Leaving Heating on Whilst on Holiday

Normally if I was on holiday for 2 weeks at Christmas I would switch the heating off and turn the water off just in case. With very cold weather predicted I just wonder if it would be advisable to leave the heating on the programmer but turn the thermostat down a bit. As I see it if it still freezes I am stuffed so I might aswell switch the heating and water off. What do other people do?

Kevin

Reply to
Kevin
Loading thread data ...

Have a boiler with built in frost protection.

You can get external frost thermostats which will run the heating if the temperature drops below a certain point, even if the other controls are off.

Alternatively, you can just turn the main room thermostat to a low setting.

Reply to
Andy Hall

You have a choice for the heating. Either leave the system on set to 8C or thereabouts, or turn the system off and drain it down. What you don't want is the system off, but full of water. Personally, for 2 weeks, I'd leave the system on, provided it was a sealed system.

As for the water side, rather than heating side, my system is entirely mains pressure, so I would turn off the stopcock and open all the taps to drain it down.

Christian.

Reply to
Christian McArdle

Maybe this is the time to fit a programmable thermostat (such as the Honeywell CM67) in place of your existing room stat, if you haven't already got one?

This would enable you to:

  • use the 'holiday' setting so that the heating is off* while you are away, but comes back on -to normal temperature settings - (say) the day before your scheduled return, so that you come back to a nice warm house
  • use the stat as a frost stat while you are away. * 'Off' isn't actually off - but simply controls to a much lower specifiable temperature (typically
5 degrees) and switches the heating on if the temperature falls below this. So the heating will only come on if it is necessary to prevent everything from freezing up.

This is what I do when I go away in the winter.

Reply to
Set Square

Going away in the winter I turn the room stat down to minimum (8-10) and the HW down to 40 (or off it's for more than a week and not predicted to be sub zero for much of that). The system's quite spread out, so the reserve of heat in the HW tank will protect much of the pipework. We have to be careful to leave a door open into the kitchen though - it's unheated with 2 outide walls and only 100mm insulation in the flat roof.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Hodges

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.