Heating On/Off or On that is the question?
This question has been doing the rounds on social media and there is not a simple answer to the question but I will explain why keeping your heating on continously is more efficient in certain situations.
If you are running a heating system in on/off or on continously it is true that running the system at a lower temperature constantly will be more efficient. Unfortunately the constrains of how you run the system may be limited by the control capability of your system. For many years UK homes have been installed with an on/off thermostat which is like driving your car at 100 mph on the motorway then stopping for a bit and then driving the car at 100 mph again. It causes a lot of strain on the system components and is not the most efficient operation. Even some of the smart thermostats use this same technique although the technology has been available for many years to modulate the boiler to a lower flow temperature. Doing this introduces the opportunity for weather compensation delivering even further efficiency improvements. Reducing a modern condensing boilers temperature also raises the prospect of the boiler operating in condensing mode. The issue is that older less expensive boilers do not have separate temperatures for hot water and heating so you can only reduce the boiler temperature down to a point where you can still provide adequate hot water temperature.
Depending on the boiler manufacturer there are ways around this.
So from the above reducing the temperature of the heat source as much as possible is important even if you decide to go with on/off control.
Due to heat pumps most efficient point of operation being as low a flow temperature as possible, keeping the heat pump on all the time and during periods on non occupation or overnight use set point setback by no more that 3 degrees so that the heat pump can recover to normal occupied temperature easily using minimal amount of energy.
With this configuration along with weather compensation optimised to minimise cycling and steady operation will deliver highest operating efficiency.
However for air to air heat pump this is where it can be a real advantage as it is ideally suited to intermittent space heating as it can rapidly provide a comfortable room environment if the system is sized correctly but again ramping up from very cold conditions uses a lot of energy.
Get in touch if you need help with deciding best way forward to improve efficiency of your heating system. Contact us.