Mad Eejits

Saving Money and Oil 24 Jul 07

We made one little change, at the end of last year, that has saved us more money and heating oil than I thought possible. That change was simply fitting a new digital central heating controller, which cost us less than £30, and has probably paid for itself several times over already.

Since I moved into the house, nearly 7 years ago now, there has been a pattern to our home heating oil consumption, which has required purchasing 900 litres of oil every March and November. Obviously, we use more oil to heat the house in winter and then our consumption rate slows down in the warmer (allegedly!) summer months. Now, however, we haven’t just broken that pattern, we’ve smashed it to pieces because, as we head towards the start of August, we still haven’t needed to order oil since last November.

I knew something was up when we reached May without having to order more oil, but with news reports about the warmest April on record, I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. I think its safe to reach those conclusions now.

So what really made the difference? Our old heating controller was old, I mean really old. It was mechanical and had two ‘on’ periods per day. That is, only two and always two. No more, no less, unless you switched the whole thing off. It didn’t feature a ‘boost’ button and its ‘advance’ option required either one click or three clicks to switch it off depending on whether or not you’d now entered a time when the heating would be on anyway. Get this wrong and the heating times were messed up for the rest of the day.

The little on and off pegs, for the timer, didn’t push in and pull out, but instead had to be rotated around the timer’s clock face. Due to their shape and size, the closest you could place them together was about 45 minutes in real time. This meant that in summer, when we only wanted the heating on for a very short time to heat water (we don’t have an additional pump on the boiler to be able to separate the radiators and hot water), we ended up having the heat on for at least an hour and a half every day. Even with all the radiators turned off, just the heat coming off the pipes could make it uncomfortably warm.

In the winter, with only two ‘on’ periods a day to play with, we’d use one to heat the house in the morning and then we’d have to use the other to heat the house for the whole evening. This normally meant having the heat on for more than 2 hours (say 6pm-8:30pm) making the house toasty (and sometimes too warm) by 8 o’clock just to make sure that by 10 it wasn’t freezing again.

Now we’ve joined the digital age, things are so much better. Sure, the new controller only has one extra ‘on’ period each day, but that’s all we need. We can bring the house to a comfortable temperature, on winter evenings, and then have a little ‘top-up’ later on. Plus we can choose to have between zero and three ‘on’ periods active, as required. With a minimum ‘on’ period of just 10 minutes, this certainly makes things more bearable in the summer. Additionally, we have boost and (sensible) advance features and the option of setting different times for every day of the week.

I’ve rambled on much longer than I really meant or needed to, but in summary, if your heating controller is getting on in years, fitting a new one could save you a small fortune. Plus, you could reduce the amount of oil you consume, lowering the amount of emissions you’re creating each year. Now that’s certainly a win-win situation.

Posted by Nev in Going Green , Money with tags heating, home, money, oil

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