Things are heating up outside at this time of year. That means you don’t want things heating up inside where they shouldn’t. Although we’re still a few months away from going around and bleeding all the radiators (I hope I haven’t suddenly got you wondering where your radiator key is!), as summer comes around the corner, there are a few simple things you’ll want to check, so you know heating is all good for summer.
This checklist covers three simple areas, all with the aim of lowering energy wastage and hopefully getting those bills down too!
Check your boiler
Don’t worry. This isn’t a tip to have a go at becoming an amateur engineer. There’s a little feature in oil boilers that anyone with one will want to check out (gas boiler owners, you’ve dodged this one). You might not know this, but the thermostat on your little central heating hub isn’t the only thermostat in a typical oil heating system. If you venture out in the garden to your boiler, there should be another thermometer attached to the boiler.Â
You should notice that it has a temperature dial going from around 60°C to 90°C. It will probably be cranked up high by default, which helps the boiler push itself to heat your home. In the summer, your boiler doesn’t need to go full throttle, so turn the dial down to the 70° range, and I can promise you won’t even notice a difference.Â
Check your valves
Speaking of moving dials around, the summer is also the ideal time to get your radiator valves turned down. If you have valves with numbers, get them turned from 4 or 5 down to 2 or 3. Again, you shouldn’t notice any difference at all.Â
If you don’t have valves with numbers, it might take a little guessing game to judge when a valve is half-open, but you should figure it out quickly enough. And if you have old musty valves you want to replace, I would recommend you click here to view some straight radiator valves you might want to pop in place for better heating control; especially if you’re someone who can’t stand those cheap-looking white plastic caps (especially if they magically have chips and cracks).
Check your timings
Your family schedule will adjust in the summer, so make sure that if you have the heating set to come at certain times that it is adjusted to. Many people fear their thermostats, especially if you have one with just three buttons and a menu you have to tap tap tap a million times to use.
I find if you have little ones that will be off school, the heating needs to be moved to later in the morning if you have the type of house where there’s always a chill in the air. The same goes for evening times. I find that dinner time is much later in the summer than a typical school week, and that is when we would have the heating set to come on. You might want to have it on for a shorter burst later in the evening, rather than wasting energy for hours.Â
That goes double for those days where you end up having a barbecue. I hate going back into the kitchen to get something from the fridge and noticing the heating has been blaring for an hour with all the windows and doors open. I’ve found that having an alarm on your phone for the evening is the only way to combat heat loss. When it goes off, and if heating is on, I have a quick scoot around the house to make sure windows and doors are closed.
There you have it. Three easy ways to check you’re not wasting heating this summer. And it didn’t even involve calling someone out!
*This is a collaborative post