The cost of living... what can we do?

We keep out thermostat set to about 21C most of the time. Just over a year ago our housing association changed our VERY old boiler for a modern one & changed all the valves on the rads as well & put a wireless controller in the entrance which the guy told us was probably the coldest place in the flat.

We started out with automatic control although he told me most people prefer manual. He set it for us at 22C (I remember he said "You like it warm,eh?") We have lived in this flat for 21 years now & we find that if the temp in our living room is below 24C we feel uncomfortable. I told him 22C feeling a bit too embarrassed to say 24C! I intended to put it up the other 2C after he had left but never got around to doing it as I couldn't remember how he set it all up!

Until last year we had always shut all the doors in our flat & even putting a draught excluder on our living room door. We have had thermal curtains on the windows in our living room, from ceiling to floor. A few years after we moved in my wife wanted a change of curtains but we didn't want to remove the thermal ones so we put the new curtains over the top of them! (Handmade by my wife!)

Now that the weather has turned colder we put the heating on at 7am & turn it off at 10pm. Some days when it warms up a bit & the sunshine enters the flat I turn it off for 2-3 hours. We now use manual control. But I have lowered the temp to just 21C as any lower we feel cold. This weekend I've tried reducing it to 20.5C but I may have to put it up a fraction if the weather gets much colder.

When I go to put it on at 7am the thermostat says 19C. On a couple of days last week it registered 18.5 or even one day, 18C! That's far too cold for us. We are both in our 70s & no longer "spring chickens" & feel the cold more.

 

Can someone explain why you have to turn up the thermostat in cold weather?

I think if the thermostat is working properly you shouldn't have to.
I know mine doesn't work well, but its 40 yrs old.

 

Dunno about a 40 year old one, but I see modern central heating comes with thermostatic valves. That seems pointless to me. So you monitor the temperature literally right next to the radiator. The main thermostat, from what I've seen, is often in an equally useless place, high up the wall nowhere near a window in many cases. Hardly representative of the temperature near the sofa.

My fancy infrared thing has a pointless thermostat. Its sensor protrudes on a stalk about 2 inches below the panel. Given that it's a radiator rather than a convector, that means it will never be accurate. If I was less lazy I'd get my kids involved in a little electronics project to build a WiFi enabled thermostat and configure Google to switch the panel on or off based on the temperature of the wall next to the sofa.

 

We don't have anything with a thermosat and nowt that has to run with Elecy(we get to many power cuts)
We have a Rayburn for cooking on and it does has a heating side to it but that's too many £'s to run,
we also have a Efel which is the same as the rayburn but not for cooking
We also have a log burner
All 3 are runing now, but if/when it gets warmer the Efel will be turned out, our house is in a L shape and big (22 window's & 4 double bedrooms) and the 3 are in the corners, all running on tick over 24/7 and nice and cozzy, the cool part of the house is 19c and no heating is on up stairs the only heat is from the 3 app going from ground floor up the stairs we don't shut any door's so air moves around the house
the warmish part is the living room but i don't now the temp but tis nice
we allways leave the log burner ticking over even if the temp goes high just to keep the walls of the house warm

 

We have 60cm/2 feet thick walls and are open plan with no central heat. When we put the heat on we set it at 22c We often have it on all day (9am-9pm) in the open-plan lounge. We have it on in the bedroom (which does not have a door) from 8-11pm and 7-9am (we don't get up till 9 as we watch the morning news in bed with tea/coffee)). Lighting the wood fire heats up the walls. We don't use anything, heat or air, for perhaps seven months of the year. In our mid 70s we don't like or plan on being cold.

 

So long as our family lounge is warm that's all we really and truly need. Nothing's worse that finally being able to sit and relax in the evening and ..feel cold! 18- 20C is perfect. We could also have an open fire in there if we really needed to , but haven't for over 30 years. The flue is blocked but it can quickly and easily be removed if suddenly needed.

Kitchen about 18C.

The kitchen, family lounge and downstairs toilet are all next to each other and sectioned off together from the main hallway by a door. So on a cold wet day we can remain snuggly warm in that part of the house not really needing to venture anywhere else until bedtime.

We want to stay in our house ,that hubs drew up the renovation plans for and did most of the rebuild himself, for as long as possible ..if not forever. But in doing so we must be sensible about how we use it's size during the Winter. We both feel it would not only be unnecessarily expensive but also very wasteful heating up the entire house that isn't used for only 2 people.

So upstairs we only have the landing heater on as we both can't sleep in a warm bedroom.

Bathrooms have heaters but we tend to not bother with them throughout the day , only having them on for an hour before showering.

Even when our brood were still with us we never set the temps higher ,the only difference was that their bedroom heaters were on.

As our house is on the large size (26 windows and 6 bedrooms) and for the last 14 years it's just been the two of us we have always been aware to conserve energy and use it in a way that doesn't cause unnecessary wastage .

We close off the big main lounge ,only using it if all the family come down at the same time in Winter.

We keep our bedroom door open so the landing heater provides enough heat to take the edge off any possible coldness to provide us with our perfect sleeping temperature.

We only use the main door in Winter because of the way our outside plot is shaped ( wraparound) we don't need to use the kitchen patio doors and the back door as well at this time of year.

The main door is set within a large lobby area so doesn't open up directly to the outside.

We haven't had to think about or change our ways of using energy as we have always used it as wisely as possible.

 

That is far too low a temperature for me. 18C. My house only dips to that at the end of a night with no heating on.

 

I have great trouble explaining to my good lady how the heating works. She will point out that it is going to be a cold night so we better turn the thermostat up! She also reckons the radiators get too hot if she puts the Boost on (26C) but are okay if she turns the stat up to 24C. I try to explain that the radiators heat up to the same temp irrespective of what the settings are. If they are on they are hot, if they are off they are not. She goes to her bed, the heating goes off, she turns the stat up (from her phone) then falls asleep. If I don't notice it is on, then it is on all night. The Boost however is only on for a short burst.

 

I'm like @redstar , can't cope with being too warm within an enclosed space. As I said in my above post 18- 20 is perfect but even then I often have to go walkabout around the cooler parts of the house just to feel able to breathe in cooler air. Perhaps I overheat too easily.

 

I joke with my wife that women may be able to multitask but men can control their body temperature. She tends to be either too hot or too cold. I keep getting asked, "Is it too hot or is it me?" or "Is it too cold or is it me?". My answer is always the same. "It's you.".

 

Actually I agree with you @Jocko ...so would my hubs!!

 

Totally agree here. With an open plan house and 5 meter angled ceilings (5 meter one side, 3.5 meters the other) except kitchen and bathrooms, there is no fear of ever being too warm, except in the heat of the Summer. The only internal doors we have is to the main bathroom and the spare room (and these are always open) which has the en-suite with cafe swing doors which the kitchen also has from the lounge.