Not putting the heating on - how's it going...?

Still not on here, heck, it about 15 degrees today so it's basically summer.
Clothes are taking a while to dry inside, but not to the point they smell musty. Current debate is if a dehumidifier is worth the investment to dry clothes.

No, there's a point where it makes sense to put the heating on. It doesn't have to be on super hot though. The colder it gets the warmer the same interior temperature feels because it's reducing the relative humidity.

Re cold fill washing machines and dishwasher - I'd been told that it was more efficient, and it might be in terms of actual energy used, but it rather depends on how you heat your hot water as singletrackmind says. If you have a cheap overnight tariff and you can put your machines on a timer, as we have, then cold fill makes sense. However if you're heating water with gas it must be much cheaper to use hot water. But if the machine's only got one fill, then you might need to set up your own mixer to produce 30C water rather than 50C or whatever your HW is.

Getting borderline now in our flat to either start using the Economy7 storage heaters, or using the last ~60mins of night rate electricity with our electric heater with integrated timer.

Re cold fill washing machines and dishwasher – I’d been told that it was more efficient, and it might be in terms of actual energy used, but it rather depends on how you heat your hot water as singletrackmind says. If you have a cheap overnight tariff and you can put your machines on a timer, as we have, then cold fill makes sense. However if you’re heating water with gas it must be much cheaper to use hot water. But if the machine’s only got one fill, then you might need to set up your own mixer to produce 30C water rather than 50C or whatever your HW is.

It's more to do with pipe volumes.

Machines use tiny amounts of water, about 5l to wash and 5l to rinse.

So all you end up doing is filling the machine with 5l of cold water from the hot pipe, which you have to then heat up electrically, and 5l of hot water going cold in the pipe that you've heated up with gas.

+ the boiler having to do a startup/shutdown sequence if it's direct from the boiler rather than a HW tank.

Machines use tiny amounts of water, about 5l to wash and 5l to rinse.

So all you end up doing is filling the machine with 5l of cold water from the hot pipe, which you have to then heat up electrically, and 5l of hot water going cold in the pipe that you’ve heated up with gas.

Inaccurate on both counts:

I don't know what diameter pipes you have or how long your pipe runs are but in my case it's 1.3l of cold before the hot water comes through (I've just measured it, how nerdy is that ?). Putting my hand on the washine machine window proves it's warm to the touch. The rinse is done with cold water obviously.

A modern washing machine typically uses 50l of water per cycle, about 5 times what you claim.

Ok
In the interest of science i am going to do 2 loads of washing
I will weigh the clothes to equal out that discrepancy.
I will switch off all electrical items at home at the plug.
Then i shall record the gas and electricity meter readings.
Do 1 wash with combi boiler fed hot water
Then record gas and electricity readings
Do wash 2 with cold tap water.
Just to prove its half the cost to primary fill with hot.

So after having the heating turned down to 16 in a morning and 18 in the evening, clothes are taking forever to dry to the point I've now brought convection heater in from garage and using that with the clothes dryer a timer and cheap rate a night finding a happy medium.
Got last months bill £97.24 the same period last year was £91.73.
It's cold sometimes but have found that using electric fire in living room is cheaper that using central heating.

Ok
In the interest of science i am going to do 2 loads of washing
I will weigh the clothes to equal out that discrepancy.
I will switch off all electrical items at home at the plug.
Then i shall record the gas and electricity meter readings.
Do 1 wash with combi boiler fed hot water
Then record gas and electricity readings
Do wash 2 with cold tap water.
Just to prove its half the cost to primary fill with hot.

Glad I’ve stirred up some debate, but in actual fact I really don’t care all that much.

I’ve installed a lot of washing machines and dishwashers and ALL of them say it’s important to have cold fill only. I’m not sure they’re saying that just to cost the owners a few extra pence on a wash every time.

