allowed to go on flat roofs". We told them it was reinforced, and that the BG surveyor had been on it, as had various workmen and builders from time to time, but they were adamant. I was furious and took BG to task in no uncertain terms. They said they would find another firm, but despite my chasing them up, they never actually came back with an alternative. Shortly after that, we sold the house. The extension was actually better insulated than the house! I think it would have made a considerable difference to a house which was always cold in the winter.

No, if your house is well insulated the heat loss when the heating is off will be much slower than if it uninsulated so that it takes very little fuel to bring it back up to the planned temperature when the heating comes back on. If you leave the heating on all the time it will keep coming on in little boosts to keep the temperature at the planned level and will end up consuming more fuel than if you had left it off.

We live in a large, old, listed house. We have insulated it as well as we can, given that it has solid walls, and cannot have double glazing fitted yet we do not have the heating on between 9.30am and 4.00pm except in the coldest weather or over night (10.00 - 6.00). It is rare for the day time internal temperature to fall more than 2 degrees in that period. The amount of fuel needed to to raise the temperature the 2 degrees is considerably less than if the heating kept coming on every time the temperature dropped half a degree to bring it back to the thermostat setting.

Our new kitchen is in a 70s extension , the rest is a stone built terrace and the only insulation we can have is in the loft , well I guess we could do the same as the kitchen on the walls on the inside but it hasn't been suggested yet ........ mmmm I must float that idea past the family .....

Not sure if this will help but it looks similar to my thermostat. Just press the + (plus sign) until it reads the desired temperature the flame symbol should then light up. This in effect switches it temporarily to manual. It will go back to your usual setting at the next programmed time. Good luck.

We fitted internal insulation to all our bedroom walls. Not at all difficult. It takes the form of a sheet of plasterboard with a foam backing that was attached to the existing walls with dabs of plaster and was then had a plaster skim over it

Referring to an earlier post. Flat roofs are not that difficult to insulate. Most (all?) flat roofs are boarded over rafters before the final roof water proof material is applied. We had the ceilings of the room in our flat roof extension removed and insulation fitted into the space between the rafters and the boarded part of the roof. The ceiling was then replastered.

Bit more complicated and expensive Monica than just rolling out insulation in a loft, wouldn't you say?
Re the thermostat in a well insulated house - not many UK properties are that well insulated.
I am pondering your argument. My DH will know the answer - energy loss models 'r us.

morethan2 I have checked with the guru. He says that if you are not needing the house to be heated it is always more efficient (and cheaper) to have the heating OFF when you are not needing the heat. i.e. if you are out or cosily asleep under your duvet.
There was a long answer involving insulation levels, outside and inside temperatures and the way boilers work. But I am going out in 5 mins. If anyone is interested I will give it a shot tomorrow.
Oh - he said heating engineers sometimes tell people to leave it on all the time because then they don't get calls from people who can't make their heating controls work!!!

Depends on the house, just getting into the loft to lay insulation in our house is really difficult, let alone getting the rolls of insulation into it as well.

Admittedly we needed workmen in to insulate the flat roof, but insulated the loft ourselves but it was done in two days and I needed neither to empty the kitchen (which is in the flat roofed area), beyond clearing the work tops and I was able to cook as normal in the evenings and mornings when the workman was not doing the job. Insulalting the loft required protective clothing, masks and a good bath and hairwash afterwards.

Our house is certainly not well insulated,nor easy to insulate as it is over 500 years old but we have insulated it as far as we can. I monitored our heat loss during the off period of 6 1/2 hours today and the temperature fell only two degrees in that time, despite the external temperature being 7 degrees and below and it did not take the system long to get the temperature up to the planned level when it came back on.

Well done with the insulation M0nica .
I don't think insulation of flat roofs has ever been included in any of the grant schemes because it is a more complex procedure which is beyond the scope of a straightforward insulation company. You'd have to employ a builder if you couldn't do it yourself.

I live in a modern house built in 1987 with full wall insulation etc. We did get a loft insulation top up to 10" from the warm front scheme.
We have a British Gas installed UP2 Dual channel progammer which is relatively easy to use.

We have a timer which can cope with different settings for both the heating and hot water but you can easily press a button to overide the usual settings.

Lucky you! Just one button...

Just ordered a Hive. £50 off till midnight tonight. (Black Friday aaaargh)