The Heating Is Going Back On — But Are You Heating Your House Intelligently?
The Heating Is Going Back On — But Are You Heating Your House Intelligently?
“Before turning the heating up this October, make sure the heat you're already paying for is going where you actually need it.”
October brings one of those annual household decisions that rarely has a precise date attached to it.
Do we put the heating on?
One evening feels distinctly chilly. The next afternoon is surprisingly warm. Eventually somebody decides enough is enough, the thermostat is adjusted, and the heating system wakes up after its summer rest.
But perhaps we are asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking “When should I turn the heating on?”, perhaps we should ask:
“How can I get the most useful warmth from every kWh of energy I use?”
That is a much more interesting question.
Whether your home is heated by gas, electricity or a heat pump, simply producing heat isn't the objective. The objective is to put enough heat into the places where people actually need it, when they need it, while losing as little as reasonably possible.
And there can be a surprising difference between the two.
A Warm House Isn't Necessarily an Efficiently Heated House
Imagine two identical houses.
Both consume exactly the same amount of energy for heating.
In House A, the living room is comfortable, bedrooms are slightly cooler, unused rooms are maintained at a sensible background temperature and the heating reduces automatically when nobody needs it.
In House B, the hallway is roasting, an unused spare bedroom is unnecessarily warm, one radiator barely heats at all and somebody opens a window because another room has become too hot.
The energy consumption might initially be identical.
The useful result certainly isn't.
This is why heating efficiency isn't simply about boilers and heat pumps. It is also about control and distribution.
1. Start by Asking Where You Actually Need Heat
One of the simplest experiments you can perform requires no special equipment.
Walk around your house on a cold evening.
Don't just look at the thermostat.
Feel what is actually happening.
Which rooms feel too warm?
Which feel cold?
Which rooms are occupied?
Which rooms are empty?
Are you heating a guest bedroom to the same temperature as the living room?
Is the hallway warmer than the room in which you are sitting?
Is the kitchen being heavily heated while cooking is already adding heat?
We often heat houses according to habit rather than need.
That doesn't mean unused rooms should necessarily be allowed to become extremely cold. Excessively cold rooms can create other problems, including condensation and damp.
But there is a considerable difference between maintaining a sensible background temperature and keeping every room at living-room comfort temperature all day.
2. Your Heating Schedule Should Follow Your Life
Many heating programmers are still configured around a traditional pattern:
Heating on at 6:30 am.
Heating off at 9:00 am.
Heating on at 4:30 pm.
Heating off at 10:30 pm.
But does anyone in the house actually live according to that timetable?
Working from home has changed things enormously for some households.
So have retirement, flexible working, school schedules and changing lifestyles.
Your heating schedule should reflect when rooms are occupied, not what somebody programmed into the controller years ago.
For example, somebody working from home may need one study warm during the day.
That doesn't necessarily mean the entire house needs to be heated to exactly the same temperature.
Similarly, if everyone leaves at 8:00 am, there may be little point in the system continuing to heat the house as though it were occupied.
Before winter properly arrives, it is worth examining the programmer rather than simply increasing the thermostat.
3. TRVs Are Useful — But Only If You Actually Use Them
Thermostatic radiator valves, or TRVs, are wonderfully simple devices.
Yet many households appear to use them in only two positions:
fully on and fully off.
A TRV is intended to regulate the temperature around the radiator. As the room approaches the required temperature, the valve reduces the flow of hot water through that radiator.
That gives us the beginnings of room-by-room control.
A living room may need to be warmer than a spare bedroom.
A frequently used bathroom may need heat at particular times.
A room containing equipment that produces heat may need less heating than expected.
The important point is that every room doesn't necessarily require the same treatment.
Smart TRVs can take this further by allowing schedules for individual rooms, although buying lots of electronic controls doesn't automatically save energy.
A badly configured smart heating system can be just as wasteful as a badly configured conventional one.
The intelligence still has to come from understanding how the house is used.
4. Is Your Heating System Properly Balanced?
Here is something many householders rarely consider.
Suppose the radiator nearest the boiler or heat pump receives plenty of hot water while one at the far end of the system struggles to get warm.