Cracked on a cold day but it’s off again (*will be on soon tho as grandchildren coming)

Experimenting - gas fire in living room vs central heating (*thermostat down 2’). Cold bedroom etc fine, cooker generally warms kitchen, but the mrs isn’t liking a cold bathroom post shower (or the towels not drying properly).

Working smart meter would be handy, but we have a dumb smart one from a previous supplier.

Todays elderly person top tip.
Flanellete sheets, takes away the getting into bed cold shock, deffo winner.

Got last months bill £97.24 the same period last year was £91.73.

That's not bad going, given the price rises.

I’ve installed a lot of washing machines and dishwashers and ALL of them say it’s important to have cold fill only.

They do, and I'm not sure why. Once (a long time ago) I connected my jetwasher to the hot tap to see if it cleaned my bike super-effectively. It didn't, and it overheated the jetwasher really quickly. I don't expect that a washing machine relies on water for cooling in the same way but it might cause some problem or other. Not least because in my house, every wash would be a hot wash at 50C as well as the rinsing, whereas you really only need to wash at 20c or at most 30C and you can cold rinse. Most of my clothes specify 30C on the label for a start.

Now that I've modified our heating it behaves and responds differently. I am going to put the central thermostat higher than it used to be to keep the rest of the house warm.

assuming the warm water needed is 20l and the cool water is 30l, ambient temp of water is 10C and the hot water is needed at 40C (and ignoring any inefficiencies in heating water in pipework etc)..

20l of water heated up by electricity is 24p, per wash

50l of water heated up by gas is 17.4p, per wash

so its definitely cheaper to use gas, if you have a 40C feed to the wash, but by such a meaningless amount that I don't think anyone will really care - how many washes per person are needed a year? 100? to in total this might save you £6.50 per person per year.. I guess you'd probably want it downmixed to 30C (from whatever you normally have your tap running at - 50C?) to be able to use 30C washes.

We've had to shut the bedroom window at night now as Pembrokeshire has been very windy for a couple of weeks now. I'm wearing jeans and socks watching telly at night but don't really need a jumper yet. Daytime temps outside are still in the teens and not much colder at night.
No heating yet but the heated airer is doing the clothes overnight.

@5lab but your rinsing is also done with hot water rather than cold if you have hot fill.

Re wind, our house is definitely colder when it's windy. We've been trying to trace draughts but it's not obvious apart from the fact that some of the windows don't shut properly, but we can temporarily fix that with tape. I'm looking at the walls surrounding the window frames next. I could do with a thermal imaging camera.

@molgrips - thats why I calculated gas heating 50l instead of 20l. There might be other advantages of rinsing with cold water (is that what you're eluding to?) - I'm not a washing expert 🙂

Todays elderly person top tip.
Flanellete sheets, takes away the getting into bed cold shock, deffo winner.

Yeah washing machines don't heat the water for rinses, and this is the majority of the water usage.

Yeah washing machines don’t heat the water for rinses, and this is the majority of the water usage

Why do you believe they fill with hot for rinsing? Mine doesn't.

I love my electric blanket. Doesn't even need to be on for an hour - switch it on when you go to brush your teeth, then come back a few mins later. Like getting into a warm bath! Aaaaahhh

Why do you believe they fill with hot for rinsing?

Singletrackmind's does because he's plumbed the only inlet to his hot water, hence the discussion.

we went with an electric blanket on a smart plug -> alexa a few years ago. Asking the voice servant to warm your bed 10 mins before you wander upstairs is a modern marvel 🙂

You just need a couple of valves to flip to fill hot and rinse cold. Even Madame can do it. On the basis of 41 weeks and 3 washes a week at 24p (see above I haven't doen my own sums) that's £30 a year the solar thermal saves just in washing clothes.

We've been using the dehumidifier after showers but still no heating needed.

because he’s plumbed the only inlet to his hot water

Ah, gotcha, I'd missed that detail. Mine's an ancient* Zanussi with both a hot and a cold inlet.

*I've had it 25 years and bought it secondhand.

