What are you all up to

While I gather it is "best practice" to fit the room stat as well as TRVs these days, to give what I think is called boiler interlock, I fail to see how this gives the best results.

The whole point of TRVs is to allow each room to be set to the required temperature and to receive heat on demand from the TRV.

If one room has priority and the system is turned off when it reaches the set temperature, then the other rooms cannot always keep their set temperature.

We are not normally early risers, unless we have something special on, so our heating comes on at 08.30 and goes off at 10.30.  In the afternoon it comes on at 16.30 at present, and goes off at 22.30.  Evenings will have less heating as the weather improves.

On very cold, dull days we do turn it on again if we are at home, but as we are south facing we get a lot of heat into the house when it is sunny and use a fan to  circulate  it to the colder rear rooms, driven by "free" power from the PV panels.

Bedroom rads. are off. Just take a hot water bottle to bed (and MOH), during evening I chuck another log on the fire. Saves on CH gas bills.

The problem with having TRV's in the same room as the thermostat is that whilst that room may reach the temperature the rest of the house can be very cold, at least that is what we found. The TRV's control the heat in the actual system, if the room with the main thermostat is up to temperature it won't heat anything. We had an immediate improvement from the Power Flush but asked BG to come in and move the thermostat from the lounge to the hall. As its wireless we can move it around if we wish. As a result we have had much better balanced heating around the house. We do have TRV's which are turned down quite low in the rooms we don't use a lot and they are pretty effective. Perhaps we are in a more fortunate position than some in that we don't have to stint on heating. We save by being away from the house for about 100 days a year when the heating is completely off.

David

I usually turn the heating down at night too. 15 degrees is warm enough when you're in bed covered with a duvet. If the temperature is too high, it can get much too hot under the duvet. I turn it back up when I get up in the morning.

We upgraded our thermostat and it's in the hall with a non thermostat radiator, we've got TRVs in most of the rooms and if it's cold we set the max to around 22C. We haven't run the timer on our new boiler yet as we just adjust the main thermostat when needed, we move it to 14C overnight but so far it hasn't had to work overnight, the insulation must be ok. We adjust it when we get up, lovely after years of early starts for work and timers to match, no set times any more. 

Our system is 37 years old so doesn't have all the bells and whistles, works perfectly well although probably no as efficient as a modern system, but doesn't break down!  We also have a log burner which I light in the afternoon and let it burn to about 10pm.  So heating system isn't on all day and we never leave it on overnight.

 Well, what a grey and dismal wet morning it is here in East Kent.Persistent rain,so had a lie in.No B/Yd today due to the wet,rained off !!Makes a change .Suppose I,ll have to do some housework instead .

Triky you don't have to do anything, put your feet up and have a day off

Also started off grey, dismal and fine rain but sun peeping through now, oh and I'm doing nothing today

Ours is coming up on 29 years now, has never needed any boiler repairs, but I did renew all the TRVs about 10 years back, and fitted a new timer about 5 years back.

The rad in the hall is the "bypass" so has no TRV and is always on. The hallway is large, this rad is very small and has the coat hooks above it, so great for drying wet things, and for having a nice warm jacket to put on when going out.

We keep discussing getting a new, more efficient boiler, but it would take many years of fuel saving to break even, so we have kept putting it off. Seems modern boilers are not as long lived as the old ones anyway.

As we have a "granny flat" there is a separate boiler for that, so if the main one fails we would still have heating and hot water there to use.

TRVs in unused rooms and bedrooms are set to the bare minimum and doors left open to allow air circulation, we prefer a cool bedroom. Lounge/dining room, bathrooms and kitchen/diner are on 20-22 degrees. Despite the size of the house bills are reasonable, especially, as David said, as we are away for around 4 months each year at present.

In the caravan we use 13 degrees overnight on the Alde, and it does kick in for short periods in cold weather.

Was a grey start here too but sun has just broken through and some patches of blue sky are appearing.  Looking forward to some "free solar heating" today.  OH is off tp put on the W/M to use the electricity.

If it stays nice she is going to try out the new car later on..