Had one of these energy bods round this week telling me we could do more to improve the efficency of my home and install draught excluders and thicker insulation & possibly replace windows and doors etc etc.
I just said if you as the energy company just reduced your bills that would help me out!
I did point out the current room temperature was 19c without any heating on and been off for the past 6 hours i didn't think that was bad as it's -2.5c outside.!!
With heating on it's between 22-25c.
The log burner is coming in here this year hopefully that will be red hot and central heating can be off.
What is your room temperature with no heating on? & what is it usually with it on?
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I recently had central heating breakdown for 2 days! The thermometer at living room was showing 12 C and it felt really cold (with -2 C outside).
When heating is on, I prefer to be around 21-25 C.
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Without a max-min. thermometer how are you going to know? Keep ours at 20C during the day - No idea what it falls to at night. 13-15 I would guess in this weather.
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We keep ours at 20. Still paying 1000 a year for gas!
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Our room thermostats turn off at 19C...
Where I was brought up in Scotland - no central heating - if there was no frost on the windows it was warm.
I refer of course to the inside of the house window..
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I'm guessing it's below freezing outside and downstairs is currently 17.5deg. The gas central heating will cut in at 17deg but this winter the house hasn't dropped that far from the morning heat (6.45-8.30am, set to 20deg). Heating comes on again at 4.30 to re-establish 20deg.
However we use the 4kw rated lounge multifuel stove loads now and I'm just lighting it so it's toasty when Mrs F arrives from work. The stove heat filters through the rest of the downstairs and if lit mid afternoon it usually means the heating doesn't come on again for the rest of the day as it keeps the downstairs to 19deg plus (the room its in will be 21-23deg.
Can't beat a stove!
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Yes want the stove in this year got some logs to chop up when the snow shifts and build a log store.
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18° in ere, without any eating, +6° out side - this is Cornwall :-)
I've just lit the multi-fuel stove, and banked it up with Taybrite, once that comes on song the temp will be 25°
That sounds a tad warm I know but, I sit around in a (Ahem!) muscle vest all day ^_^
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>
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>> That sounds a tad warm I know but, I sit around in a (Ahem!) muscle
>> vest all day ^_^
>>
Hello Onslow..
tinyurl.com/a3blpb2
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Its 17 at the moment, just got in, just turned the heating on. it averages about 21
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When heating is required, about 19 degrees.
The rest of the time its usually closer to 30, unfortunately household aircon is not widespread in Chile. Whereas when we're in Brasil the entire place is 19 degrees, whatever the outside.
In the UK then house is always 19 degrees. Costs a damned fortune though.
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22 degrees here. Wife has heart condition and she feels the cold alot so Im forced. When she goes to Aussieland in Feb I will knock it down to 10 degress and put a jumper on, it only gets down to about 14 degrees at night.
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No heating, about 8. Heating on, in this weather, about 15. Can't get it any higher, so has to be electric fire boost and sit by it.
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>> No heating, about 8. Heating on, in this weather, about 15. Can't get it any
>> higher, so has to be electric fire boost and sit by it.
What sort of heating have you got?
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And it won't get you above 15C? Do you have any insulation?
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Single skin brick, three outside walls, one north, north one has large single glazed timber sash, south has large "french doors", also single glazed.
Sums for "doing something about it" are so vast that an electric fire and an extra jumper is the answer.
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Blimey. Sounds awful.
Roll on summer eh?
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>>Sums for "doing something about it" are so vast that an electric fire and an extra jumper is the answer.<<
Dry lining, incorporating a insulation layer must be a DIY option if the room is big enough to loose the 30cm off the width. Had not realised that EPC could go up to Z!
www.greenenergypartners.co.uk/gep-domestic/epc-ratings
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"Sums for"doing something about it" are so vast"
Presume you have some thick (thermal) lined curtains over the windows/french doors? (and draughtproofing?
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EIGHT! - you cannot be serious!! - good grief Rickenbacker :(
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21C. Gas central heating switched on early October, will be on until April I expect. Being on the edge of the sticks, there are a fair few properties in our neighbourhood who are on oil/solid fuel/calor - don't envy them.
But with the predicted snow for the weekend, I think I'll get some logs and coal for the open fire. Like to have that on in the afternoons/evenings when we're confined to barracks. I'm thinking of getting a stove for the living room, but I have a feeling our fireplace opening is too small to take one.
ETA: we all know about this, right? I'm going to get assessed, I know we could do with a modern boiler, and some solar panels would be nice. www.gov.uk/green-deal-energy-saving-measures/how-the-green-deal-works
Last edited by: Alanović on Wed 16 Jan 13 at 16:21
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At 4.30pm today the room was 17c according to the digital thermometer not the fire is on and popped upto 18c 21-23c is what i preffer.
