Daily Central Heating Usage

robyn

Registered User
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Just wondering how many hours per day people have their central heating on for. In a 4 bed house, we have the gas timed to come on for an hour in the morning and for 3 hours in the evening from 6-9pm. Is this pretty average considering the house size?
 
robyn said:
Just wondering how many hours per day people have their central heating on for. In a 4 bed house, we have the gas timed to come on for an hour in the morning and for 3 hours in the evening from 6-9pm. Is this pretty average considering the house size?

We use Oil and also have it timed from 5:30am to 6:30am (so when we get up house is nice n snug) comes on again at 6pm until 9pm total of 4 hours a day. Tis pretty average if you are both working as there is nobody else around to use the heating but if one of you was at home it would be 6-8 hours a day maybe depending on the weather of coarse.

Good Luck ;)
 
Well we have gas. Our CH setup is that rads have TRV, the CH and HW supplies are separate and contolled via motorised values. I have controllers for both CH and HW that can be set for up to 6 different periods per day. The year prior to the child's birth, with typical periods (i.e morning/afternoon/evenings & weekends) was say €x. Once the nipper came along, and we minded her at home for the first year, we switched the CH contoller to be a constant termostat, and manually adjust the temp throughout the day as we saw fit and turning it down say over night. As a result the house was constantly comfortable/warm but guess what, for the year the cost was also near enough to €x!!!! So we have kept it that way!!

No waiting for the house to heat up etc...

You should give it a try, its not as if the boiler is buring 24hrs per day, only just when its needed.

S.
 
Hi,

on for 1/2hr before get up & on in evening depending on need.......if i don't feel cold i dont use it, max is usually 2/3 hours in very cold weather...........I find a lot of people's houses too warm & heating is on just as a habit.....
 
Like Suzie, we have our gas combination boiler on all the time and control it via the thermostat in the hall. All upstairs radiators have thermo- controlled valves so that it is not too hot up there. We turn the hall thermostat down to 15 degrees at night.
 
DOBBER22 said:
We use Oil and also have it timed from 5:30am to 6:30am (so when we get up house is nice n snug) comes on again at 6pm until 9pm total of 4 hours a day.

How quickly do you get through a tank of oil?

We bought 1000 litres of oil for about 590 euro at the start of December and since then we've had the heating on about 3/4 hours per day just like yourself. As far as I can tell by tapping on the side of our tank we're already 1/3 of the way through - does that sound like a lot? Granted it's been mid-winter and we're heating a 3-bed detached house.
 
fullerand said:
How quickly do you get through a tank of oil?

We bought 1000 litres of oil for about 590 euro at the start of December and since then we've had the heating on about 3/4 hours per day just like yourself. As far as I can tell by tapping on the side of our tank we're already 1/3 of the way through - does that sound like a lot? Granted it's been mid-winter and we're heating a 3-bed detached house.

1100L (Tank Capacity) would see us through the whole winter heating not used in summer or early autumn I've spent a total of E800 on oil this year, that should see me through to next Winter hopefully. You really should have a dip stick to measure your Oil level I got one from my Oil supplier free of charge, very handy to keep track of how much fuel is being used weekly ect..

Good luck ;)
 
I live in an old house that isn't dry lined (early cavity (of a sort) building) but has double glazing and masses of attic insulation.

Our heating is on for at least 4 hours each night downstairs and up stairs for the last hour of that also. Our 1000L tank of oil has lasted since August but we reckon we need about another 200-300 litres to get us through the rest of the cold weather. We have a gauge on our tank to show how much is left and how quickly we are using it.

We do light a fire most nights in the sitting room for comfort and turn the radiator TRV down low in that room. I'd say we spend less than 20 euro a month on fuel for this fire.

Rebecca
 
I'm experimenting with heating periods at the moment, I previously used to have it come on at 6am until 9am when the kids would be getting up and out to school, then have it come on again at around 12pm with regular on/off until 10pm. However, what I found was that the house would go from periods of too cold to too hot so what I'm trying at the moment is to have the radiator temperature at the lowest the unit allows but from 6am to 10pm the system is set to be on for 30 minutes off for 15. I'm hoping that this means that running lower temperature rads for around 10 hours a day costs the same or less running fairly hot rads for at least 8 hours a day and at least now I don't have the temperature highs and lows.
 
2 bed own door end of terrace garden apt.
No heat in am - I'm only up 45mins before I leave, I can manage without heating house up only to leave it empty.
30mins heat in pm.
Out at work for 12hrs, if I'm cold I wear more clothes.
 
Round Tuit said:
2 bed own door end of terrace garden apt.
No heat in am - I'm only up 45mins before I leave, I can manage without heating house up only to leave it empty.
30mins heat in pm.
Out at work for 12hrs, if I'm cold I wear more clothes.

You are so cold man :D
 
Dobber, I'm just a poor SWF who managed to get a step on property ladder and begrudges giving Bord Gais any more money than she has to!!
 
How do you arrange for the heating to be on downstairs only - is it possible to get it easily set up or is it a big job or are you manually turning off rads upstairs? Thanks
 
Round Tuit said:
Dobber, I'm just a poor SWF who managed to get a step on property ladder and begrudges giving Bord Gais any more money than she has to!!

Here ya go a nice wooly jumper for ya, don't blame you not wanting to give Bord Gais any money

f3_2.JPG
 
Hi Toby

It's part of the heating system I just had installed in the house in the summer. I have a thermostat upstairs and one downstairs and an overall control for the system. All the rads have their own stats too so you can leave a little bit of heat on and adjust it easily (but to be completely honest, I used to do this with the rads in my old house anyway but just not fully turning the knob and I thought it worked pretty much the same).

I love being able to turn on the heat downstairs only without messing with radiators. I think I would get more use out of the system in a newer house because then I would maybe tinker with the temperature on the stats more, whereas now I find I either want the heat on or off. I don't really understand why anyone would need so much specific control over temperatures but maybe the whole thermostat thing will grow on me and I'll use it more in less cold weather.

I don't know if it would be a big deal to retro-fit it but even if you could just switch it on and off up/downstairs would be enough for me.

Rebecca
 
Mine is on from 7.15 - 8.30 in the mornings and from 6 - 10.30 in the evenings. I have a back boiler in the sitting room so most nights the rads are still nice and hot going to bed. I'm fascinated about leaving the heating on all day at a low temperature. Would this work on any heating system? I have an oil cooker in the kitchen, would you turn that down to its lowest setting and leave it at that setting? I'm sure you burn a lot of oil powering up and down the boiler so it does make sense to leave it on.
 
we got a bill of €300 euro from bord gais this month.
Just wondering on average what everyones bills do?
 
I'll let you know about keeping the heating on for longer but at lower settings when I get my next gas bill. I'm hoping it'll work out around the same cost or less as in theory I shouldn't need as much gas to run the rads at a lower temperature. The heating aspect already works better as there aren't any uncomfortable highs or lows any more.
 
PINK said:
we got a bill of €300 euro from bord gais this month.
Just wondering on average what everyones bills do?

Mine was €79? What's average?

(3 bed semi)
 
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