Nov 21 bill - Electricity 524 kWh £101  Gas 1724 kWh £65

Nov 22 bill - Electricity 307kWh £115 Gas 783 kWh £89

bills are for Oct usage obv..

Gas 63kwh
Elec 88kwh
October figs obvs.
Still no ch on here as its 15c outside.
Ran it for 10mins to check for air, sludge and wound in a ls valve on a rad thats always red hot. Still working which is nice

Leccy was

October 2020 389kwh (60 quid )

October 2021 224kwh (37 quid)

October 2022 83kwh (26 quid)

The hot water in the washing machines almost exclusively heated by the solar PV - solar thermal next but still won't be messing around with valves during a wash cycle.

26c outside and 25c in the bloody office cos the air con is crap

deffo not putting the heating on it's darn near bushfire season 🙂

The subject of hot water supply temp to appliances or to the taps is solved by fitting Thermostatic Mixer Valves.

I have one on the outlet of my cylinder, so the water at the taps is regulated to around 42°c and if you wanted a lower temp to dishwashers you'd just fit another at that appliance.

These TMVs allow you to store high temp water (solar thermal regular gets to 70° in summer) and minimise the amount you use.

I don't have a problem supplying my dishwasher with 42° water and would be happy to supply my washing machine with 30° for wash and rinse if the hot was free (solar thermal). My understanding of rinsing with warm water is that the clothes come out wrinkled (but that's not my specialist subject).

TMVs are highly recommended 👍

Electricity

Nov 2022 290kWh £50
Nov 2021 430kWh £63

I can't tell with gas because we don't have a smart meter and it's a mess of estimated readings and late readings by me.

Weelllll.... In Cambs, it's still shorts but the heating's been on a couple of times though it's gone a bit milder again. We got down to max 10°C during the day a few days ago. Y'know, when the roads are perma wet and the house starts to become a cold sink. The heating is set to be available for an hour in the morning and 3 in the evening. Set to 16°C, thermostat in the hall but not calibrated to anything so could be any random temp.

We're not messing with the dish or clothes washers. The latter is mostly used at 40° or 30° and I really CBA dicking around for 3 washes a week.

Ran it for 10mins

I have turned my gas Ch on for 15 minutes this morning to make sure nothing is becoming seized.
I have been using a fan heater, far infrared panel heater and a electric blanket for the rest of my grid powered heating needs.

Significantly reduced gas usage last year vs 2020. I think by just reducing the base temps in kitchen and lounge (terraced house). So now you have to actively turn a rad up for the boiler to fire. Also did away with the fancy geo-location thing and now just turn off/on when needed.

We’re not messing with the dish or clothes washers. The latter is mostly used at 40° or 30° and I really CBA dicking around for 3 washes a week.

Our dishwasher is on daily = worth swapping a hose from cold to hot.

I have been using a fan heater, far infrared panel heater and a electric blanket for the rest of my grid powered heating needs.

Gas is still 1/3 the price of SVT electric per unit. Why would you switch to grid electric?

I cracked over the weekend but set it to 19deg in the evenings and for an hour in the morning. It hasnt actually come on in the evenings yet.

Heating on, boiler now broken. That'll teach me.

Gas is still 1/3 the price of SVT electric per unit. Why would you switch to grid electric?

Presumably because it's much easier to heat just the room you need with electricity, and 100% of the energy you use goes into that room unlike with gas.

Presumably because it’s much easier to heat just the room you need with electricity, and 100% of the energy you use goes into that room unlike with gas.

There are many schools of thought on this, both personal and peddled by companies and organisations. The only true way to measure the cost is to take your meter readings.

My thoughts are that this single room heating thing isn't efficient as the rest of the house is lowering it's thermal mass and needs to be heated at some point. I run my gas heating at a reduced flow temp (currently around 33°C on weather compensation) which I am finding reduces the moisture levels in the house and is very comfortable and efficient.

The only truth is what you pay 🙂

Gas is still 1/3 the price of SVT electric per unit. Why would you switch to grid electric?

