Heating off

[SteamyTea]

Well yesterday was the first full day I had my heating off.

Over the last two week I had turned off the main storage heater, now the little one is off as well.

So gone from around 20 kWh/day, including DHW and everything else, to 10 kWh/day and now down to round 5 kWh/day.

House was a bit cooler than I like, and has been, since I turned off the larger heater, gone from around 20°C down to 19°C.

This morning it was at 17°C (5AM), but now almost 19°C, so not so bad.

 

The price difference has gone from 14p/hour for all heaters on, to 10p/hour with just the small heater on, and now will be around half that.

I can live with 14p/hour to run a house, but half that is even better.

 

 

 

 

 

[ToughButterCup]

Yes, the edges of Spring. At long last. Time to save up for the next price hike. 😔

[Ralph]

Is that just for your heating?

Still a bit too cold this far north to turn it off but we were down to 6 kWh/day last week on the heating as apposed to 14 kWh/day in January

[SteamyTea]

13 minutes ago, ToughButterCup said:

Time to save up for the next price hike

I think I am still quids in, but we should not be in for another major rise in energy prices.  Seems our capitalist economic system, in conjunction with government guidance, and most importantly, people cutting usage, has worked.  The mild winter may have helped a bit, but not as much as people think as we have crap heating systems in the UK.

 

South West Water, the most expensive water supplier in the country, and possibly the world, offered us all £30 off our bill if we cut back on usage.

5 lt/day was the target.  I got the £30, so the target was hot, but no idea by how much.  Some of that will have coincided with reduced energy usage.

So in this instance, a financial incentive worked, though I am not sure how full our reservoirs are.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, Ralph said:

Is that just for your heating?

Both heaters seem to have used about 15 kWh/day.  This is pretty consistent as they are old (1987) storage heaters.

The larger one (4 element, 3 kW) seems to have used 10 kWh/day and the smaller one, which is half the size, 5 kWh/day.

The remaining, or current, usage of 5 kWh/day is for DHW and all the other house loads i.e. fridge, cooker/oven, washing machine.

Last summer/autumn I did two improvements, fixed the leaky back door and added secondary glazing to my window.

The secondary glazing, which greatly educed noise (I already had double glazing) also seems (need to analysis temp differences more) when I need to turn on/off the heating by at least a °C.

In the past I would turn thee heating on once the previous weeks OAT was 10°C, now it seems to be around 9°C.

I also have a warmer house by around a °C.

I also have hardly used my portable fan heater, which was usually my 'gauge' for when to turn the storage heaters on.  If I was using it for 2 or 3 hours a day, then was the time to swap over (that is down to price difference as I have E7).  Probably used it in total this winter for 5 hours.  That is mainly down to not having a cold draught on my feet from the leaky back door (that was, in the end, a simple fix and took 10 minutes to put right, but 18 years pontificating about it).

[Ralph]

That does not seem bad. I'm about 10 kWh/day for everything else including DHW. I work from home so I'm not too bothered by it.

[SteamyTea]

24 minutes ago, Ralph said:

That does not seem bad. I'm about 10 kWh/day for everything else including DHW. I work from home so I'm not too bothered by it.

How large is your place, mine is a small ~50m², terrace.

And in one of the warmest places in the UK winter.  It almost got down to -2.5°C once.

 

Here is this winters OAT temperature profile. 1/1//23 to 1/4/23.

I think I wasted energy by unnecessary heating, 15% of the time.

 

[Ralph]

We are about 152m² detached. We have quite an open plan house with vaulted ceilings and a lot of glass. We have been down to - 12°C this year. What seems to make a real difference is the wind. A brisk NNW coming off the Cairngorms really finds all those gaps. We also run the house quite warm, it never comes below 20°C and is quite often at 23°C. 

[SteamyTea]

9 minutes ago, Ralph said:

What seems to make a real difference is the wind. A brisk NNW coming off the Cairngorms really finds all those gaps

When I look at my 'windrose' that groups house, OAT and solar by wind direction, it is only OAT that makes a noticeable difference.

Probably down to only having 40 m² of wall/window area. Half of that will be shielded as it is, at best, facing the opposite direction to the weather.

 

For a place your size, where it is, and the temperature you keep it at, it is quite an achievement to use so little energy. I assume you have a heat pump.

 

My problem is even at 14p/hour at worse, for everything, I cannot justify financially a HP. Though I might get one as an experiment.

I suspect getting some PV, 2 to 2.4 kW_p would be the best route as I can get 5p/kWh SEG. Even allowing for a MCS payment, probably works out the better option.

[SteamyTea]

Well first full week with the heating off, and as I guess, maybe a bit too soon.

Mean house temp is now 17.8°C, down from 19.3°C the week before.

External temp, 7.9°C, which is lower than the week before, which was 8.5°C

Consumption is 43.4 kWh for the week, 80% at night.

