Who’s Caved and Switched the Heating On Already? - Your Home

RE: Who’s Caved and Switched the Heating On Already?

Judith — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:58:27 +0000

@editor yesterday we used 12kW of electricity for heat, so a cost@15p per kWh of £1.80.

It makes me (and the cat) purr, keeping the house warm. Some of the house heat came from solar gain, and some of the electricity was also from solar. I consider that not exporting at15p, soon to be 12p means it all costs the same. Back in the autumn we flicked a coin and fixed the incoming Cosy tariff for a year. That might be one of our best decisions.

Fuel oil prices are eye-wateringly silly at present.

RE: Who’s Caved and Switched the Heating On Already?

JohnnyB — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 10:16:03 +0000

Last year I turned it off mid March as Homely was tending to over heat the house. Over the last month Homely hasn't been doing that and the current plan is to leave in on. As others have said the cost is minimal now we have solar and batteries.

RE: Who’s Caved and Switched the Heating On Already?

Majordennisbloodnok — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 10:02:37 +0000

I have to put my hand up and say we haven't turned just the heating off since the heat pump was installed. Obviously, we've put it all into holiday mode when we've been away for a significant while and we also turn the heat pump off entirely for any Octopus saving sessions, but we just leave the thing to do hot water and heating the full year round; if it gets cold enough in an unseasonal snap for us to need to heat the house, the heat pump is able to and will kick in to do the necessary.

RE: Who’s Caved and Switched the Heating On Already?

Toodles — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 08:48:24 +0000

@editor Having instructed Homely to provide a set comfort level, should the weather not allow us to enjoy that level of comfort, then Homely will. Theoretically, we need not switch the heating to the ‘off’ position at all, but, I will do so when I start wearing shorts again! Warm Regards, Toodles.

RE: Who’s Caved and Switched the Heating On Already?

Andrew J H — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 04:14:55 +0000

@bash similar here, it cost me 33p yesterday to use 4.8kw so no point in switching off yet as it is so cheap.

RE: Who’s Caved and Switched the Heating On Already?

Bash — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 01:55:42 +0000

@editor

Ours is costing about 50p per day, so i can't see any reason to switch it off 😀

RE: Who’s Caved and Switched the Heating On Already?

Mars — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 21:57:16 +0000

Flipping the topic... who’s going to turn their heating off first this year? It’s still pretty chilly where we are.

In our case the situation is slightly different this year. As many of you know our heat pump failed, so we’re currently running on kerosene. With the recent insanity in oil pricing linked to the Iran situation, I’m now looking for any excuse to turn the heating off because I'm not hugely motivated to pay over £1.50 + VAT for a litre of fuel.

Last autumn I was asking who would hold out the longest before turning it on. Now the question is the opposite: Who’s brave enough to turn it off first (I suspect it might be me 😉) and whose system will do it automatically?

RE: Who’s Caved and Switched the Heating On Already?

Sheriff Fatman — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 12:21:57 +0000

We've been running our Ecodan system, installed in June, using the Havenwise app from the start, and it had basically been doing hot water only heating until the last week or so, when we've started to notice occasional heat coming from the radiators at times, which is the first opportunity we've had to experience heat pump controlled heating around the house.

MELCloud still reports that the pump is spending over 75% of the day idle, but the time spent providing heating is now higher than that for hot water for the first time since it has been installed.

We're now playing around with the scheduling to get the settings right for the house, which has so far involved going from a target temperature of 20C, up to 21 and, as of yesterday evening, back down to 20 again when we collectively decided it was a bit 'toasty' in the early evening. The MELCloud thermostat is located halfway up the stairs, away from any radiators, so we're monitoring the individual room temperatures using cheap digital temperature displays purchased from Amazon to see whether we need to touch the fully open TRV's in any of the rooms at any point.

Sad as it sounds, it's quite exciting to actually feel the system doing its thing for the first time. It's surprising how little heat seems to be produced by any of the radiators, but they're obviously doing what's required when needed. It's noticeable too how little solar generation there's been on the generally cloudy days so we're actually started to use grid power towards the end of some days, confirming my instinct that increasing the battery storage from the current 10.5kWh capacity would definitely be a worthwhile investment at some point.

RE: Who’s Caved and Switched the Heating On Already?

GrahamF — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 18:25:29 +0000

In the last week, the external temperature in south Manchester has varied between just under 10C and 19C. We certainly have had the heating turned on 24 hours of the day and don’t consider it to be caving at all. The logic is simple to me. I like the temperature to be 20C. I don’t care which month of the year it is, I always want it to be at least 20C.

We installed our new toy in August, so I have been impatient to play with it. I have been slowly edging the weather compensation curve downwards to optimise performance. The heat pump has been doing a great job of keeping the downstairs internal temperature at, or very close to, 20C. Upstairs is settling at around 21C.

My wife and I frequently observe how comfortable it is with consistent temperatures throughout the house.

RE: Who’s Caved and Switched the Heating On Already?

JamesPa — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 17:23:30 +0000

Mine went on today. IAT has dropped two degrees over the past few days.