The temptation is obvious:
turn the heating temperature up.
But that may simply make the already-warm rooms even hotter.
The real problem could be the distribution of water through the system.
Radiator balancing aims to ensure that the heating water is distributed appropriately throughout the system rather than taking the easiest route through a few nearby radiators.
If some rooms heat extremely quickly while others remain stubbornly cold, balancing is one of the things worth investigating.
It isn't glamorous.
There isn't usually an exciting gadget involved.
But sometimes improving an existing heating system is more environmentally sensible than buying another piece of technology.
5. Bleeding a Radiator and Balancing It Are Not the Same Thing
These are often confused.
If a radiator is cold at the top, trapped air may be preventing hot water from filling it properly. Bleeding the radiator may solve the problem.
But if radiators around the house warm very unevenly, the problem may involve balancing.
And if a radiator is hot at the top but persistently cold across part of the bottom, that can indicate a different problem again, such as restricted circulation or accumulated material within the system.
The useful lesson is:
Don't automatically turn the thermostat up because one room is cold.
First ask why that particular room is cold.
6. Zoning Can Make a Big Difference
Modern heating controls can divide a house into zones.
That might mean:
upstairs and downstairs;
living areas and bedrooms;
frequently occupied and occasionally occupied rooms;
separate parts of a larger house.
This makes intuitive sense.
Why should bedrooms necessarily follow exactly the same heating schedule as a living room?
Why should a home office require the entire house to be heated during the working day?
True zoning can require plumbing and control changes, while smart radiator controls can provide a degree of room-by-room management in suitable systems.
But the principle is more important than the technology:
heat according to use.
7. Heat Pumps Change the Way We Should Think About Heating
This becomes particularly interesting with heat pumps.
A traditional heating system has encouraged many of us to think:
cold house → very hot radiators → warm house quickly.
A heat pump generally works most efficiently when it doesn't have to produce unnecessarily hot water.
That can mean operating for longer periods while supplying larger radiators or underfloor heating with lower-temperature water.
The house is maintained rather than repeatedly rescued from being cold.
This can feel strange at first.
A radiator doesn't necessarily have to feel extremely hot to be heating a room successfully.
In my own home, where I use an air-source heat pump alongside solar panels and battery storage, this changes the way I think about heating completely.
I am not simply asking:
“Is the heating on?”
I am thinking about when electricity is available, how much the house needs, what temperature the heating system needs to operate at and how all these parts work together.
The house becomes an energy system rather than simply a collection of appliances.
8. Flow Temperature Matters
One particularly important setting is the heating system's flow temperature.
This is the temperature of the water being sent around the heating circuit.
With a heat pump, demanding unnecessarily high flow temperatures generally makes the machine work harder.
The interesting challenge is therefore:
How low can the flow temperature be while still keeping the house comfortably warm?
There isn't one universal answer.
It depends on factors including:
outside temperature;
insulation;
heat loss;
radiator size;
underfloor heating;
required indoor temperature;
how continuously the heating operates.
This is where properly designed systems become important.
Bigger radiators aren't necessarily there because the house needs more heat. Their greater surface area can allow the same required heat to be transferred into the room using cooler water.
9. Weather Compensation Is Surprisingly Clever
Imagine that it is 14°C outside.
Your house needs some heating, but probably not very much.
Now imagine it is -3°C.
The building is losing heat much faster.
Why should the heating system behave identically in both situations?
Weather compensation allows a suitable heating system to adjust its operating temperature according to outside conditions.
Mild weather?
Lower flow temperature may be sufficient.
Very cold weather?
The system can increase it.
Rather than repeatedly switching between HOT and OFF, the heating system tries to match the heat being supplied to the heat the building is losing.
This is particularly useful with heat pumps.
The clever part isn't producing more heat.
It is producing only as much as is necessary.
10. Don't Fight Your Own Heating System
Some household behaviour is wonderfully contradictory.
We turn the heating on.
The room becomes too hot.
We open a window.
The heating notices that the room is getting colder.
It produces more heat.
We have accidentally created a system for heating the garden.
