M0nica
Gosh, Teacheranne, if I had the thermostat on 20, let alone 22, I would be lying on the floor like beached whale, gasping.
A house has to be left fully unheated for awhile to get mouldy. We didn't get out to visit our house in France, from July 2020 until September 2021 14 months.
It was shut up and unheated and went through a full winter. The house is in Normandy, a region with a high rainfall, hence all the grass and all the cheese, with temperatures similar to southern England We went over this autumn expecting to find a lot of mould, but found almost none, The house did feel damp and all the beds needed a couple of days airing, but otherwise, dust and spiders were the biggest problems.
I think one of my problems is that I spend a lot of time just sitting down as my arthritis is very bad at the moment. I’ve had to get a cleaner to help out so apart from cooking, I tend to spend my days crafting or reading!
My house had mould problems for several years after I moved in, it never seemed to feel warm and there was a lot of condensation on the windows in the winter. I tried to open the windows as much as possible ( difficult when out at work for over 12 hours a day ) but still ended up with black mould inside my wardrobes and behind my head board of my bed. In fact, my mattress was damp so I had to move my bed away from the adjoining garage wall and put it against the radiator!
I ended up having two wall vents put in my bedroom wall, changed the boiler to a more powerful one, put in two extra radiators and also had a positive air exchange unit installed in the hall. Now my bungalow gets toasty hot very quickly but I still try to keep an even temperature during the day rather than have cold spells.
Mind you, it does have to be cold for me to raise the temperature, I had it at 18 degrees all through the Autumn and only set it at 20 fairly recently. And there are times when I sit in just a T-shirt after I get in but I soon cool down and pop a jumper on.
My energy consumption have not gone up noticeably since I got my new boiler and was able to heat the rooms better. No more signs of nasty mould and no condensation on the windows.