Central heating - when do you turn it on?

[Berti]

mine is on a thermostat and it turns on automatically around october when temperature inside drops below 18 C.
that usually means that in the mornings it's on shortly and in the evenings also......whenever the thermostat decides it's too cold inside.
so it's not just blasting away all day......
I think 18 C is about the lowest I can go without getting uncomfortable.
it's an 50's house, badly insulated but yet we manage with this temperatures.

berti

[Millymollymandy]

In France the standard is to have an outdoor thermostat - which makes no sense whatsoever because on a sunny day in say March or October, even if the temp in the shade is about 12C it can still be warm both outside in the sun and inside due to the sun, but the central heating will turn on because it thinks it is cold and can't differentiate between a cloudy or a sunny day. Most stupid system I've ever come across.

My new boiler in being installed next week due to the plumber having a cancellation so I'll actually have effective central heating BUT underfloor ch is rubbish for this time of year because it takes so long to heat up/cool down (rather like old fashioned storage heaters) so it is still best to just light the wood burner when it gets too chilly, until proper winter!

Haven't put any heating of any sort on yet as I'm just snuggling under extra layers in the evening when I feel the cold. It's been lovely and warm during the day recently anyway.

[Sky]

We haven't got central heating, we rely on the sun to heat our house during the day. We built our house to face the sun and it works well combined with our extra insulation and double glazing.
We have a wood burner to heat our house when there's no sun.
I miss central heating though, and the ease of setting the timer to flick the boiler on 15mins before we got up or so.

[anarchistinslippers]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8283796.stm

Fantastically sloppy journalism, remarkable given the employer. This is real Year 8 history homework stuff. Not only does it not reach any conclusion, or barely mention the other side of the argument (the "less than 7%") it also fails to have any form of, well, form. It's lazy, it's cut and pasted and and it's.. ugh!

C- Must try harder, Master Geoghegan.

[Millymollymandy]

I was trying to hold out until today 1st October but gave in and lit the woodburner last night!

[MKG]

Yep, it is a bit of a ramble isn't it? And he's obviously never seen the Victorian houses I've lived in - small rooms indeed!

Mike

[anarchistinslippers]

I'm something of a masochist, it comes from years of being on a wage, as opposed to salary and as a consequence would "rather" (if rather is the word) be too cold than too hot. It's never unbearable here, but I do wonder what it would be like on either end of our 5 house row near some rather open, flat fields. Fortunately, we're in the middle, have a hot water bottle and one of us is very skilled indeed at making heartwarming dishes.

[MKG]

Eeee, there's a lorra namby-pambies on ere. When ah were a lad, we ad ter brek ice off o' watter afore we cud gerrin bath.

Bath? Yer were lucky. We ad ter get weshed in a damp matchbox.

Matchbox? Yer greet pansy. We ad ter rub sticks together to mek a flame. By time yerd finished that, yer were sockin wet so yer dint need bath.

Tell that ter yooth o' today ...

Mike

[anarchistinslippers]

Ah, so you lived through the eighties too, eh?

[MKG]

... and a decade or three before that, too. Unfortunately

Mike

[Stonehead]

I had a good laugh when I read a story on the BBC News website about 1 October being "national central heating day". Why? Because they were talking about turning the thermostat down to 18C and putting on a sweater. Up here, 18C is a balmy summer's day.

Our central heating comes on when the house temperature falls below 12C. There are nights in winter when the toilet cistern and shower pipes freeze because they're too far from the nearest radiator. It makes mornings invigorating.

Anyway, if we start feeling cold, we go outside and work for a few hours. When the temperature is -5 to -15C, then 12C feels positively hot!

[Anne A]

We did without the heating till mid November last year, We change the timer each day when the heating goes on, so if we are going to have a lie in, its kept off, unless our lad has to get up for work, it goes on for a few hours each evening whilst we are wandering about, but is turned off once we settle into the living room as we have a log fire there, its a tall victorian house, with high ceilings and big hallways, its that time of year to put the thick curtains up, bring out the draft excluders and check for stray drafts, It should be warmer this year as we have finally carpeted the hall?

[Millymollymandy]

I have a new condensing boiler since yesterday and my radiators are actually working - as we never use them the last time we put them on just because we thought we ought to from time to time, they didn't work! Mind you I saw the colour of the water that came out of our system (after draining and refilling!) and it's all got to be cleaned out properly, not just drained. Some machine gets attached for 3 weeks or something to suck out the mud - part of the system is underfloor.

I can't take below 20C when I'm sitting still and even then I'm covered in blankets and the cat. It's different when I'm moving around and in the bedroom I don't care how cold it is any more as I've got my new(ish) electric blanket - my most prized possession!

What I don't like about underfloor is having the same temp everywhere - that means some rooms are too hot and some are too cold. I like cool everywhere (tho' that would be some people's hot ) and a nice hot living room with my log burner. Plus I can dry clothes and wet tea towels in front of the fire whereas what do you do with underfloor, put them on the floor to dry?

[Milims]

Oooh congrats on the new boiler MMM!

We've managed without the heating until yesterday, which is quite good as OH's condition means that his own thremostat doesn't work properly! However the weather has turned really wintry here so I've popped it on low. Up 'til now the sunshine has heated up the conservatory so the heat has travelled thru the house during the day and I've snuggled with blankets in the evening - but I added a hot water bottle last night

[Graye]

We don't have any here in France unless you could count the electric radiators in every room which have thermostats? What defines central heating? Controlled from one point? They do have an over-ride switch in the garage so I suppose it is a form of central heating. Anyway, we don't use them much as they click all the time. Pity really because French electricity is cheap, especially at night. We have a woodburning inset in the living room which has some weird and wonderful ducting system from a box concealed in the chimney breast which supposedly sends hot air into pipes in the loft (we're single storey) and through the rest of the house too. I can't see how that works either unless we install a pump, surely hot air will just stay near the ceiling? Anyway, it appears not to do much!

Hence, as soon as the weather starts getting cold here and we've had a week or so of enjoying burning logs we pack up and go back to cold and windy Whitby for the winter. Seems strange but we have a gas fire in the living room which keep the whole of the rest of the house toasty (still using summer weight duvets in mid winter), really good double glazing, lots of loft insulation (in fact we don't have access to the loft as it's packed tight) AND we are in a fisherman's cottage which is built directly on top of another one so we get their heat too. No other forms of heating at all.

Everyone thinks we are a bit odd going back to North Yorkshire for the winter but bearing in mind the rooms there are tiny and we have carpets compared to this place which is enormous with very high ceilings and tiled floors it really is the best thing to do. And Whitby is lovely in winter - no tourists!