What is the ideal home temperature?

What is the ideal temperature to heat my home?

Often at home it becomes a competition as to what temperature to have the thermostat set to., with different occupants having different ideas of the ideal temperature.

Crazy as it may seem,1 in 20 people have their thermostat up to 30 degrees. with the average household having their thermostat set to 23 degrees.

Yet shockingly each degree can cost you an extra 10% on your heating bill a year. Making the difference between 17 degrees and 30 degrees a 130% increase. A one hundred and thirty percent increase! Even the difference between 22 degrees and 18 degrees is a massive rise in the amount of money that is taken away from you every month.

The problem with overpaying on your bills and not achieving a perfect home temperature is more often due to a lack of patience and misunderstanding of thermostats.

We know only too well how it feels to come home to a cold home after a chilly wet day out. Everything is wet, cold, and uncomfortable. But should you turn your heating up when it’s cold? The answer has to be No. You shouldn’t turn your thermostat up when it’s cold or down when it’s hot (because it’ll make no difference).
Room temperature’ is defined as a comfortable ambient temperature, generally taken as about 20°C”. And the definition stays similar across all the sources, which usually quote a 20-22 degree” mark.

How Warm Should Your House Be According to the UK Government

The UK government used to recommend a temperature of 21 degrees for living rooms and 18 degrees for bedrooms.

The evidence that’s available points to 18°C being the most appropriate threshold, with little to support the 21°C recommendation, particularly for the fit and healthy. What it also made clear was that the ageing makes our bodies less able to regulate our temperature, and less able to detect the cold, so a recommendation that just relied on people adjusting the temperature to one that is comfortable might put older people in danger.

The False Assumption Costing Everyone a LOT of Money!

So your reaction will either be one of complete surprise or total indifference because it’s obvious when you spend a few seconds thinking about it. But, it’s just not something that most of us think we need to consider. Your thermostat tells the boiler to keep heating until the house is a specific temperature. It maintains a set temperature, nothing more.

Most people are still in a Victorian mindset and, during cold weather, they crank up the heat. And while that is a perfectly reasonable course of action, it’s not what your thermostat does.

Your thermostat is, instead, a limiter, not an accelerator. A minimum and a maximum temperature limiter rolled into one.
If you’re cold and you turn your thermostat up to 30 degrees in an attempt to make your home hotter. You’re essentially saying to your boiler you couldn’t reach 20 degrees, so give 30 degrees a try with the rate of heating staying the same.

The key is that turning the thermostat higher does not heat the home any quicker, at 20 degrees if you turn up the temperature to 24 it would take no less time to reach that temperature than if you turned the stat up to 30 degrees. Turning it higher just means you’re more likely to overheat your home and therefore waste heat by opening windows etc to get the temperature down!

A Nest thermostat gives you a head start in maintaining the correct temperature by ensuring that your home is heated for when you arrive home, therefore avoiding the temptation to crank up the temperature because its cold when you get in. Also its learning capabilities, if you are patient initially will result in you having to worry less about getting that ideal temperature.