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Are you having “thermostat wars” in your house? In my home we are stuck in the usual sex-based temperature divide, with my husband continually trying to turn the thermostat down, while I nudge it back up again.
But this winter, we have also become interested in a different way of changing our central heating settings in a bid to save money on gas bills.
It involves turning down the temperature of the water that the gas boiler supplies to radiators. If done right, it’s possible to do so without noticeably lowering the home’s air temperature.
This could reduce gas bills by £60 to £100 a year, depending on the initial temperature setting and layout of your house. But you have to be aware of a few potential pitfalls.
Which heating systems are suitable?
The hack works with condensing gas boilers, the most common kind. They have been the only type of gas boiler it has been possible to install since 2005.
In most houses, these supply hot water both to radiators and to taps, and the temperature of the water in these two systems can be adjusted separately. This is about turning down the temperature to your radiators only.
A word of caution is that people should not attempt this process if they have a hot water cylinder, where heated water is stored. Here the water needs to be kept at 65°C or over, to prevent the growth of bacteria that can cause Legionnaire’s disease.
But these days most people have combination boilers that heat up water on demand, without using a cylinder.
How does it work without making house colder?
You might think that not-quite-so-hot water in your radiators would make your house colder. But that’s not automatically the case.
A comfortable home air temperature is usually somewhere between 19°C and 21°C. Most gas boilers send out water to radiators at a “flow temperature” of anywhere from 55°C up to as high as 82°C.
A high flow temperature means that the boiler may need to function just for short bursts, often just a few hours in the morning and the late afternoon and early evening.
But it is usually possible to achieve the same daytime temperatures with a lower flow temperature and just have the boiler functioning for more hours in the day.
So, as well as turning down the flow temperature, you may need to adjust your central heating timer, to make sure the radiators have been on for long enough before you get up in the morning.
Having central heating working lower and longer has some side benefits: radiators aren’t too hot to touch, and the boiler does not automatically turn off and on so many times during each period of use, which helps prolong its life.
And in larger rooms, it can mean the air temperature is more consistent. “With boiling hot radiators, if your chair is very close, you’ve got an uncomfortable hot spot. If your chair is on the other side of the room, you’ve got to wait to warm up,” said Bean Beanland, founder of the Heat Pump Federation.
Why does it work?
But the main reason to turn down the flow temperature is how it affects the boiler. The chief benefit of condensing boilers is they are more efficient than older models because they have a second way of heating water, as well as the primary method of burning gas fuel.
Burning fuel releases exhaust gases that escape to the outside through a flu pipe – but these exhaust gases can be very hot, so this is wasted energy. In condensing boilers, that energy is used to heat up water returning from radiators, which means it burns less gas for the primary heating method. That burning less gas is what leads to lower fuel bills.
However, for technical reasons, that secondary method only happens efficiently if the returning water is at a temperature of 55°C or ideally, lower still.
Water returning from radiators is typically about 20°C cooler than output flow temperature because radiators give out heat to the air – which is after all their job. That means the flow temperature should be no more than 75°C. And the further below that you can get it, the more efficiently the secondary method works, and so the more savings you can make.
According to the Heating Hub, most homes should be able to have their boiler at a flow temperature at about 60°C, while newer homes with good insulation may manage 50°C or 45°C.
Yet, some boilers are installed with a flow temperature of 80°C, and may not be functioning in condensing mode at all.
The key thing is to give it a try and see what feels comfortable, said Mike Foster, chief executive of the trade association the Energy and Utilities Alliance. “Every heating system is different. But you can turn it down a bit, see if it works, and if it does, then you will have saved some money.”
It also might need to be adjusted for the weather, said David Farmer, a building physicist at the University of Salford. “It depends on how warm or cold it is outside.”
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A study by Farmer found that people who reduce their flow temperature from 70°C to 60°C may be able to cut their gas use by about 8 per cent, equating to about £60 a year off a typical gas bill. If their flow temperature was set higher originally it would be more.
It might not be a huge saving, but unlike the approach of turning down your thermostat, this is one change that doesn’t take any self-sacrifice.
It does, however, create even more potential for domestic disagreements over whether a home is warm enough.
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