The heating is on !

[brand]

I don't ask much of my daughters for Christmas... I gave them the grid reference!

 

[raleighnut]

The secret with ours is to get plenty of wood on and then leave it alone with the top vent shut (closed to 80% by the DEFRA modification kit) it then just glows for a good 4 hrs before you either let it go out or reload it.

 

[welsh dragon]

I don't ask much of my daughters for Christmas... I gave them the grid reference!

View attachment 61098

If you have any spare, can you deliver it to Wales ?

 

[brand]

The secret with ours is to get plenty of wood on and then leave it alone with the top vent shut (closed to 80% by the DEFRA modification kit) it then just glows for a good 4 hrs before you either let it go out or reload it.

Rather have it fully open as that is maximum efficiency and just keep it ticking over with a little bit of wood added every now again. At night close it down as it will still be warm in the sitting room and I will have two hot kettles of water.
A rare example of efficient inefficiency. If I leave it open it will be cold in the sitting room and I will have to turn the heating on for an hour and I will have to use the electric kettle......then I will cry for hours and hours.

 

[brand]

If you have any spare, can you deliver it to Wales ?

NO

 

[cookiemonster]

It's cooled down enough here for me to switch the air con off.

Been wet here all day, has cooled the city down nicely.

 

[brand]

If you have any spare, can you deliver it to Wales ?

NO as there is no such thing as to much wood just to little storage space.

 

[welsh dragon]

NO as there is no such thing as to much wood just to little storage space.

Thats what MR WD says. He just keeps making the log store bigger. Soon it will be bigger than the bloomin house

 

[G3CWI]

The government spends umpty million every year on research, you would have thought they could have got this looked into by now. It affects us all and is actually quite important on several levels.

Frankly I would prefer some objective information rather than a wild guess from a random heating "engineer".

 

[nickyboy]

I was told by a heating engineer that it is more efficient to keep it on all the time but when you are out, turn the thermostat down by 3 degrees so that the boiler doesn't come on full again when you bring it up to normal temperature. It is all to do with keeping the walls warm apparently.

Eh? That sounds like a load of crap to me. Imagine your house is like a kettle. Is it more efficient to heat up the water in the kettle when you need it from cold or keep the water in the kettle warm all day?

Of course it is more efficient to heat up the water when you need it from cold. There is confusion between "Which method requires the least energy" and "Which method allows the house to heat up most quickly".

Minimum energy usage = turn the heating off completely when you don't need the house to be warm, let the house cool down, then blast the heat when you need it. Basic physics. The only way that this is not true is if the house you're warming is perfectly insulated......and of course it isn't

 

[gavroche]

Eh? That sounds like a load of crap to me. Imagine your house is like a kettle. Is it more efficient to heat up the water in the kettle when you need it from cold or keep the water in the kettle warm all day?

Of course it is more efficient to heat up the water when you need it from cold. There is confusion between "Which method requires the least energy" and "Which method allows the house to heat up most quickly".
Your analogy is weak as you can't compare it to a kettle. The walls of a house take a while to warm up, a kettle doesn't. It makes sense to me to keep the walls warm as a lot of cold comes through the walls, that's why a house in the middle of a row of terrace houses is warmer than the ones at either end.
Minimum energy usage = turn the heating off completely when you don't need the house to be warm, let the house cool down, then blast the heat when you need it

 

[Saluki]

I've got my thermostat set to 18 degrees and bob it on for an hour every so often. I have one of those pay as you go meters, and its £52.50 plus VAT for each meter to change to a proper one. Horrific to see the gas money being munched away by heating the flat.
18 degrees will do for now, may be up to 20 if we get a really cold snap, and Hubster has been told to put a jumper on and not sit in a bloomin' tee shirt with the heating on. The hounds have indoor PJs made from fleece so they stay warm. I know that Hubster likes the house to be as hot as Bermuda but he doesn't pay the heating bills, I do and I'm getting a bit stingy in my old age (actually the gas and elec bills are rising fast than my income).

I'm going to fit a wee dog flap in the back door, when I have a moment, for the Jack Russell who loves outside, whatever the weather. Then I don't have to leave a door open for her.

 

[Saluki]

A man and his fire is a wonderful thing . I don't have central heating. I have a wood burning stove that heats the whole house. When i had central heating, we left it on on low all day rather than turning it on and off. We had thick stone walls and the heat was absorbed into the walls during the day, and radiated back into the rooms during the night. The walls acted like a radiator.

You lucky spud. I really miss my wood burner. We are not allowed to fit one as it messes up the eco rating of the flat apparently.

 

[nickyboy]

Basic physics. You're confusing "least energy" with "fastest to warm up to required temperature"
For so long as your house is warmer than the ambient temperature, there is heat being lost from the house. The way you use least energy for any object (be that a house, a kettle or whatever) is to maintain it at ambient temperature when you don't need it to be warmer and only warm the object when you need it to be warmer.
Maintaining it warmer than ambient when you don't need it to be results in heat escaping that you've paid for

 

[Cuchilo]

The kettle thing is a bit pants really . If you turn the heating on when you want it then you are boiling a full kettle every time . Unless you only have one rad on in one room at a time .