New born baby- heating on all night?

[davecon70]

Evening all

This is quite topical given energy prices but any advice would be appreciated!

We’ve just brought our newborn baby home and trying to figure out the best way to keep the house warm without our gas bill doubling. I should point out that we are end of terrace in a 1930s house with solid walls and it is never warm despite double glazin, double rads etc.

My solution so far has been to set up the hive thermostat in the bedroom along with a hive TRV with the heating on manual. The rad would be set to 17C and thermostat which should mean that heat is only delivered to that room as all the other rads are off.

how does this sound? does It make a difference to energy consumption if the boiler is only feeding one rad or is that a waste of firing it up and other rads might as well be on? Are there any other solutions which could be better like a mobile oil radiator?

cheers for any input!

 

[big-all]

new baby should be in your room both to keep a eye on him/her and for body warmth from mum and dad heat to the room can be in cot or in your bed but off course ideas may have changed in the last 35 years ??
but initially perhaps 6 months to 1 year in the cot then play by ear

 

[RandomGrinch]

or in your bed but off course ideas may have changed in the last 35 years ??

A lot has changed in the last 35 years!
The guidance (see attached) to help avoid SIDS is to NEVER have the baby sleep in the same bed as you - the room temperature should also be around 18°C, but being as low as 16°C is 'OK'

Our situation was somewhat similar to the OP's - 2up/2down Victorian mid-terrace, solid walls, but relatively stable temperature.

Our solution was to set Nest to 17.5°C for the downstairs rooms. We had a Moses basket downstairs and took shifts - one of us snoozing on the settee with bab in the basket (in a baby sleeping bag of appropriate tog), and the other having well deserved and undisturbed sleep upstairs.
It's also useful having bab in the one place (and at the correct temperature) for the constant stream of visitors.

It might not work for everyone, but it worked for us

Our bab is now three and going through a growth spurt, hence some very disturbed nights...
...and posts on here at 3:30 am!

@davecon70 best wishes, good luck, get as much sleep as you can and enjoy the journey!

 

[oldbutnotdead]

Unless you manually turn all the other rads off they will still be heating whenever the Hive calls for heat.
House always cold may well be undersized rads.
Oil filled rad is a good local heat source but remember you can heat 4 rooms on gas for the same price as 1 room on electricity.

 

[Bodgedbuild]

Your heating absolutely DOES NOT need the heating turned up for a baby. I speak from being a father who's child spent nearly a week in hospital, 2 days of which were in a coma from pirexia. My oldest boy was being looked after by his grandparents at the time and they wrapped him up warm and turned the heating up because he had a cold.
Something I have learned from that is that a baby will cry when too cold but fall asleep when too hot. I was told by the doctors at the time that it is infinitely safer to keep a house too cool than it is too warm.

 

[johnny2007]

Congratulations for your new baby.
18 degrees is fine for a baby, as long as he's not naked.
There's no reason why your baby should sleep in the same room as you, as long as you can hear him crying (baby monitors help if your walls are soundproof).
If you turn all other radiators off, you will save energy.
I turn all rads upstairs off during the day because we're downstairs and turn the boiler radiator setting to 2 once the desired temperature is reached.
This seems to be a lot more economical than run the whole system at setting 5.
Of course in the evening we open the radiators upstairs, set each trv to the correct position which we worked out with a thermostat, and set the boiler heating at 5.
When you want to heat your whole house, it's important to have a balanced system and trv set correctly.
Lots of videos online explaining how to do it.

 

[CBW]

Congratulations on the baby, and I too speak from experience. You can as stated overheat a baby, and you’d be giving the best start to being someone who is nesh. We lived in a terraced house, which did get cold, but only put the heating on when required, and not through the night and my kids are fine.

 

[kidgreen61]

We had frost on the inside of our windows when I was a kid, didn't do us any harm.

Fooking hated the cold ever since though

 

[Mottie]

My son and daughter in law were anal about the temperature in the baby's room. They had a baby monitor that showed the temperature in the room and an alarm went off if it was too hot or cold.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

We had frost on the inside of our windows when I was a kid, didn't do us any harm.

Fooking hated the cold ever since though

Same here. Little to no hot water, just one warm room in the house, and some of the coldest winter of the last century. When I was old enough, I would go off camping in the snow. Never did me any harm.

 

[davecon70]

Thank your for all the replies so far. Just to clarify that most of the other rads have hive TRVs on them or are turned down to night mode.

last night worked ok from a hating sense at least as when the temperature in the bedroom went under 18C the boiler fired up and kept the room up to temperature. It won’t be turned up higher than that.

from what everyone has written the gas CH is going to be the ‘cheapest’way to deliver heat, although with current gas prices it’s going to be an expensive winter for everyone.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

last night worked ok from a hating sense at least as when the temperature in the bedroom went under 18C the boiler fired up and kept the room up to temperature. It won’t be turned up higher than that.

You could try every alternate night, using an oil filled thermostatic controlled electric heater, checking the consumption versus cost via meter readings. Using a CH to heat just one room, might prove to be more expensive, with all the losses and wear and tear, than an electric oil filled heater.

 

[nitro23456]

My son and daughter in law were anal about the temperature in the baby's room. They had a baby monitor that showed the temperature in the room and an alarm went off if it was too hot or cold.

Good job they weren't anal with something else or you might not be a grandparent.

 

[Mottie]

Good job they weren't anal with something else or you might not be a grandparent.

Lol. I did think that after I posted!

 

[ericmark]

We have 9 programmable TRV's so as with your hive we can select which rooms are heated and when, that does seem the best option, but we still have some old mechanical TRV heads, and they have a huge range, which it likely why they have *123456 on them rather than degrees C.

I found set to between 2 and 3 it would start closing at around 15ºC but not fully closed until around 20ºC, so to maintain a room at 20ºC it could be anywhere between 2 and 3. Where the electronic type are so easy, if you want 18ºC you set to 18ºC.

However I also found the lock shield valve setting also important, TRV's are slow, and we would not heat the rooms over night, so in the morning the central heating would start, all radiators got hot, the the TRV's closed, but since radiator already hot they continued to heat the room, so temperature would over shoot, it took a long time to slowly trim the lock shield valve to stop radiators heating up too fast.

But heating up one room is just like only heating domestic hot water, the boiler runs at minimum output for a very short time, I use oil, and realised there is a lot of pipe work between boiler and cylinder which has to get hot to heat the DHW, so I was not sure if electric would be cheaper, however using just time to control boiler it seems using oil is far cheaper than electric, as electric so over priced.

But easy with gas, it is sold by the kWh, as is electric, oil sold by the litre, and no meter to show how much I use in a day, but gas is so cheap compared with electric there is no question, gas heating is cheaper.