I must admit I have no actual idea how much it costs to warm our living room for an evening, say, via gas CH. Although we're getting a smart meter installed next month which should make things a bit clearer!

Presumably because it’s much easier to heat just the room you need with electricity

Also IR heaters are pretty efficient… I have an 800W one for the shed (costs about 27p/hour to run)

Or, run your 19kw boiler, which is modulated down to 7kw on weather comp for an hour. Of which it will only be firing for 30mins. (costs 10p/kw x 7kw = 70p/kwh = 35p/HR to heat the whole house).

Read my comment about thermal mass & turning rooms off 👎

The only truth is what you pay 🙂

Or, run your 19kw boiler, which is modulated down to 7kw on weather comp for an hour. Of which it will only be firing for 30mins. (costs 10p/kw x 7kw = 70p/kwh = 35p/HR to heat the whole house).

I see what you're saying, that trying to heat a single room is like trying to heat an uninsulated house because the heat escaped relatively easily.

I'd still back the idea that it's cheaper heat 1 room electrically than a whole house on gas.

Especially if you're using IR heaters or electric blankets. A 70W electric banket obviously makes you feel a lot warmer than a 7kW boiler overnight, and uses 1% of the energy, even if it is 3x more per unit. IR to a lesser extent, especially in poorly insulated or draughty spaces.

Or, run your 19kw boiler, which is modulated down to 7kw on weather comp for an hour. Of which it will only be firing for 30mins. (costs 10p/kw x 7kw = 70p/kwh = 35p/HR to heat the whole house).

Read my comment about thermal mass & turning rooms off 👎

The only truth is what you pay

@thisisnotaspoon

The problem is summed up in the title of the thread. Traditional UK mentality is that it is on or off. The progressive way is to move away from binary to controlling a system to extract maximum efficiency via modulating controls.

Every house has different characteristics, so replacing the heat loss will be different. This is why, you have to measure your use & try different settings.

A 70W electric banket obviously makes you feel a lot warmer than a 7kW boiler overnight, and uses 1% of the energy, even if it is 3x more per unit.

Doing kwh figures like this is a pointless excersise as neither the boiler or the blanket will be operating at 7kw or 70w per hour. What if the boiler was using the same as the blanket? I know where i'd rather live.

 

only heating a single room is definitely more efficient in terms of cost (if you can use trvs on gas) and energy usage.

heat loss is all about temperature differential. lets say (for a clean example) the external walls of a room allow 10% heat loss per hour (things are more complicated than this). if the room is 20c and outside is 0c, if the room is unheated, you'll loose 2c the first hour, then 1.8c, then, untill the difference is so minimal as to effectively be nothing.

lets say you're working from home, and heating the whole house. To heat that room (that you're not using), you need to use enough energy to compensate for 2C the first hour, then 2C the second hour, and so on. A total for a 8 hour day of 16C "worth" of energy.

if you don't heat the room, the loss after the first hour reduces. by hour 8 you're losing less than 1C per hour. The total loss over 8 hours would be 11.4C (down to a temperature of 8.6C), which you then have to spend reheating the room, but that loss is about 28% less loss than the heated room.

There is some loss out of the room you are heating into the rest of the house, so the room you're not using isn't completely unheated, but the savings available are still considerable

Doing kwh figures like this is a pointless excersise as neither the boiler or the blanket will be operating at 7kw or 70w per hour. What if the boiler was using the same as the blanket? I know where i’d rather live.

No, it just demonstrates that it's far more efficient to heat the thing you want to heat, rather than the whole house.

The better way to think about the whole system is by heat loss (which has to equal heat input - accumulation anyway).

It's difficult to model (in your mind anyway) what's going on with a 20kW boiler its duty cycle, what all the TRVs are doing etc.

Much easier to visualize that a wall with twice the differential temp to the outside loses twice as much energy, and therefore requires twice as much energy input also.

