Have you put your heating on yet?

[CivicDuties]

In answer to the "what's your DD" question:

4 bed detached in the Thames Valley, built 1971. Double glazed, loft insulated (could probably be thicker), cavity walls insulated. Ancient, heat only, gas boiler, kitchen appliances all electric. EV charged exclusively at home, does about 150 miles a week on average. One thermostat in the house - set to 20.5c, all rads (15 I think?) on full, heating on 24 hours a day roughly early November to April. 2 adults WFH full time, one teenager in residence, one teenager during University holidays. Although the thermostat says 20.5, true temp around the house is 19c downstairs and 17c upstairs consistently, according to a cheap digital thermometer from IKEA. I'm comfortable with that, Mrs CD spends most of the day under a blanket grumbling, daughter occasionally complains, I then point out to her she's wearing shorts and a crop top, so get dressed or shut up.

I'm on Agile, and pay a DD of £192 a month. I'm £100 in credit at the moment, will be going into debit at the end of this month. Last year I recovered from a debit position by about July, I'm expecting to do that a bit earlier this year as I think I'm paying a bit too much - but not enough to worry overly.

[Calza]

B'stard Child said:

What was the starting temp?

Fair question, don't know. Too cold and early to check at 5am!

[B'stard Child]

Calza said:

B'stard Child said:

What was the starting temp?

Fair question, don't know. Too cold and early to check at 5am!

Fair answer

[pacenotes]

Trustmeimadoctor said:

pacenotes said:

Moving house soon,

Whos best to install a Hive system onto the boiler? Electrician, Plummer or heat engineer?

What Boiler and why hive?

Ive been using Hive in my current house, I don't see a reason to change?

Whats the best one these days?

[Trustmeimadoctor]

Depends on what boiler and what functions you need

[B'stard Child]

Following TMIAD format

For me 113sqm 4 bed 2 people unoccupied during office hours M-F

Heated to 19c in main rooms - 17 in less used rooms (Wiser is pretty good at managing overshoots so Wiser TRV 19 is 19 and Wiser TRV 17 is 17 but Wiser 17 maybe 16 or 18 depending on the room orientation)

Heating normally on 0630 - 0830 am and the 1500 to 2200
No setbacks set outside of those times (although I am currently experimenting with setbacks)
However for last few days heating has been from 0630 to 2200

Yesterday heating was on for 15.5 hrs and I used 71.3 kW @ 6.961p so £5.27 (No vat or SC in that)

Electric yesterday 12.1 kW £3.36 (No vat or SC in that)

I pay £140 a month for gas and elec (I started the year £308.70 in credit - I took back £300 end of last year)

[TimmyMallett]

Interesting.

I'm actually waiting to see the UTH UFH ROI.

[UTH]

TimmyMallett said:

Interesting.

I'm actually waiting to see the UTH UFH ROI.

Not sure I'm clever enough, or willing, to do all these sums

[B'stard Child]

CivicDuties said:

I'm comfortable with that, Mrs CD spends most of the day under a blanket grumbling, daughter occasionally complains, I then point out to her she's wearing shorts and a crop top, so get dressed or shut up.

This is totally normal for the female of the species Mrs BC is exactly the same......

[georgezippy]

Hoofy said:

Cotty said:

I think I might need to turn mine up a bit. My olive oil froze in my kitchen overnight.

I think you win the thread.

However, your place isn't as cold as someone I knew from Sunderland. His kitchen was so cold that the dishwater in the sink froze so he couldn't access a teaspoon to stir his tea.

This surely should be in the "Pistonheaders and their first world problems" page.

[AB]

7 bedrooms, 6,500sq ft, very poorly insulated old house... been in here 18 months, had to have one of the two boilers replaced as it was horrendous. This time last year we had bills of nearly £1,500 a month for a couple of months, this month £900 but we've had a house full of tradesmen and I've been working from home full time with the heating on.

It was 4 degrees in the house when I woke up this morning and there was ice on the inside of the sash windows which are due for replacement.

Embarrassingly the tariff is what we managed to sort 18 months ago when there was uproar on prices.

During the summer it was around £400 a month, mostly electricity.

[cliffords]

AB said:

7 bedrooms, 6,500sq ft, very poorly insulated old house... been in here 18 months, had to have one of the two boilers replaced as it was horrendous. This time last year we had bills of nearly £1,500 a month for a couple of months, this month £900 but we've had a house full of tradesmen and I've been working from home full time with the heating on.

It was 4 degrees in the house when I woke up this morning and there was ice on the inside of the sash windows which are due for replacement.

Embarrassingly the tariff is what we managed to sort 18 months ago when there was uproar on prices.

During the summer it was around £400 a month, mostly electricity.

