Is It Better To Leave The Heating On Constantly? Boilers & Heat Pumps | Consumer Advice

Leaving your heating on may save you money! In this video, we answer the age old question, "should I leave my heating on at night?" and much more, for both boilers and heat pumps.

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00:00 Intro
01:50 What do we mean by heating all the time?
02:48 Heat loss is not the same as fuel usage
03:40 What's the heat source
06:36 Steady State Heating
07:37 Benefits of Steady State Heating
09:05 What's your usage?
10:01 Thermal Mass
11:04 What emitters do you have?
12:39 What controls do you have?
13:34 Summary

[HeatGeek]

Join 'Heat Geeks Heating Help for Homeowners" on Facebook for bespoke advice on YOUR specific system.

[anthonypaynter]

That is a superb explanation of how to operate our central heating. I have been keeping our room stat at 17oC all night & most of the day, (we are retired & at home constantly). I have been really worried that we were using far more gas than we needed to. But when the heating has been off for 8 or 12 hours, it takes forever for the house to warm up so I have felt that that was too costly so it's nice to hear that you agree. We are lucky to have a well insulated house & a year old combi boiler, our old one had been installed in 1984 when the house was built, but packed up last Christmas. The new one stopped a week ago because of the big freeze, but the condensing outlet had got frozen at the bottom bend. I had to start near the roof with a hairdryer until it had all melted. Added some insulation around the pipe & got rid of the 90o bend at the bottom & all is good now. Very scary being up a ladder to use the hair drier at 80 years old, but our plumber was too busy with emergency call outs. Thanks for an interesting video.

[bajatoma]

I am really shocked you have only 38k subs.. man.. every single plumber should subscribe, and every DIY at heart person should.. absolute gold stuff

[Wellspicedchaffinch]

Wow you literally just validated that the way I have my Atag i15s boiler setup (for 20 degrees basically all day, and 18.5 degrees at night [because we have a 1 year old who we want to keep warmer than us adults]) is basically optimal.

We find the house takes a while to heat up - so running a steady temp all day gives us the comfort levels we want. I have worked from home for 2 years (soon to change) so having a warm house has been helpful/comforting.

We have weather comp and its a condensing boiler - and it has low temperatures generally - which is great when you have a little one who you don't want to hurt themselves on a red hot radiator.

The new tech in boilers is pretty great - but it's fapping complicated. I reckon 90% of homeowners will never bother to learn about this stuff - and I reckon 70% of plumbers don't understand how to tune a modern heating system. My installer didn't understand how to set it up properly for our home's characteristics, and I don't blame them: you need to live with the home and the heating system - configuring it for 2 to 3 months to get it right.

Even after maybe 50 hours tuning everything (TRVs, timings, temps etc) - it still needs a tweak once in a while.

It's absolutely exhausting tbh.

[spokes]

I've followed this and left the heating on, the results have been fantastic! House is nice and comfortable. Heating bill has increased by £197 and getting my house repossessed now. Just kidding, it has improved thermal Comfort and I'm not seeing the vent exhausting loads compared to the neighbours

[denisdolan]

excellent, describes my situation to a T! Had a 30 year old boiler changed to a Valliant condensing boiler. Amazed at the difference, but getting a new boiler didnt take into account the 30 year old TRVs. Your explanation of the improvements with heating all the time, (retired in bungalow with solid brick walls) almost decribes me peffectly. thank you. very professionally explained.

[damienguegan]

I have only recently started to look into heat pumps, your videos are so clear and informative, they should be subsidised by the government. Simply amazing!

[KateSilvester]

Hurrah! At last I have found someone explaining and SHOWING how to use the controls on my Air Source Heat Pump. I am pleased I got an AHSP, I just wish the manufacturers instructions were as helpful and as clear as these videos Congratulations Heat Geeks! This is exactly what I have been looking for since I had the system installed.

[maze]

Thank you for such a thought provoking video and appreciate the time and effort these things take. I’ve passed this on to my two lads who have wet systems as it will help them make a more informed choice than the ones currently doing the rounds. I have a warm air system powered by a very efficient condensing boiler and as we have an open plan ground floor operates very well but I cannot regulate the temperature it operates at but it is much lower than conventional wet systems. As retirees we need heating on all throughout the day and I’ve approached my heating from a similar ‘speeding car’ car approach. The house is quite well insulated, cavity and loft, and my night time stat is set at 16 degrees. Current weather conditions dictate that it does operate, however I build the house temperature slowly first thing in the morning. To help address the cost we go to bed an hour earlier and get up a little later. The first main heat is at 17 degrees for ½ an hour incrementing up to 18 or 18.5 by 10 in the morning. As I have a smart thermostat I can adjust from my armchair raising to 19 degrees early evening. I do supplement the heating when it gets too cold with heated throw-overs which makes us very comfortable. I find that if the house is left to cool down too much you know pretty instantly how hard the boiler works to build up the heat lost - whether all this saves money I can’t say but as you say it’s also about comfort and preserving our health👍🏻 Kindest regards and Merry Christmas Mike

[neillewis]

Entirely agree. I’ve spent so much time trying to educate friends & family that a consistent, low heat where you just adjust the target temperature during night, day & perhaps evening if you want to comfortably relax is the way to go.