So if I only put the living room rad's on, and heat that room to 20C (and say it's 0 outside), even if those heaters are running flat out, and the rest of the house creeps upto 10, it's still using only a little over half the energy as it would to heat the entire house. The better insulated the individual rooms are (i.e. how cold can you make everywhere that isn't the living room) the better that gets. Take that to the extreme of turning the heating off and sitting in bed with an electric blanket whilst the rest of the house freezes is an extreme example, but would save 99%* in that case to demonstrate the point.

Lowering the temp of the circulating water lowers the entropy in the system which increases efficiency in other ways. But that's tweaking the last 5% out of it rather than saving 30/50/70/90% just heating the rooms/people that need it.

*more or less depending on the duty cycles of the electric blanket and boiler.

hmmm, think our boiler is a bit beefier than that & it doesn’t have weather comp as far as I’m aware (it’s not mentioned in the manual anyway. It’s fairly old) That said, I do use our gas boiler for heating the house – the IR heater is for the shed (like I said 😂). I was just commenting that it’s probably not particularly terrible vs gas costs. 😃

Weather comp just turns the flow temp down. You can do that manually 👍

Smart TRVs don’t necessarily mean that you turn the room off it can (and generally is) just set lower. You can’t actually be suggesting that having the entire house at (say) 20° when you’re literally only using one room is somehow more energy efficient? 🤔

You made a point of them being 'smart' which means the only think they do differently to a normal TRV is be able to turn off via an app. 🤔

The problem is summed up in the title of the thread. Traditional UK mentality is that it is on or off. The progressive way is to move away from binary to controlling a system to extract maximum efficiency via modulating controls.

No idea what you mean. Most of us have thermostats and TRVs. Turning the heating 'off' just means forcing the system to not modulate upwards.

Or, run your 19kw boiler, which is modulated down to 7kw on weather comp for an hour. Of which it will only be firing for 30mins. (costs 10p/kw x 7kw = 70p/kwh = 35p/HR to heat the whole house).

Right but you don't necessarily want the whole house heated all the time.

I see what you’re saying, that trying to heat a single room is like trying to heat an uninsulated house because the heat escaped relatively easily.

The heat escapes into the rest of the house, and quite slowly at that because the temperature differential is a lot smaller than that between outside, at least in our house. From experience, this 2kW eleectric heater only needs to be on for 10 mins to heat the room up very well, then it can be off for hours. I'm sure that's cheaper than running a 9kW boiler for the same time.

And you often can't heat a single room with a gas boiler depending on how your system is designed.

@thisisnotaspoon Your reply is getting crazy and is pointless.

My point is. Measure your useage and inform yourself of your actual useage.

It's the only way you will know if its worth sitting in a freezing room with an electric blanket, or living in a comfortably temp house.

Ps - I'm not about to test the electric blanket theory 😅

You made a point of them being ‘smart’ which means the only think they do differently to a normal TRV is be able to turn off via an app.

does anyone know of any good guides/websites/app for calculating property heat loss?
I'm going back to basics, I need to target my efforts where they count, I know our house isnt very efficient but they numbers I'm seeing at taking the pish

@molgrips what I think buttonmoon is on about is systems that can auto change the temp of the water flowing thru your rads based on the weather, to make the boiler more efficient.
That assumes that your boiler and / or controller can do that, which I suspect most of the populations can't.
My controller and boiler are opentherm compatible. It would have been an extra £80 for the opentherm box, I would have to be convinced on paper that its worth it to have a £80 box twiddle with your radiator water flow temps. I suspect it doesn't make that much difference unless maybe you have a massive house, even then I'd have to be convinced.
It's the same with tap water temp. My experience is that turning down my hot tap water flow temp didn't make much difference to gas usage, it might if your having 12 baths a day.

I suspect it doesn’t make that much difference

Turning the flow down has made a big difference here. House is much more comfortable overall with slower flow and lower temps. However, it means that the hot water essentially doesn't work at all because the circulating water is now cooler than the tank. So I'd love a programmable flow temperature.

