None of these fancy electronic,/WiFi gizmos here. Rads all have thermostats,rad in spare room is turned off. Got a battery in out thermometer in the conservatory,that's for checking on the plants. Have tested it with my cooking thermometer,it's pretty accurate.
How many people living in areas subject to low winter temperatures have boilers with "frost stats" where if the house is unoccupied and no heating on, then the heating will come on at about 5 degrees to prevent pipes freezing up?
I have an internet-connected thermostat which does exactly that. If I put it into "holiday mode" I can also monitor the temperature of the house from anywhere in the world. It does have disadvantages though - it means that if I'm on holiday I can tell when there's a possible power cut because I can't connect to the thermostat. But then again, it might just be that the phone line is down. Our long-suffering neighbour has been sent to check on a couple of occasions.
I’ve just bought 500 kilos of LPG at €2.75 per kilo - €1,375. We get through 1000 kilos of gas a year. 90% of that is central heating, the other 10% hot water. Spend the same again annually on 3-phase electricity. So €5.5k annually.
Living in a beautiful, old, but poorly-insulated stone house with swimming pool in the middle of nowhere with no access to mains gas or water might be idyllic but it’s seriously expensive and getting more so. We would normally have the heating on by now, but surviving on the log fire and extra jumpers. As soon as the sun starts to go down up in these northern mountains it gets pretty damn cold!
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
Reading all these stories, i'm so glad i don't feel the cold. My genetics have probably saved me thousands of pounds.
Have you still got your shorts on? I have my thermostat at around 12 or 13 degrees when the heating isn't on. I don't see the point of having it on unless I feel cold, and it certainly hasn't been cold here this autumn. We've only had a handful of frosts so far, and about 5 or 6 days when it's been down to two or three degrees. It's set for half an hour for the girls getting up for work, and we switch it on manually apart from that. On the days they're not up, or working at different times, I just alter the clock so that it isn't coming on at the back of 4 am which is when younger daughter normally gets up for work. If it's set too high, you're constantly using leccy for switching the boiler on.
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Raisingirl,am assuming that is because your pump is in a shed, because obviously there has been a lot written and spoken about heat pumps recently, saying how noisy the fans are.
Ours is a ground source heat pump so it makes about as much noise as a fridge freezer (rather less, actually). It's in the shed because it was put in while we were still building the house. We finished the shed first. And it's next to where the borehole is for the ground loop so it was convenient. Air source heat pumps make a bit of noise because they have a fan. Our next door neighbour has one. It's very quiet here at night and even so we're not aware of their heat pump running. They may be, being closer to it, I haven't asked them. In any town, the background noise will be louder than a heat pump. In older houses where the central heating has been added later, there's often a bit of noise from the pipework moving as it heats up and cools down. We did have a back boiler in a house we lived in in Bath which sounded like there was a reasonably large animal trapped in it with a hammer.
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
How many people living in areas subject to low winter temperatures have boilers with "frost stats" where if the house is unoccupied and no heating on, then the heating will come on at about 5 degrees to prevent pipes freezing up?
I think it's pretty standard in combi boilers to have frost protection. My boiler comes on every 30 mins for a few mins throughout the year.
Raisingirl, yeah,I like that large animal with a hammer. Me,I had years of "menopause" hot flushes, then just as they are easing,I get put onto amlodipine, I will give you one guess what the common side effect is!!! At the moment,hubby is happy with the summer duvet, thankfully. Even last night,with an outside temp of around 3c,I spent most of it on top of the duvet. We didn't have central heating when we moved into our last House,just the gas fire,and no double glazing either.
Combi boilers have a particular frost problem. When the condense pipe freezes they stop working, so they often have quite high automatic protection settings
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
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My genetics have probably saved me thousands of pounds.
Living in a beautiful, old, but poorly-insulated stone house with swimming pool in the middle of nowhere with no access to mains gas or water might be idyllic but it’s seriously expensive and getting more so. We would normally have the heating on by now, but surviving on the log fire and extra jumpers. As soon as the sun starts to go down up in these northern mountains it gets pretty damn cold!
I have my thermostat at around 12 or 13 degrees when the heating isn't on. I don't see the point of having it on unless I feel cold, and it certainly hasn't been cold here this autumn. We've only had a handful of frosts so far, and about 5 or 6 days when it's been down to two or three degrees.
It's set for half an hour for the girls getting up for work, and we switch it on manually apart from that. On the days they're not up, or working at different times, I just alter the clock so that it isn't coming on at the back of 4 am which is when younger daughter normally gets up for work.
If it's set too high, you're constantly using leccy for switching the boiler on.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Air source heat pumps make a bit of noise because they have a fan. Our next door neighbour has one. It's very quiet here at night and even so we're not aware of their heat pump running. They may be, being closer to it, I haven't asked them. In any town, the background noise will be louder than a heat pump.
In older houses where the central heating has been added later, there's often a bit of noise from the pipework moving as it heats up and cools down. We did have a back boiler in a house we lived in in Bath which sounded like there was a reasonably large animal trapped in it with a hammer.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I think it's pretty standard in combi boilers to have frost protection. My boiler comes on every 30 mins for a few mins throughout the year.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”