Advice on oil consumption

[SooBee]

We have an oil fired boiler (2 yrs old and serviced annually).

Bearing in mind the cost of heating oil, I wondered if it is maybe more economical in cold weather to keep the eating on low all day at, say, 16.5 degrees, rather than having it go off in the morning and then come on again about 6 pm at 18 degrees plus. In other words, is it better just to keep it ticking over and keeping the chill out rather than blasts of heat a.m. and p.m.?

I am at home most of the day but we have an eco oil heater (run off the elec.) which heats the room that I use most quite efficiently.

Grateful for advice.
PS It's a large detached house so no heat benefit from neighbours!

 

[oilhead]

All you can do, if there is no other control over the system, is try each method over a period and compare the comfort against cost.

 

[roberta1000]

Do the experiment by all means but this has been asked in different guises on many forums in the past. The answer is that it ALWAYS takes more energy (i.e. costs more) to keep a house or anything else at a given temperature above ambient than it does to let it cool and then reheat it. (Naturally if you only heat it to 16 instead of 18 it will be cheaper but you could do that on the timer anyway).

There are other considerations of course, such as comfort and the length of time it takes to bring the house up to temperature, but keeping the house heated will certainly cost more than reheating it each time.

Do you think it would cost more or less to keep warming your electric kettle throughout the day or to only boil it when it was needed?

 

[ALEC1]

the critical factor is actually how long you are there...a lot of houses have people in the, 18-20 hours a day..

 

[SooBee]

the critical factor is actually how long you are there...a lot of houses have people in the, 18-20 hours a day..

As stated, I'm in the house most of the day.