Turning the flow down has made a big difference here.

I agree. But here is the problem for System boilers.

Again, a problem in the UK is the antiquated system design (S or Y plan) . You may be able to get around this problem with a cylinder relay box which would tell the boiler to heat the Hot Water to a higher temp than C/heating (W or X plan). I run this setup.

Heating hot water is relatively low energy, heating the house is where the bulk of the energy is needed, hence the need to control it properly and have a comfortable efficient house.

We are 30 years behind Europe 🙁

That makes sense. Thanks. Doesn’t help, but is interesting!

I'm thinking about creating an automated temperature control knob for my boiler, and setting the hot water on a different schedule. Maybe also automate the pump flow speed too.

I could build-in weather compensation at the same time.

You made a point of them being ‘smart’ which means the only think they do differently to a normal TRV is be able to turn off via an app.

the big power for us is the ability to schedule different temperatures in different rooms at different times of day. I work from home 4 days a week, my wife works part time, so on the days I wfh, the room I work on is warm, the bedrooms are cold. Downstairs is on lightly warm during the day when my wife is at home, and at the weekends, then the living room is toasty in the evenings. The bedrooms are warmest in the mornings and have a little heating in the evening as well. All of this will turn off if both my wife and I are out of the house. Whenever any room/zone is heated, there is heat called from the boiler, otherwise its dormant.

None of that is possible with "dumb" trvs, and significantly dropped our bills

None of that is possible with “dumb” trvs

I just walk up and down the stairs and adjust them as need be, not that we're using any CH yet....

I just walk up and down the stairs and adjust them as need be

That'd be a right faff in our house.

I just walk up and down the stairs and adjust them as need be

Same way you do it with a smart one. Play with the settings till the room is warmed to the temp you want.

how do you adjust a dumb TRV to make a room the exact temperature you want? Mine just had an arbitrary 1-5 scale on them I think

Define exact eg whereabouts - 10cm from the radiator or on the other side of the room?

Just because it has a degrees C scale on it doesn't make it any more accurate than the dumb wax based ones....

does anyone know of any good guides/websites/app for calculating property heat loss?
I’m going back to basics, I need to target my efforts where they count, I know our house isnt very efficient but they numbers I’m seeing at taking the pish

Probably some forn of way of doing it but generally there's so many variables it's hard to 'generalise' heat loss. As mentioned above, it depends on a lot of factors, external and internal temperature difference being one - a more basic thermo calculation. For a house, you'd tend to look at insulation, surface area and how the wall is made up etc, but that may be looking in to it too much. I did my university project on this kind of thing.

That’d be a right faff in our house.

Generally I'm always looking for an excuse to get more steps in etc. My watch beeps at me every hour to say 'get up and move', so it's not really a faff...

Turning the flow down has made a big difference here.

If you previously had your rads scalding hot, then yes you'll notice a difference. I was talking in terms of already running rads at a sensible temp (45° in my case, maybe a touch higher in coldest weeks). I don't feel there would be much to gain in my house from having an £80 opentherm box making micro adjustments, when I can do any odd tweaks if necessary by means of a big dial on the front of my boiler.

Heating's on! I've lit the wood burner. It's about 16°C in the afternoon and 6 in the morning which is a good few degrees higher than seasonal (unless this is the new normal). The house was down to 17.5 having left the doors open to air this afternoon. The thing stinks as it always does on the first burn of the year, something to do with the black finish Jotul use.

Still hanging in there, heating not on yet... But I'm getting close to caving in today I must admit!

I'm perfectly comfy at 17 degrees in shorts and a T shirt with bare feet, my wife likes it a couple of degrees hotter.

So we compromise at 19 degrees.

Still hanging in there, heating not on yet… But I’m getting close to caving in today I must admit!

+1

I should really put trousers on first though, still in shorts.

I agree. But here is the problem for System boilers.

It's not specifically system boilers, its the old Y and S plan concepts.

