Bad GCH pushing my GSH

When we first moved into our second Transition House (which I'm going to call TH2 from now on and TH1 for our previous house), the first thing I noticed was that none of the radiators had thermostatic valves. That didn't really bother me, because I didn't really use them in my previous house. A room was either being used with radiator on and the door was open, or it wasn't radiator off and door shut.

The second thing I noticed was that there is no wall thermostat to control the heating - this I thought very odd and further investigation showed that there is no control for the hot water temperature either! It's very old.

The central/water heating does have a timer and it can be on twice a day for the hours we choose. There is also a switch to decide whether it is off, heating the water only, or radiators and water.

Due to my panic last week, the radiator heating is off and the water heating is only when we need it. The result of course is that the house is very cold, but I am pleased with the graph :) - we are now only using the same amount of gas in TH2 with no heating, limited hot water and cooking as we were in TH1 when the lovely gas-condensing-combi boiler was keeping us lovely and warm with hot water on demand.

So I guess I need to go through a few of the major differences between TH1 and TH2.

Insulation
TH1 - Cavity wall insulation and 250mm loft insulatation
TH2 - None.

Windows
TH1 - Double glazed and no draughts between the glazing and the walls.
TH2 - Double glazed, but badly fitted, so draughts between the windows and walls.

Doors
TH1 - Came with the double glazing - insulated and double glazed, no draughts.
TH2 - Oh my, you can see light underneath the front door!

Heating and hot water
TH1 - Gas-combination-combi boiler, thermostatic valves for everything, totally controlable.
TH2 - Gas, timed, no thermostatic controls.

Cooking
TH1 - Electric
TH2 - Gas

Ability to make changes
TH1 - Limited only by money and time (we owned the place)
TH2 - We rent this house, so can't make major changes

So what next?
Well, there are plenty of things we can do within the scope of our tenancy agreement to help us save money on our bills (and of course reduce gas use and all the associated environmental effects).

The first thing we have done is shut the doors to the rooms that we are not using, so that we don't have heat escaping to those spaces.

The next thing I am going to do is sort out all of the draughts. That will be the next blog post.