As we're approaching our first winter in a real house for a little over five years, thoughts are turning to heating. In theory, we should be able to last longer without the heating needing to come on, and in theory when it does we will need less. In practice we can't easily measure heating separately from hot water so it will be difficult to isolate the heat load.

But as a base measure, we will be able to spot when the heating does start to come on (it's left on permanently with thermostats calling for heat when necessary - so far this hasn't happened).

So here's the suggestion. Post here when your heating first starts to come on / when you switch it on this winter, with a quick outline of your house and location.

I'm getting close to the point where it's time. Temperature downstairs dipped to 69F yesterday, but it was sunny so it made it back to 70F by bedtime and had only dropped to 69F this morning (though outside it was the coolest it had been since April at 53F / 11C). Today will be in the low 70s as will tomorrow and sunny so I should be OK for a couple of days. So long as it's sunny in the day then I can just put the heating on air-circulation mode to even things out between the sunny and shady areas so I might be able to keep the heating off for another couple of weeks hopefully. Once it does go on, the thermostat will be at 71F until the spring and the heating will run when it needs to to maintain that temperature. It's actually better for the house and furniture etc. to keep a relatively constant temperature and humidity. Always the challenge here in winter is keeping the humidity up - I stop using the bathroom extractor for showers around about the end of October until April-ish.

[edit: right now it's 68F downstairs, 73F upstairs and 62F outside at 11:30am and I did turn the heated floor in the bathroom back on Wednesday as it was cloudy and dismal outside]

My location is 45° 28' N 73° 45' W so there's still quite a reasonable amount of solar gain to be had.

Paul in Montreal.

Posted By: fostertomThat's terrible Paul - not even the equinox, 'going in'.

It's not on yet :) So long as it's sunny in the day, we'll be OK - and often the beginning of October is warm - the challenge is when it's cool and cloudy out as there's no solar gain, then, in the upstairs office at home where I work. Downstairs is OK if the oven is used :) Biggest challenge here is the oscillation in temperatures - last Friday we hit 33.5C as the daytime high, then Sunday was only 17C with an overnight low of 11C, then back up to 26.5C on Tuesday but only 16C yesterday and 11C this morning. All that said, the heating has been off since the end of April though, so it's not so bad :D

Paul in Montreal.

We're definitely aiming not to have heating on before mid-October, like last year, and off again Mar/Apr. We don't want more than 6 months' heating!

Rgds

Damon

I didn't turn the central heating off until May this year :( Will do better next year.

Perhaps I'm for-tuna-te, but at home, we don't have 'the heating' on more than 6 times a year I guess. OK, last January was an exception. Clearly PiM is in a different climate so cannot be judged by the same standards - but we try and get a room, possibly two, warm - and congregate. Stoves in divers areas help. As does the IWI we are slowly applying in certain areas.

Yes, it can be a wee bit chilly in the passages and stairwell, but we all need to start thinking about zoning big time, insulation big time and where that heat will come from, cos 'the heating' we are talking about, ie central heating, is not sustainable. No amount of green energy will heat existing housing stock to the levels of comfort the cornucopia of cheap, fossil-fuelled energy has seduced us to believe is normal. It isn't, never was, and soon won't be once more.

Rant over. My retirement thesis will be on how central heating, rather than TV, helped destroy family life.

Yeah it's just a cold house for some reason. I came in at 8.30 and checked the temperature in the living room - it really was 17 degrees after what has been quite a sunny day - the solar panel has made a reasonably warm tank of water. Fortunately I have plenty of scrap wood to burn from the house I'm renovating :)

Posted By: crusoe
Yes, it can be a wee bit chilly in the passages and stairwell, but we all need to start thinking about zoning big time, insulation big time and where that heat will come from, cos 'the heating' we are talking about, ie central heating, is not sustainable. No amount of green energy will heat existing housing stock to the levels of comfort the cornucopia of cheap, fossil-fuelled energy has seduced us to believe is normal. It isn't, never was, and soon won't be once more.

Woah... nice rant

As our (newly built) house has no heating at all up stairs and is thermostatically controlled in each room downstairs, your talk of zoning is falling on deaf ears. Why should an efficient, clean central source of heat distributed with low loss around a thoroughly insulated house be less 'sustainable' than smaller, less controlled and typically less efficient units scattered throughout the building? How exactly are you warming your one or two rooms?

Anyway, interestingly our front room which currently has a chimney sealed by nothing more than a ball of rockwool, has started to call for heat for a short period each morning. The thermostat there is set the highest of any in the house (at about 20 degrees), and as we wake at dawn it says the room is cold for a while. After that, all is good and we're happily padding round the rest of the building in our pyjamas in the morning.

The bathrooms are cool, but not cold - I should try and get the towel rails plumbed in to ensure they stay comfortable and dry once the winter weather begins.

Build a box stove into the fire hole, you get more heat and it keeps the fumes and smoke out.

You probably still shouldn't burn treated wood though *shrug*.

Burning older treated stuff can release some really nasties, I'm not sure what, but there's often heavy metals and whatnot. I wouldn't do it on an open fire, especially if you have kids.

I have a stove like above and often burn offcuts in it, CLS etc, whatever that's treated with. But then I don't have any neighbours...

My heating was on for an hour for the first time last night.

Have been starting to wear a jumper on and off for the last couple of weeks in the house, but needed a quick boost last night. Soon it will be 'jumper and fleece' time.

My house has thick stone walls, not a lot of insulation (aim to fix this next year), about 150sqm, in Aberdeenshire. Generally have the temp at about 15C in winter, with some rooms closed off - except when the woodstove goes on and it gets a bit warmer.

I was under pressure to put the heating on last night, so I did 1/2 an hour on my wife's exercise cross-trainer thingamy - well, she never uses the bloody thing - might as well get my money's worth. Got the house warmer too. If I can get the rest of the family motivated, I reckon we could last another month without heating.

Posted By: DamonHDThe suggestion from the Met Office is that after Saturday temperatures should go up again a little for many of us in the UK if I've understood the monthly forecast correctly:

Monthly forecasts are a work of fiction. Beyond even 3 days it's more or less guesswork unless the weather has entered a blocking pattern. 5 days really is the limit I think.

Paul in Montreal

Posted By: DamonHDActually the Met Office says as much and now refuses to do public season-ahead forecasts, but I think that the general temperature trends a couple of weeks away are just about believable IMHO...

Well, as it's getting towards Autumn the trend should be downwards :) But I find here the 14 days forecasts are often chaotic in how they flip and flop between predictions of above or below average temperatures. All that said, the seasonal forecast for this spring and summer was spot on - due to continuing La Nina activity it was predicted to be warmer than usual and indeed it was with the records for spring and summer more or less. I'm just hoping we have a record warm winter again :)

Paul in Montreal.

Well no heating for me yet (non insulated 30's semi, yes I know, I know, not out of choice). I put a thin jumper on tonight for the first time, but we are still at 20*c at the moment (coolth effects making it seam colder).

Last year we lasted until early november (i seam to remember but not 100%) and I hope the same will happen this year.

I have lots of nicely seasoned sycamore but nothing to burn it in (was a pest tree in my garden so as sustainable as burning stuff gets) at the moment.