I have a year old system boiler on hot water priority. It takes about 25 minutes to heat the well insulated water tank on full burn, then runs at whatever flow temp I specify, on a per degree basis. Currently 47°, but suspect I can go lower at this time of year

This Southern wuss has caved in but the musty smell is still lingering around the upstairs. Guess it's a matter of time although not helped by a dead radiator in one bedroom.

This Southern wuss has caved in but the musty smell is still lingering around the upstairs. Guess it’s a matter of time although not helped by a dead radiator in one bedroom.

I put ours on for 2 days... dried out the house and it's back off.

My wife caved last night (as we had people from social services doing a home visit and she didn't want them thinking we live in a cold and damp house). Three hours later it was uncomfortably hot so it was switched back off and the windows opened LOL! 14deg outside at 7am in Harrogate this morning!

Heating is still off, turned the towel rail up a notch as the towels weren't drying out. Like others I'm finding the musty/damp feeling more objectionable than the cold after the last few weeks of torrential rain. I guess we're just used to the very dry centrally heated air feeling.

It was 16C according to the thermometer in the conservatory this morning. Which is just getting weird this time of year.

Just took a meter reading, about 43m3 of gas this month which corresponds to about a £60 ish bill I think. About twice as much as we used in the previous month and that's with only about half the period using heating. That matches my rough estimate of heating using 3x as much as hot water and cooking combined.

Heating is still off, turned the towel rail up a notch as the towels weren’t drying out.

Electric or hybrid towel rails? I'm considering hybrid towel rails to help with drying stuff off during "summer" when the heating's off.

thisisnotaspoon

Heating is still off, turned the towel rail up a notch as the towels weren’t drying out. Like others I’m finding the musty/damp feeling more objectionable than the cold after the last few weeks of torrential rain. I guess we’re just used to the very dry centrally heated air feeling.

The damp air takes more energy to heat and takes heat away from our body faster .. so it's not entirely in your head.
The other thing is ... if it were in your head does it matter?

I stuck the heating on for 2 days and doors/plaster etc dried out a lot... it's off again now but FEELS much warmer.
It MIGHT actually be warmer, I didn't really check.

I’m considering hybrid towel rails to help with drying stuff off during “summer” when the heating’s off.

Same here. Radiator in the bathroom is old and leaking, looking at a hybrid replacement to keep the damp at bay... and also as a back up source of heat if we ever have gas shortages or the boiler stops working.

Electric or hybrid towel rails? I’m considering hybrid towel rails to help with drying stuff off during “summer” when the heating’s off.

It's plumbed into the hot water cylinder circuit, so it works all year round as long as people are in the house having baths/showers and the cylinder calls for hot water.
Unexpected benefits:
- The HW comes on an hour before the heating, so when I'm the 1st one up before the heating's on in winter at least the bathroom is warm and the towels are toasty. Once I'm dry and dressed I'm not fussed how cold it is.
- Effectively modulates it's own use, the more showers are had and towels used, the longer the HW is on to warm the cylinder again.
-The pipes run under the bathroom floor, so it's cheap underfloor heating too! (see point 1).

It’s plumbed into the hot water cylinder circuit, so it works all year round as long as people are in the house having baths/showers and the cylinder calls for hot water.

Interesting, not heard of that.

Still holding out here, last year I'd have he the heating on by now but coping ok.

I live in a tower block that's been clad so don't get the sudden drops in temperature you get in traditional houses, or the dampness (even though it's in Manchester!) The building generally holds on to residual heat until January, when the internal communal spaces and stairwells get cold, then the block becomes a bit of a fridge for the second part of winter.

It probably won't be many days until I have to start using a little bit of heating in the evening. I should probably close my bedroom window.

I caved in the other night as the cold air started to trigger my asthma.

Temps have been near freezing outside here this week, and house temp has been dropping into single figures. Needless to say the heating has been on an hour or 2 each day. Brings it back up to 14-16 degrees, which feels absolutely tropical now. Living like a King.