We had a winter , last winter , with similar sq feet and on occasion no doors just polythene, whist we had building work done . Two boilers here too and at that point gas at 11 p compared to 7p today. It was minus 6 at night and not above freezing by day for about 10 days . We had frozen pipes in the loft but the lowest temp we found in the house after no heating for two days was 8. We had no loft insulation at all at that point . Worst month we had was £750 combined . We never did more than £200 on electricity. You are using a lot of electricity, especially if that is a summer month . What on ?

[Hereward]

cliffords said:

...You are using a lot of electricity, especially if that is a summer month . What on ?

Outdoor swimming pool ASHP / circulation pump maybe?

[AB]

Until we had a lot of electrical work done and changed all the lighting to LED, we had approx 15x 250w SON upturned floods along the driveway that wouldn't turn off, as well as maybe 15 to 20 150w floods externally on perimeter which were on D2D. It just took a while to get my head around what exactly was going on in the house.

It's coming down and I'm hoping this month will be an anomaly as I've had the heating on a lot while at home and a lot of people round for Christmas and other bits. We've had dehumidifiers and electric heaters on in the basement following some building work... anyway, after 18 months, work is nearly complete, everyone can fk off out of the house and I can spend some time getting my head round it all a bit more.

[Hereward]

AB said:

...we had approx 15x 250w SON upturned floods along the driveway that wouldn't turn off, as well as maybe 15 to 20 150w floods externally on perimeter which were on D2D...

Crikey, sounds like an airbase! Actually I think I recall a post you made about that previously.

When I moved to my current place I recall swapping out a load of 100w bulbs but nothing on your scale.

[AB]

Hereward said:

Crikey, sounds like an airbase! Actually I think I recall a post you made about that previously.

Total overkill but the previous owner was very security conscious, even down to the commercial grade security system which has been a total PITA.

The first week we moved in, my 2 year old found a hidden panic button which he couldn't resist pressing. We had police here in minutes at about 7am and we hadn't been given the 'password' by the previous owner

[ro250]

TimmyMallett said:

For those of you that sound like you've got the heating on a lot (relatively) can I ask what your monthly energy DD is for the year? I know it's tricky but, for example, in our place, if we have the heating on for about 7 hours a day (morning and evening), with electricity for an average house, we hit nearly £17 yesterday for total energy cost (based on GSH @ 7.1p/kwh) and its not as if we have a warm house with the ambient temp as it is - last month the month cost was £380 and that's with a multi fuel stove running from 4pm to 10pm which I probably spend £800 a year on fuel.

I appreciate comparing apples (small house) and pears(big house) and speedboats (income) doesn't really server a purpose but I'm interested in what people really balk at when they see how much bills hit?

Sounds not a million miles away from us. Not sure what type of house you have but ours is 4 bed det, there's 4 of us and I WFH. Don't have a smart meter.

December actual was £285. Jan will be higher as this week heating has been busy (I'm not sitting in the cold!).

Our DD is actually £362 but that's too high as I have about £700 in credit right now and Octopus payment calculator says it should be £238 but I'm leaving it for now until the spring.

[ashleyman]

So we've come to the end of the test of having the heating on all day vs 2 daily heat cycles.

Between 27 November and 27 December we averaged 46KW/h per day gas use.

Between 28 December and 19 January we averaged 86KW/h per day gas use.

We made a few mistakes, first not realising the temperature was set to 21 and not 19 on the thermostat for the middle part of the day where it would usually be off. It's also been super cold compared to the November/December period.

We were £150 in credit which has basically been eaten by this test but it has been nice being warm all day and not getting the shivers at 2PM counting down until 3.45 when the heat would come back on!!

Electric is £1 per day more expensive also.

Edited by ashleyman on Friday 19th January 11:58

[UTH]

TimmyMallett said:

For those of you that sound like you've got the heating on a lot (relatively) can I ask what your monthly energy DD is for the year? I know it's tricky but, for example, in our place, if we have the heating on for about 7 hours a day (morning and evening), with electricity for an average house, we hit nearly £17 yesterday for total energy cost (based on GSH @ 7.1p/kwh) and its not as if we have a warm house with the ambient temp as it is - last month the month cost was £380 and that's with a multi fuel stove running from 4pm to 10pm which I probably spend £800 a year on fuel.

I appreciate comparing apples (small house) and pears(big house) and speedboats (income) doesn't really server a purpose but I'm interested in what people really balk at when they see how much bills hit?

Missed this question

4 bed, fairly poorly insulated detached house. UFH heating all downstairs, rads in all bedrooms/two bathrooms upstairs.
£300 per month DD. So far my highest bill has been £478 this winter. Sadly I'm now becoming used to less than £500 a month being "ok"!

[TimmyMallett]

Well thank flip its getting a lot milder this weekend