house heating
 

is it more economical to leave the heating(combi boiler) on 24/7 or put it on the timer?
can run it on a lower setting when left on

i mean leaving the radiators running 24/7 in cold coditions rather than having the timer on, it,s nice and warm all the time in the house but the heating is running on a lower setting.

if its a combi it will be anyway for your hot water. I don't think they run economically at low temps because of latent heat or something.

has your boiler not got a timeclock?

Combi's (as do all boilers) will always have a pilot light - is that what you mean by 'on'?

If so, then this will be your most economical setting, not on the timer. However if you are planning on leaving your house for a while I suggest you set teh timer to heat the house for approx 30mins per day to avoid frozen pipes.

Stat should have an anti-frost setting - below ?10C it comes on anyway.

bttt

It all depends on how well insulated your house is, how efficient your heating system is and it's thermal output. Check also if you have any radiators which don't have a themostatic valve. If you do, then this radiator will always be on and needing out put from the boiler.

In our old house (60s built) we found it was marginally cheaper to have the heating on 24/7, so the house was a constant temp than being on a timing circuit to heat up the house for the times we were in.

We also found that if you say switch off the heating at 10pm, then by 5am it's very cold (especially if it's minus 5 outside and windy!). Even by 6:30 when we normally got up, the house still wasn't fully up to temperature (boiler presumably going non-stop during this period), and it wasn't until about 8:30am when the house was a nice constant temp throughout - ie just when we were leaving! Same thing if the heating was off during the day - we needed to have the heating on by about 3pm on very cold days for the house to be warm for us coming home.

Having the heating on 24/7, the boiler just needs to to top-up every so often when the temps in any rooms drops enough to open the thermostat on the radiator.

We've now got a modern well insulated house, and find that we can get away with only having the heating on for a few hours per day and there's also a master thermostat in the hall which will switch everything off if it's too warm.

John