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Posted
Living on my own in a 2 bed house, it's currently 9 degrees.

 

wow, your body will be working overtime to divert blood away from extremities at that temp. Cognitive performance will be impaired, which could put you at risk of doing something silly like leaving gas on. You also dehydrate faster.

 

Try to get the temp up, even a couple of days per week and give yourself a rest from it.

Posted
Bad news for Economy 7 tariff customers. The price cap is changing in January and your rates will go up :(

 

We just had this email from Octopus

[ATTACH]67517[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]67518[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]67519[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]67520[/ATTACH]

 

Thanks. Im'a let my partner know. She's running storage heaters on Eco 7. She only has electric so this will hurt her.

Posted (edited)

Just seen from world health organisation that any thing over 18 degree centigrade is seen as comfortable temperature. This is great as I can now turn the heating down a degree!

 

So if anyone visits at Christmas and complains I’ll send them to that information.

Edited by nicholab
Posted

We were discussing this yesterday

 

We obeyed instruction from MArtin Lewis and turned down the circulation temperature on the central heating

 

but we also scrapped the room thermostat connected to the boiler and got a different one

 

as a result of this - probably just the room stat - we have been able to drop the target temperature of the lounge by at leat 1.5 degrees - as the whole system now works better and keeps the tempetature far more stable

 

with the old stat and the higher radiator temperature we were forever changing the setting on the room stat as it had got too cold or too hot

 

 

no idea if it is actually saving much money but the room is far more pleasant to be in now that it stays at a constant temperature

 

 

(and no - it is not a 'smart' thingy or connected to my phone or Alexa or whatever!!!)

  • Thanks 1
Posted

I've got smart things now. Drayton Wiser thermostatic valves means we can set different rooms/times/temperatures.

 

So, the only room in the house (except bathroom & toilet) being heated is the one I'm in, feeling ill.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
I got an email from Bulb about this. I think mine is to drop by about 1p per Kwh. I look forwards to my visit to the penny chew sweet shop at the end of Jan.

 

We have economy seven… our day rate is staying the same and the night rate is going up. We need to redo the maths to see if it’s worth charging our hybrid car with petrol prices coming down and it costing more to charge it at night. It was very close when Mr gee40 last did the maths. We charge it on sunny days with our solar when we can.

Posted (edited)
Was it an electric car??

 

article seems to just say it was an engine fault - petrol is quite burny I seem to recall????

I've no clue to be honest, but just a couple of weeks back, we had a BMW go up in smoke in the village. Local social media with complete predictability brought all the anti EV mob out saying it must be electric. Turns out it was a diesel car. Now whether it was an electrical fault or not it hasn't been reported. I expect quite a few ICE car fires start with electrical faults, but that doesn't make electricity bad

Edited by Ditto
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Posted
I've no clue to be honest, but just a couple of weeks back, we had a BMW go up in smoke in the village. Local social media with complete predictability brought all the anti EV mob out saying it must be electric. Turns out it was a diesel car. Now whether it was an electrical fault or not it hasn't been reported. I expect quite a few ICE car fires start with electrical faults, but that doesn't make electricity bad

 

Probably some idiot tried using those flashing things on the side

 

you should never tried using products first!!!

 

:getmecoat:

Posted
Just seen my December dual fuel bill :scared:

I'm glad the cold snap was only 2 weeks!

 

Ours is nearly double the November bill, but we did decide we were going to ignore the meter for Christmas week - used the ovens regularly between Christmas Eve and New Year and also heated and used our conservatory for the same period while there were 5 of us in the house. Hopefully our daily bills will be considerably lower from now on.

Posted
I made use of holiday mode on the boiler controller for the 8 days we were away. Should have turned a lot more electrical things fully off, but at least got the kids to turn computers and monitors off. I'll be comparing that week with the previous and week after in due course.
Posted

Read the meter for our gas to work out how much keeping the house at 18 degrees since setting it at the beginning of December (recommended for our damp/condensation problems) is costing extra!

 

Worked out the units into £s...

 

SEP, OCT & NOV = £75

DEC = £118

 

September we only used 3 units at the old rate and October & November we used 44 units at the newer rate.

 

December we used 100 units at the newer rate, but we don't use gas to cook and there wasn't really anything different in terms of hot water usage, so that is all heating .

 

Now January will be at the newest rate I guess, not sure if we'll get another couple of really cold weeks but then I'm not sure I can justify that amount for another month either...

 

Might have to do a little test to see what temperature the house actually drops to during the day without heating, because at the moment of course it is kicking in every time it drops below 18 degrees C which seems to be quite often as it obviously drops below that quite quickly. Or whether it's worth the extra units used to heat it to a higher initial temperature means it will use less to then keep it above 18C...

 

Someone did put a calculation up for heat loss, but I need real world figures/examples, or for someone to actually just decide which is best... everything I read contradicts the last thing I read. Plus I know it's not good for the fabric of the house to be heated and cooled and the damp/condensation is a big problem... :confused:

Posted (edited)

Our heating used just over double the energy in December compared to November. Part of that is down to the ASHP being less efficient at lower temperatures, but mostly it's down to the greater heat demand due to a bigger temperature differential between outside and inside. All settings were left the same.

 

A direct comparison is almost impossible. You need the same external air temperature, humidity, sunlight otherwise the heat demand will be different. Even your neighbour's could be different depending on tree shading, how much heat they use cooking, how many people are in the house.

 

In terms of preventing condensation, steady state is generally best. As I'm sure you know, drier air is easier to heat and is less likely to give you condensation issues. You might save money overall by running a dehumidifier - but again it would be difficult to prove.

 

18°C does sound slightly high in terms of preventing condensation, but if you've had advice, you might need to stick to it. We have an ASHP, so it's not a direct comparison (again!) but we are looking for a fairly steady state and the minimum energy use and spend for comfort and avoiding condensation. We run at 18°C during the day and set back to 16 at night. I found more than a 2° set back used more energy. The actual temperature that's comfortable for you is partly personal preference and partly depending on where your thermostat is compared to the room you want to be warmest.

 

You can work out the dew point for a given humidity level which would give you the minimum temperature you could go to. It's possible whoever told you 18°C has already done that.

Edited by jmak
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Posted
I made use of holiday mode on the boiler controller for the 8 days we were away. Should have turned a lot more electrical things fully off, but at least got the kids to turn computers and monitors off. I'll be comparing that week with the previous and week after in due course.

 

Don't they have standby mode to auto turn off after 30 mins anyway?

Posted

Smartplugs with energy monitoring are really cheap, yep you have to be careful of the load sometimes. I have one button which runs a script when I leave home and others such as when I go to bed via Home Assistant which turn off things I don't need when I am in bed, sleeping or not at home.

 

Depending what energy monitoring plugs you get they can have historical data so you can see how much power you are using (or saving) by leaving on standby, leaving on or isolating power completely.

Posted
Don't they have standby mode to auto turn off after 30 mins anyway?

There are lots of things I'd like my teenage boys to do, but getting them to do it is another matter, or at least whilst also maintaining a degree of household harmony, and to be honest, they are mostly good kids - and if I'm brutally honest, I'm selling them short!

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