designerradiators

Every winter, we have the same debate: is it better to leave the central heating on all day and night, or to turn it on and off as and when it’s needed. Here, we’re going to explore this issue in more depth. It’s an extremely contentious issue, with plenty of anecdotal evidence, but what to the experts say?

If you visit the British Gas website, it clearly says that it’s more financially viable to adopt an on-demand approach to your energy use. For this option, the boiler requires a timer and a scheduler, so that you can programme it to come on and off when required. For most households, this means setting the system to come on half an hour before you wake up, and to remain on for an hour or so, until you leave the house for the day (at the weekend, it makes sense to keep it on all day if you’re in the house). Then again, for it to come on half an hour before you get back from work/school. This time, it should be on for about four hours.

The idea behind the system is that your home requires a certain amount of heat to keep it warm, and that overtime, this heat will leak out of the home, depending on how well ventilated and insulated it is. Once the house is warm, it should remain warm for a significant period of time before it starts to cool again. If you have the system on constant, then you’re simply wasting energy warming a space that’s already warm.

The people who think that it should be on constant are thinking about the way the thermostat works. As the temperature starts to drop, the thermostat kicks in and heats the house back to the temperature set. However, there are a few problems with this: first, you won’t feel the drop in temperature as quickly as the thermostat, so it actually kicks in before it’s necessary, second, it may not provide an accurate reflection of the temperature of the house. For instance, if it’s in the hallway, it will register the house as colder than it is and, again, kick in unnecessarily early.

There is an option that allows you to make use of thermostats, but not the main thermostat. This option works well with a timed system and it involves the valves on the radiator. You can buy thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) that sense the temperature in the room. These close the radiator on and off as the room reaches temperature, and consequently, means that the boiler works less hard. It gives you much more control over the heating because you can tailor each room to a specific temperature, e.g. have the lounge hot while the dining room is cool. You can buy these valves for all radiators, even towel radiator valves can be TRVs. People often neglect to consider towel radiator valves, but they can have a massive impact on your electricity. Think about it, you only use the bathroom once a day, in general, so if it’s being warmed at other times, that's a waste. Instead, you can set it to a lower constant heat and help to prevent waste.