Saving gas

In an earlier post I said that we were going to experiment with our central heating as I would be at home much more than in the past.  We decided to put the central heating on permanently and then use the thermostat to control the temperature.

At night time, we turn the thermostat to about 14 degrees so that, if it was an extremely cold night the heating would kick in for a short time.  During the day, we set the thermostat to about 16 or 17 degrees when we are in the house and need some extra heat.  If we are doing a lot of physical work or go out we turn the thermostat back to about 14 degrees.  In the evening when we are sitting for longer periods of time, we may push the thermostat up to 18 or 19 degrees - particularly if it is very cold. Interestingly, we have rarely put the thermostat higher than that but would have done in the past when the heating was only set to come on twice a day for a few hours.  The outcome of all this is that we have used 264kWh LESS gas this winter than last winter (Nov to Feb period) - but it cost £24 more as the price of gas has increased since last year.

If any of you reading this try a similar experiment then there are some caveats.  One is that this is not a scientific experiment and I have no idea how last winter's temperatures compared to this winter's temperatures.  Another is that you need to be very disciplined about adjusting the thermostat or you will waste gas.

Based on this limited experiment, we intend to continue in the same way for the reminder of the year and  will then compare the overall usage with last year to see how we really fared.