Ventilation is essential, particularly for managing moisture and indoor air quality.
But ventilation and uncontrolled heat loss are not the same thing.
If a room is regularly overheating, investigate why.
The answer may be the heating controls rather than the window.
11. Find the Heat Thieves
Heating intelligently isn't only about producing heat.
It is also about keeping it.
October is therefore a good time for a simple thermal detective exercise.
Check:
windows and doors for draughts;
loft insulation;
curtains that block radiators;
furniture positioned directly in front of heat emitters;
unused chimneys;
loft hatches;
poorly insulated pipework;
permanently open windows;
badly fitting external doors.
A thermal camera makes this fascinating because invisible heat loss suddenly becomes visible.
But you don't need one to begin.
On a cold, windy evening, your hands can reveal a surprising number of draughts.
12. Don't Block the Radiator You Are Paying to Heat
Interior design sometimes works against physics.
A radiator is installed.
Then we put a sofa directly in front of it.
Or hang heavy curtains over it.
Or build furniture around it.
We then complain that the room takes too long to warm.
Radiators need to transfer heat into the room.
If much of that heat is warming the back of a sofa, the arrangement isn't helping.
Before spending money modifying the heating system, look at what is immediately around each radiator.
Sometimes the cheapest efficiency improvement involves moving a piece of furniture.
13. Measure Before You Guess
This is perhaps my favourite approach because it turns household energy use into an experiment.
Don't simply decide that the heating “seems expensive”.
Collect some information.
Record:
outside temperature;
indoor temperature;
electricity or gas consumption;
heat-pump electricity consumption if available separately;
thermostat settings;
heating schedule;
particularly sunny or cold days.
If you have smart meters, energy monitoring, solar monitoring or battery data, there may already be a considerable amount of information available.
Change one thing and observe what happens.
For example:
Week 1: existing settings.
Week 2: slightly lower heating flow temperature.
Week 3: revised room schedules.
Week 4: adjust TRVs in little-used rooms.
You are now doing something far more useful than following a generic energy-saving tip.
You are learning how your house behaves.
14. Comfort Still Matters
There is a danger that discussions about energy efficiency become competitions in discomfort.
That isn't the objective.
A cold house isn't a badge of environmental virtue.
People differ enormously in their needs, and older people, babies and people with some health conditions may need particular care over indoor temperatures.
The aim should therefore not be:
“How cold can I tolerate my house?”
It should be:
“How can I provide the comfort we actually need with the least unnecessary energy?”
Those are very different questions.
15. Try an October Heating MOT
Before winter really arrives, spend half an hour examining your heating system.
Ask yourself:
When is the heating actually scheduled to run?
Does that match when we are at home?
Are unused rooms being heated unnecessarily?
Are the TRVs sensibly adjusted?
Do all the radiators heat properly?
Are some rooms consistently hotter than others?
Is furniture blocking radiators?
Are there obvious draughts?
If I have a heat pump, is the flow temperature higher than necessary?
Is weather compensation available and correctly configured?
Can I measure my consumption before and after making changes?
Don't necessarily change everything at once.
Make one or two sensible changes and watch what happens.
That way you can discover what actually works.
The Greenest kWh May Be the One You Use Properly
We often discuss domestic energy efficiency as though the only objective is to consume fewer kWh.
Of course reducing unnecessary consumption matters.
But there is another side to efficiency:
getting more useful service from the energy we do consume.
If 1 kWh of energy helps keep the room where you are sitting comfortably warm, it is doing something useful.
If that same energy overheats an empty bedroom, disappears through a draught or results in somebody opening a window because another room has become too hot, something has gone wrong.
So when the first genuinely chilly October evening arrives, don't automatically reach for the thermostat and turn it upwards.
Walk around the house first.
Check the radiators.
Look at the TRVs.
Examine the schedule.
Think about which rooms you actually use.
And, if you have a heat pump, consider whether it could provide the warmth you need using a lower and more intelligently controlled flow temperature.
The objective isn't simply to use less heat.
It is to make every unit of heat you pay for work harder for you.
And that may be one of the easiest places to start making your home both greener and cheaper to run.
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