Week before was 67.2 kWh, with 85% at night.

 

Here is the windrose and the consumption charts.  The difference in the external temperatures is rounding errors and my rear garden sensor and the local WU weather station.

 

 

 

Week before

 

 

[ProDave]

Still a little too cold for heating completely off here.  I recon an average outside temp of 10 degrees is needed. Still only an average of 7.4 over 24 hours here.

 

So what I have been doing is putting the heating on for 2 hours in the middle of the day so it is entirely powered by surplus PV.  

 

Bit of a pain to do that manually, and even more a pain to change the timings on the heating programmer.

 

Anyone know a 3 channel heating programmer that has (at least) 2 sets of on off programs and an easy way to switch between the summer heating times and winter heating times?  Sounds like another DIY project but it would be making it with some form of user interface that is not too geeky?

[JohnMo]

I am using a "COMPUTHERM Q7RF, it has a 0.1 hysterisis, so works well with UFH. Can be switched to a cooling thermostat for the summer.

 

Although running UFH on weather compensation, the heat loads are so small at the moment, the heating is off way more than on.  Have the night temp set at 19, so if we have had little or no solar gain, the floor gets a top-up overnight.  At 0700 the temp is set for 18.5, to force the heating off if it's on.  Living room is currently at 20.

 

Heating has only been on a couple of times in the last week.

[JohnMo]

Forgot to say Amazon is the cheapest I found.

[ProDave]

When I say a summer / winter setting, I want something that has 2 (or more) sets of heating TIMES.  So in winter the heating comes on at 6AM so it is warm by the time we get up and stays on all day.  In spring  / autumn when not a lot of heat is needed, it can all be done an hour or 2 either side of mid day when it is near certain there will be lots of surplus PV to use up.  So a different set of on off times.

 

Something that would let you have 2 sets of on / off programs entered and easily switch between them is something I would like to buy, but fear it is something I will have to make.

 

Ha ha, thinking about it, I may have a "solution"  I actually have a "spare" 3 channel programmer.  The spare is not of much use, as it is missing it's back plate (the connector plate that goes on the wall)  But it is a simple job to unclip from the back plate, so I could have one of them set to winter timings and the other set to summer timings and just interchange them.  I think they call this "thinking outside the box"

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

Still a little too cold for heating completely off here.  I recon an average outside temp of 10 degrees is needed. Still only an average of 7.4 over 24 hours here.

What I am finding, only 18.8°C as I type this (16:25 10/04/2023), but I can live with it.

And I am saving what, £3 a week, the same as a coffee.

[ProDave]

Well that is my "summer" programmer now on the wall and the one with winter times set, put away for 6 months.  I will see how it works now it is automated.

 

Of course the theory works well on a sunny day.  A lot is talked about "weather compensation" but for me, proper weather compensation would be turning the heating on and off to properly match available PV generation.

[Ralph]

We're going to be hit with high wind and rain this week so mine will be staying on for a while yet.

 

We get a good bit of solar gain. It looks like the heating has not come on for just over 24 hours and the main area is sitting at 23.8°C 

[MikeGrahamT21]

29th March was last time I had the heating on, definitely an earlier switch off this year compared to last. Haven’t felt the need to put it back on again.

 

Also have been off grid in terms of electricity for the best part of a month with the battery storage hitting full charge most days now.

[Marvin]

18 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Of course the theory works well on a sunny day.  A lot is talked about "weather compensation" but for me, proper weather compensation would be turning the heating on and off to properly match available PV generation.

We're trying our best. We are using a PV diverter to the hot water tank which is at 75C to last 2-3 days. We have about 40W PV installed per m2 floor.

 

[ProDave]

ASHP has not done any DHW heating for at least 3 days now.  We have had a rare occurrence here, 4 mostly fully sunny days, coinciding with a bank holiday weekend.   Doesn't stop the air being cold due to a cold wind.

[Marvin]

29 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Doesn't stop the air being cold due to a cold wind.

Met office show snow for the highlands today...

 

[ProDave]

11 minutes ago, Marvin said:

Met office show snow for the highlands today...

 

Don't assume "April showers" means rain.

 

I worked for someone not far from here that remembered it snowing in mid summers day many years ago.

[Pocster]

44 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Don't assume "April showers" means rain.

That reply is golden 

[SteamyTea]

10 minutes ago, pocster said:

That reply is golden 

Dirt boy, that though never crossed my mind.

[saveasteading]

I relayed your info to the family. They report back that the ufh is already off because there is plenty of heat from a hint of sunshine. Big windows to that section of the building. 

Promising for the winter heating performance.

 

Will be interesting come the summer.

Blackout curtains touching the floor, stair and veluxes as a cooling flue, open the wbs for stack ventilation, and park a van in front of the windows?