Heating A Cold House

The cold spell seems to have kicked in now and I have heard it mentioned on the news on TV that this could be one of the worst winters for many years. We shouldn’t complain really as it has been an exceptionally mild winter do far and at some point or other the cold did have to arrive.

The house feels cold almost all the time at in conditions like this though and there has been talk on the TV of whether it is cheaper to run the heating all the time or just turn it on when you need it. The theory is that if you turn the heating off the house goes cold and then the boiler has to work flat out to heat it up again and therefore it might be cheaper to just leave it on all the time. The energy companies are in universal agreement that it is better and cheaper to only have the heating on when you need it. A lot of the heat in a house simply vanishes through the walls so if the heating is left on all day you are paying for the heat to go outside.

My own issue at the moment is that we have a fairly large radiator in the hall and we rely on that to heat the upstairs as well using the thinking that heat rises. It works to a degree and most of the year round the one radiator is enough for the job. But in very colds spells such as we are having now I sometimes think it would be good to have a small radiator on the landing and there is actually a good spot to put one. But that is going to cost a couple of hundred pounds or more, maybe much more! My plan is therefore to fit a wall mounted convector heater such as the Dimplex DXC30TI. It is wall mountable and has a built in timer and will work out at about a quarter of the price (or less) of having a radiator added to my central heating system. It doesn’t mean having the carpets taken up to fit and I can even fit it myself in just an hour or so as it just plugs into a 13amp socket. During warmer spells I can just turn it off or turn the thermostat down. Sounds ideal to me.