[Closed] House heating - How much heat do you lose over night?

what's loose?

More so this is like asking how longs a bit of string....

In summer i have a net gain.

In the depths of winter when its -15 outside and blowing a hoolie my heating can be on and off a few times. night just to maintain 14 inside.

Furry muff. Lets say at present, so cold/mild. Consistently lose 2c over the last few nights.

Not paid it any attention before so a little unsure what i lose when it's colder.

Hang on.
You turn your heating off at 8pm and by morning you've only lost 2-degrees!?
I would say that was a miracle.

Although - how you set a thermostat for 10-degrees, when the heating is actually off?

We heat the house (stone detached) to 19C in the evening until 10pm, on the coldest nights this winter it was 15.5C the next morning. More typically it will be around 17C

I have still to insulate under the floor and improve the loft insulation though, as I dont have 270mm full coverage due to a boarded section so I expect some small improvements next winter.

I'll be giving it more attention over the coming weeks. Just going of one room at present, kids room has a digital thermostat. Likely ground floor temp will be a great deal lower.

how you set a thermostat for 10-degrees, when the heating is actually off?

loads

I've never seen the stat above 19 degrees even if we left it on constant, although we only have blinds up and no curtains so i could insulate more,

drops to 14/15 overnight during the coldest nights, don't bother having it come on when were asleep,

kids bedrooms stay warm, but our converted attic bedroom is like an icebox, but we sleep fine

We put the heating on at 5pm, set to 20c but it never reaches that temp. We get about 19c, by morning its back down to about 14c. Old boiler, no loft insulation over half the loft (loft boards) and in need of underfloor insulation.

You turn your heating off at 8pm and by morning you've only lost 2-degrees!?I would say that was a miracle.

Agreed. After a frosty night that's what we get with R7 roof, R3.5 walls, R3 floor, Triple glazing units in all the big windows and most of the small ones, a double back door, double glazed front door. No central heating, wood burner left to die out at 20:00.

Scottish Gas are still offering free wall and loft insulation. I've just had my walls done, lofts converted to a room.

They might try and sell you a boiler but just say no. Other than that its easy.

www.britishgas.co.uk/energy-saving-products/home-insulation

crap old house here,

heating on, all evening, we might just get up to 19dC.

by morning, it's more like 12.

yes, we're insulating.

(ie, this is an improvement)

Ours is shocking.

Switches off at 10pm @ 20deg on at 6am can be 15 deg

[i]We run our heating for 3 hours on an evening, 5-8 and an hour in the morning. It's set for 18c between these times and 10c out of those times.

Over the evening, we lose 2 degrees in temperature and I wanted to compare.
[/i]

At what point does the heating come back on? If it's 18c at 2000 and then loses only 2c by morning that kinda implies that the heating doesn't come back on until 1700, or some point late afternoon?

Sounds like you've either impressive insulation, live a good bit further south than the UK or next door is on fire...

Draughty wooden windows and doors that won't close properly due to 20+years of overpainting mean ours drops from 20c to 16c overnight at the minute. Getting UPVC and composite doors in about a month which should make it a bit better.

Come back on at 6 in the morning for an hour and then off during the day until 5pm (well, not off but set so low it never comes on).

That temp loss is in our kids room each night this week which only has one external wall and is upstairs so likely the most efficient room in the house. We added additional plaster board to the walls when we did up their room.

I'll be checking temp loss in the rest of the house now to get an average but, from the sounds of it, it's not that bad.

All windows/doors brand new modern glazing and i chucked some extra insulation in the attic when we moved in.

Live in bleak Yorkshire.

1920's house here. We've got young uns and to appease wifey's paranoia that they'll freeze to death overnight we've trialled leaving our heating on 24/7 this winter. Radiators at max, boiler as low as we can tolerate.

Interestingly just had our quarterly gas bill for Nov - Feb and we've used nearly 20% less than of the similar period last year where we would turn off the heating during the night and when we were out. I recall last winter being similarly mild here so I was pretty surprised and it's been win win - happy wife, house feels more comfortable as well and kids still alive 🙂 I guess last winter the boiler had to work too hard to restore the lost heat after it had been off.

[i]we've trialled leaving our heating on 24/7 this winter.[/i]

Yep, always worked for us - far better than coming into a cold house.

All we did was run it (on the thermostat) at 20c and drop to 15c overnight and when out.

I think you'll find it's running the water temperature in the rads lower that's saving you energy shortbread. Most boilers have two burn rates and are much more efficient at the lower rate, the higher rate only really being needed for instant hot tap water.

Heat loss from the house is proportional to temperature above outside temperature so the colder the house the less it loses.

"I think you'll find it's running the water temperature in the rads lower that's saving you energy shortbread. "

which is only afforded by running the system 24/7.....

i had a house with 3 ft thick stone walls .... the one time i did turn the heating off when i was out - it took nearly a week to warm the house up again.

Poke that for a laugh - thankfully it was a rental.

Last night the [upstairs] temperature went from 17.4 to 13.6 between 10pm and 8am.
That's a house completed in '79 with unfilled cavity block walls and reasonable roof insulation. Windows are UPVC double glazed but there is quite a lot of glass.
I should also add it's an upside down house in an exposed location in N Wales with the living accommodation upstairs. It's been effectively unheated since new year so some heat may have 'soaked' into the structure.

Edit: I'm only here to meet the British Gas chap about the free cavity wall insulation but it looks like we're a bit out of luck as they will only do the whole house (3 walls for us as we're attached on one side) but one wall has UPVC cladding and I'm not sure I want to remove it or drill on the inside.
He was very helpful and actually said that if it was his house he'd not go with BG as they only do blown mineral fibre and, in our location, we'd be better off with Thermabead.