Halve your heating costs

A question about : Halve your heating costs

One point from a workshop I attended this weekend.

Paul Mobb recommends the power of the wrist.

1.Get a screw driver and turn the thermostat on the hot water tank down to 55 degrees rather than the 70 it is set at presently. Hot enough to run a bath/shower without adding cold water.

2. When you are at home, operate the heating at 18 degrees in the day time and at 14 degrees at night

Those two actions will save you about half your heating costs.

I would add get energy saving lamps as weel. Each one will save you about £7 per year, so put them where you have the lights on the longest time. My first ones lasted eight years as well.

Best answers:

• I would consider 55 degrees a little low for prevention of the more dangerous bacteria.
  From memory 65 was the recommended safe temp to kill bugs, though 60 seems OK from these figures, killing Legionella in mins as opposed to many hours at 55.
  https://www.iphe.org.uk/databyte/legionella.pdf
  A fully lagged tank will keep water hot for hours, so nowhere near half cost on the hot water side..
• dc
  How likely is it that your water supply is going to have bugs in it before you heat it?
  And most of the time it will be sitting there for hours anyway.
  All i can tell you is that this guy has been experimenting seriously for the last 5 years and he saves half his fuel bill this way.
• How much does this bloke charge for his workshops then, sounds like he has a masters degree in wrist action?
• The point that people always ignore when they crow about changing to compact fluorescents is that they only save money when they're switched on. To save Ј7 a year, a CF would have to run for over 3h17m a day 365 days a year, or over 6 hours a day for the 6 months when the evenings are dark. Out of the 16 bulbs in my house, just the two that are on for long hours are fluorescents. That way I get 90% of the saving for 13% of the cost.
• Thanks for the tip about the boiler. I'll turn mine down as I've never seen the point in adding cold water when you've paid to heat it up.
• I must confess I learned long ago to keep the water temperature on my boiler at just slightly above the perfect temperature for a nice hot shower. It always struck me as ludicrous that people paid to have boiling hot water, only to have to add cold water to make it a nice comfortable temperature for baths or showers.
• If it's stored water you should have it above 60C.
  For the reasons dc stated @ https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...56&postcount=2
  If its not stored then it should be OK at a lower temp, dont forget although your tank temp may be 55C at some point along the pipes it may be just the right temp to bread bacteria. So the hoter the tank the less colder spots will be in the pipes.