When we bought our last house, we had prepayment meters for a while which were obviously awful, but gave me great awareness how much we were spending. Even though I was naive to the flow rate at that point, the constant temperature targets worked a treat. Another level again since I belatedly cottoned on to the flow rate a few years ago…

[filmsbysi]

Thanks for your time, in putting all of these videos together. It's important information for people to have, right now.

[machinehead]

Just a thought regarding condensing boilers and a bit on heat pumps for good measure. As you say, the vast majority of people with gas or oil boilers now have condensing boilers. So far, so good. What’s not good is that many, possibly most of these, have been installed and ‘commissioned’ to run at high temperature flow rates, as was the norm on pre-condensing boilers pre 2004/5, and often run at 80* flow and 70* return temperatures (or there or thereabouts). This means that whilst the boilers are indeed ‘condensing boilers’ they rarely, if ever, run in condensing mode. Even this is understandable, given that human nature demands that when cold, you want to warm up as quickly as possible, and people want to practically burn their hands on a stinging hot radiator to prove to themselves that their heating system is on. This video helps to re-educate people on how to effectively and efficiently use their condensing boiler systems. And I believe that re-education is needed, even more so with heat pumps which generally can not operate at these high flow temps. Part (and only part) of the reason why heat pumps have gained a bad reputation for being expensive to run is because people have blasted extra electricity into them in their quest for high temperature heat in short bursts. Liked and subscribed, by the way…

[wobnoway]

Firstly, don't stop doing these videos it really brings these important points to people's attention, any comments of mine is subject to discussion ;-). I had one comment to add/make, when intermittent heating with a lower delta t you will have a lower heat loss, I'm thinking can i be bothered to calculate this for my own home. Anyway many years ago i just used to give advice on heating as you put it about occupancy e.g. if your home a lot then underfloor is brilliant, if your at work all day and out on weekends then radiators or fan coils (love fan coil). A test was carried out with heat pumps in same house types, one ran at a constant 21 the other time clocked for 6 hours of the day. The one on all the time had a great SCOP compared to the other, but the other was less money to run a year (£200, at the time). Anyway all the best.

[timiav]

Bravo Adam! As succinct as ever, keep up the good work. 👍

[EPPball]

I've taken a different approach. We live in South Australia and the winters here are mild (we don't get snow), but still cold. Our house is double brick, with lots of insulation in the roof and triple glazed windows. We have a large solar array on the roof. I considered batteries, but our main use of power is heating in the winter and so we have 3 Heat Banks. A Heat Bank is a simple device. An electric element is surrounded by a thermal mass (Magnesite bricks). 2 of our Heat Banks are charged during the day by the solar array and give up their latent heat during the evening. The third (largest) heat bank is charged during the night using off peak power and gives up stored heat during the day. The hot water system is a Heat Pump run on a timer, so it only runs during the day when the solar panels are generating power and we only run the dishwasher, washing machine and dryer during the day. The system has worked well for us.

[henryshannon]

Very informative, I have been telling friends the same story for years but I don't think that many believe me. Well done!

[macraghnaill]

When I bought this house 28 years ago [built 1970] 3 bed semi] I was told to leave the heating on 24/7 as it's cheaper, I tried various timed settings and it was cheaper to leave it on set at 18c.
In 2010 I had a new Baxi Solo 15kw boiler fitted,
again tried timed settings I used more gas, timed on 6.30am and off 10pm 3.5 units used, timed on at 4.30am to 10.30pm 2.5 units used, on 24/7 1.5 units used [gas meter is in cubic feet]
Unless we have very cold weather usage is pretty much the same
Running gas fire and heating I use 2.5 units per day, gas fire on around 12 hours and has an input of 6.85kw output 4kw

The best way to see if leaving your heating on 24/7 or timed is to take week when temp and gas usage are the same then try your timed method for 3 days and leaving on 24/7 for 3 days, read your meter before and after each, also turn your boiler temperature setting down to the minimum it will work on, if it numbered 1 to 6 set it to number 1, if it just has an arrow find the best point and mark it .
This guy says houses don't normally drop below 16c, mine does, without heating it's about 5c warmer than outside

[johntisbury]

Really helpful and well explained. Thank you.

[steveh]

well explained. My home is quite modern. I increased my loft insulation to 250mm. I installed hive and new radiators, bigger ones and put insulation behind radiators. Set boiler to 60'c
By using my heating as normal timed, when I am in, my boiler showed to be on about 3-4 hours on the hive trend graph. By leaving it on at 18 and bumping to 19.5 when I am in, the boiler is on for as little as 35 mins in 24 hrs. I am 100% convinced my fuel usage is so much less. I never used heating like this but its so much better, the whole heat mass of the building and every thing in it, is kept at a constant. I also use stats on all the radiators and a hive thermostat on the rad in the bedroom.

[pawelnotts]

I miss the time when I was living in a 70s flat in Poland heated up by the hot water from a nearby power plant (whole city runs on this). Radiators would come on in autumn and go off in the spring, steady temperature throughout the day with lower temps during the night (you can obviously dial down the rads yourself if you want). No mold, nice and toasty 23C all the time and none of the faff I'm having now in a detached house 😂