-3c outside and getting colder tonight. :-(
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Normally around 21.5 to 22.5C.
We have a small and very well insulated house, thankfully.
EON say that in the last 12 months we have used 4732 kWh of electricity and 8450kWh of gas.
They reckon our £££ spend next year will be: electricity £682 and gas £378.
I assume they are expecting our prices to go up once our fixed rate deal expires in July.
The low, by some standards, gas spend is down to good insulation & size, the high electricity spend is down to our tumble drier and extensive use of the electric cooker & oven, maybe while bread making and potato baking
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>>>Single skin brick, three outside walls, one north, north one has large single glazed timber sash, south has large "french doors", also single glazed. Sums for "doing something about it" are so vast
Is that double brick but no cavity then?
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Eight degrees sounds low/terrible! We had huge bay windows in the previous house and were single glazed (original leaded) downstairs. And a big leaded French window at the back of the house.... that house cost a lot more to keep warm!
In this house, the hall is where our thermostat resides and we tend to keep it around 18 deg C. The rest of the house has thermostats on the radiators.... the lounge gets nice and warm quickly.
Actually the thermostat has 5 temperature targets for throughout the day but I'm not really allowed to set it how it could be and leave it alone.... wife thinks heating should be on or off at times.
When it's really cold outside like it has been the call might fall to 13 or 14 degrees Centigrade. Not helped by front door opening and cold air coming up from the cellar when that door is opened.
Oddly today it's not felt that cold but the house has been colder without heating on. Some days it just feels more chilly - odd that.
We don't have cavity insulation - was dubious about the negatives. Rear of house is solid two bricks, side is cavity with a small gap leaving only half of the front that's not the bay windows.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Wed 16 Jan 13 at 17:01
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"They reckon our £££ spend next year will be: electricity £682 and gas £378.
I assume they are expecting our prices to go up once our fixed rate deal expires in July.
The low, by some standards, "
Got our statement today. Estimating our combined gas and electricity for the next 12 months as £997 (modern 4 bed detached). Not too bad at all.
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>> Got our statement today. Estimating our combined gas and electricity for the next 12 months
>> as £997 (modern 4 bed detached). Not too bad at all.
>>
Our heating is provided by a newish condensing gas boiler controlled by a thermostat/timer that is set for 17 overnight, 21 in the morning, 19 for the middle part of the day and then 22 from 16:00. Despite being a detached Edwardian house with original (albeit refurbished) single glazed sash windows and no cavity wall insulation the heating seldom kicks in at night, though it did last night and I expect it will tonight as well looking at the forecast!! The front of the house has large bay windows so today's bright sunshine kept the house warm enough until the middle of the afternoon.
Despite all that the living room is currently 25 degrees because my partner lit a fire around an hour ago. What'll happen next is it will get too hot so the door will be left open; that will warm up the hall so the heating will go off, and by 8 upstairs will be feeling a little chilly!!
FWIW our combined gas and electricity is forecast to be just over £3k but we have an Aga that must be around half of that. As its used several times a day and provides background heat all year round I'm OK (ish...) with that. But it does sound like we're paying at least 50% more to heat an old house than a modern one would cost :-0
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Living room is currently at 18.3°C, kitchen (where the boiler is located) is showing 22°C. Been at home for an hour and a half with GCH on. It's -3.5°C out, and has been up as high as -1.1°C today.
The coldest it's ever been indoors here is 12°C, it's a 1990s council house so walls are insulated and windows are DG uPVC. No fireplace. I tuck the curtains up onto the windowsills at night so the radiators heat the rooms properly, and have full-height curtains across front and back doors and a foot of insulation in the loft. To offset this I have a(n almost-) teenager who likes to leave doors and windows(!) open for no reason.
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The coldest room in my house in my bedroom. It is over the garage and has a concrete floor with a carpet, three outside walls and a pitched roof without a loft space. I was away for recent weekend and the temp in there when I got back was 9C which is as low as my wall thermometer reads!
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Thermometer is in lounge.
Inside hovers about the 18 degrees mark with no heating, which for me is fine. Wifey thinks it's not fine, so...with the oil central heating it's usually about 21 -22 degrees....with the log burner, 22 - 24 degrees.
Our electric bill is truly hideous. The oil bill was, but has now improved a little as I use the log burner a lot. There is no gas supply, so cooking is electric and with the very poor summer and two young kids the tumble drier is always on. I did put a clothes line up in an inside back passage, but the clothes didn't dry very quickly and then smelt..so that's a no-no. Thinking of putting a clothes horse in the downstairs loo's shower area and turning the radiator right up, got to be cheaper than the tumble drier.
