Amid the onset of the cost of living crisis, homeowners are looking at ways to save money on their energy bills, but turning boilers off may not be a sensible option.
That’s the view of experts who say they could use up more energy by being turned on and off, depending what type of boiler you have. With the average energy bill set to rise to £3,549 a year in October, an 80 per cent increase from the current figure of £1,971, householders have been dreaming up ways of saving a few quid, but this idea is not necessarily a good one, reports the Mirror.
If you have an old, uneconomical boiler then switching it off during the summer makes sense. But if you have a modern boiler, turning it off in the hotter months is “completely unnecessary”, according to Boiler Central.
They said: “It is always recommended to keep your boiler on as long as you have a new boiler and it is working properly. Modern new boiler replacements do not use any gas whilst they are not required, so even in summer you can leave your boiler on.”
For example, gas combi boilers only use gas on demand when you turn your taps on or turn up your thermostat. As we head into autumn and winter many households may decide to turn their combi boiler off at night – but that might actually be the less efficient option.
“One major flaw in this plan is that a gas boiler firing itself back up every morning tends to use a higher amount of energy than just leaving it on overnight,” Boiler Central said. They also advised that if you have a tankless heating system or combi boiler then the best thing to do is use your thermostat, which measures the temperature of the room it is in and sends a signal to the boiler.
This lets the boiler know whether it is needed to heat up, to increase the temperature in the house, or turn off, to decrease the temperature. Instead of turning your boiler off every night, one option to help save energy that might be even more efficient is to use your thermostat and to set your temperature lower if you don’t need as much heat.
If you set your thermostat at a lower temperature then your boiler will usually only start itself up when the temperature drops to that specific level. So if you think 20C is widely regarded as ‘room temperature’, but you can cope with 18C and put a jumper on or a small blanket to save a bit of cash, then there is always that option.
Boilers are clearly made to be turned on and off because they have a button that does exactly that. But boiler makers do not expect this to happen regularly, Boiler Central added.
The firm went on: “Stopping and starting a boiler that is meant to be left on, which is the expectation these days, could cause problems. We’re not saying it will, but it may not be the best course of action.
“If you have an older boiler, it might be more temperamental than the newer models. Stopping and starting an older boiler could do more harm than good, especially in extreme cases where you’re worried if you turn it off, it may not even start back up again, leaving you with no heating at all.”
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