Keeping your home warm / heating / energy crisis / insulation etc

I've just replaced our Hive with a Tado + Automation subscription. £99 from Screwfix plus £25/year subscription. The price made it worth doing, as I don't think the Hive was making the best use of our gas.

one for the golf thread?

I looked into this and yes you can run them just on a combi. i have one (with hot water control)though not connected up yet or even moved into the property it’s for but Tado themselves told me that’s the one to order.

I was pleased with myself, but not so pleased with myself that I photographed it. Soz!

That's it, some little cast iron style things. They look very nice but seem to struggle with the heating part. The actual radiators are up at 60 degrees so I think the boiler is fine (25kW, 9 radiators), just not enough area on the radiators.

I have one of those ir thermometers somewhere so wandering around checking a few temperatures could be informative.

@Grumpy_Git I was pondering that. Not sure whether they are just to stop drafts or they stop heat escaping too.

As an aside, this seems relevant

If the radiators are hot and the rooms cold they are undersized.

We filled gaps around front door (behind upvc porch extension) but still an icey blast coming through

The mention of curtains, upthread can mask a draught by difusing it so it's less perceptible, but not actually reduced. They do reduce heat loss from convection as your room/space is separated from the colder door/window, so definitely worth while.

Check how well the door seals by going around it, trapping a thin piece of paper or crisp packet in the door when you close it. If the paper needs a bit of a tug to remove it, that should be good. If it doesn't have any resistance, it's not going to keep the wind out.

Just been in the kitchen and stood in front of the fridge, with the door open, just to warm the room up.

Got a door curtain rod from Linear. Was easy to fit, and John Lewis had a ready made curtain the exact size.

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Yep, a regular Worcester Bosch thing.

Maybe! But seeing our gas use go over £10/day, if it does make things more efficient it should pay itself back over winter.

Jesús Christ.

Really need to get some bigger radiators, underfloor insulation and some new windows.
In these really cold snaps, just can't seem to get the downstairs warm in our house. Nice polished floorboards can get in the sea too. With this hyper inflation, can't actually afford to get the work done.
Our electricity and gas usage has reduced substantially year on year too but the bills, they keep going up and up whilst my wages do not!

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also on £10-12 a day for gas the last week or so - heat set to 17 between 7am (‘pre-heats’ earlier) and 7pm (I work from home and wife, who runs very cold, looks after the toddler full time).

the nest says the boiler was on 7h yesterday for what it’s worth.

1906 3-bed mid-terrace up north, though have insulated under floors and used insulated plasterboard on external walls where we could.
the house was a student let before we bought it and has had ventilation grates above floor level in the bay upstairs and downstairs retrofitted, which is noticably drafty, so will likely sort those out as we have a fancy new dryer for clothes and a dehumidifier.

also planning to insulate externally if/when funds allow, but this winter is definitely tough and looking more and more overdrafty as well as regular drafty.

Talking heating tactics. What’s most efficient heat/cost wise, running long and low all day or short sharp spells?

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Depends how well your home is insulated and how big your rads are.

Heat pump vibe is low temp, big rads and good insulation. Gas combi is blast gas for a couple of hours with hot rads.

Low and slow if you can limit heat loss and are in the house all day. I think running a combi at the lowest flow temp you can get away with is also more efficient, something about them not actually condensing when run hot, no heat is recovered from the flue gases, energy is just pumped out the hole in the wall.

Cost-wise, our house works out about the same either way. It's definitely more comfortable when on all the time as there's often someone home each day. Our graph looks similar to your first, with the different shades of grey showing how the boiler is modulating output to maintain a temp, rather than running flat out all the time.

i run my combi at 55c and it can heat rooms to 19c fairly easily with the triple panel rads I got. I still want to insulate the place though and expect I could go lower after i've done that

Karcher have got their black edition window vac discounted atm, plus an extra 10% off if you sign up to their newsletter gives a little off and covers the shipping.

Cost-wise, our house works out about the same either way.

Ours seems to be too. I turned the boiler down this year as an experiment, mainly to see if I could regulate the temperature a bit more effectively. When the boiler runs hot, the radiators get very hot, the room (air) temperature shoots up too high, thermostat clicks it off, temperature plummets, repeat. The temperature swings between too high and too low - and it's not particularly comfortable like that. With the boiler turned down, the radiators are nowhere near as hot, but they're heating the fabric of the house and not simply overheating the air in the room. The temperature is definitely more stable and it's far more comfortable.

Ta!

No worries 👍

Understood, ta!

Nice one, ta!

Got a code for the 10% ? I signed up but didn't get a code in the email 😐