I'm paying £140 a month now for electric, as the £80 previous payment wasn't enough and I now owe them £344. once I've done the back pay element, i'm hoping it will settle down at about £100-£110.
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Our house was built in the 1820s and extended in c 1900 and then partially extended to add granny flat and garages in the 1970s. Two storeys. 5 bedrooms, etc etc..
Stone built with walls up to 1.5 meters thick in places with cavity walls (uninsulated).
About 0.7 metres roof insulation in the various lofts.
1983 Gas boiler plus electric water heating and tumble dryer.
Combined gas and electricity bills c £2k... I have a record going back 10 years and we consistently cut usage until 2 years ago (2010-11 winter was -18C) and thereafter it fluctuates .
If we spent £30k on new boiler and dry wall insulating each room we could save £500 per year...! :-)
Last edited by: madf on Wed 16 Jan 13 at 18:12
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>> If we spent £30k on new boiler and dry wall insulating each room we could
>> save £500 per year...! :-)
And theirs the nub of it. To answer a couple of earlier questions, the walls are about 7 or 8 inches thick, so don't know how many bricks that is (just looked at the window frames). Yes, we have heavy curtains, and the windows were draught proofed a few years ago so nothing much else to do.
The cost of dry wall insulation, and the hassle of expensive redecoration, and the losss of room space and so forth are not even worth considering. As ever, and probably like most here, we're not eligible for any benefit or credits or payments of any description whatsoever for anything, and never have been, so everything is entirely self funded. The payback period for all this stuff is longer than I anticipate being alive, for some of them.
So I choose jumpers, a combined oil and electricity bill of about 2.5k, but at least we get a holiday, usually!
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I'd not pay £30k to sort this out. I'd sell in summer/spring and move abroad :-)
Seriously, the cost of gas/electric to live with this makes sense doesn't it. Aldi had gas heaters of some sort this week... not the sort for a lounge though!
I'd be away for the winter if retired.... I intend being away from the UK when possible. Period.
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>> FWIW our combined gas and electricity is forecast to be just over £3k but we have an Aga
>> that must be around half of that. As its used several times a day and provides background
>> heat all year round I'm OK (ish...)
How much! The Aga might take £1500 but that's more than we pay for gas and electric here full stop. No wonder your heating doesn't come on at night.... you've got an Aga! :-)
I'd have to check what we pay at the moment but I think gas + electric is less than £1000. And I work from home so use electric and some heating all year round.
EDIT: We pay about £840 for gas and electric. Just checked. Will get the next bill soon.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Wed 16 Jan 13 at 18:30
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Of course, where you live in the UK makes a difference. If I lived in Cornwall, I expect our bills to be under £1k with the same house.
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Got a 50kW gas boiler - it goes on when I can see my breath ;-)
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It's 16C in the lounge. Energy monitor is flashing "too cold", but the cynic in me says that it would, given it's a gift from Southern Electric.
The boiler is set to keep 16C during the day if there's someone in, and if the house is empty the frost stat keeps it sat at 12C. The exception to this is if it feels cold inside, when the policy is to hit the boost button for 30 minutes.
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Combined elec/gas for the last year here is £813 on British Gas standard tariffs - I often think about shopping around but then I hear what some people spend and it seems like a bargin.
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>> Of course, where you live in the UK makes a difference. If I lived in
>> Cornwall, I expect our bills to be under £1k with the same house.
>>
Definitely; we live very near the south coast which is why the some of the snow that fell on Monday morning can still be seen on our Up!, which hasn't moved since the weekend ;-)
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>>some of the snow that fell on Monday morning can still be seen on our Up!<<
It's what's known as a freeze Up!
:}
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The walls here are stone on the outside and brick on the inside built in 1909, approx 11" thick walls with plaster etc the temp is 19c in the room heating knocked off at 8pm will stay like that till around 4pm i guess, the outside temp is -3.5 in Leeds today.
The bod who came tried to sell me cavity wall insulation at a reduced rate till i told the young lad there is no cavity! He said they must be a cavity? Been down this road a long while ago there is not.
Some more loft insulation might help a bit the roof slates the snow has meted off at the peak but next door has no insulation in the loft conversion or very little and the heat seems to get under the slate my side and melts some of it.
Noticed a draught on the back door draught excluder a job with the hair dryer may get the rubber strip to bounce back into position and seal the gap.!!
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22. Heating on 24/24 this weather but turned down to 16 at night.
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It depends how close one sits to the stove.
A toasty 70-75 in the kitchen, falling to about 50 in the furthest extremity.
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>> It depends how close one sits to the stove.
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>> A toasty 70-75 in the kitchen, falling to about 50 in the furthest extremity.
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So Gas Mark 1 then... I imagine you must drink lots of fluid to keep cool and sit around in shorts.
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What is the temerature of your living room? - movilogo
