Should I Turn My Boiler Off At Night?

Turning your boiler off at night may seem like common sense, but read this first – you may not be saving money by doing so.

Should I Turn My Boiler Off At Night?

How well insulated is your home? If you have good insulation and sealing around doors and windows, your home will probably retain sufficient heat overnight.

If any of these are lacking, your home can drop in temperature quickly and no new heat will be generated. That leads to damp walls as water condenses on them, which increases heat loss and also causes costly damage. You could even get frozen pipes, which can burst.

Remember the cost of bringing the temperature back up to 18–20 °C in the morning. If the temperature has gone to below 10 °C overnight, your boiler has to work extra hard to heat up in the morning, whereas it could have been ticking over with a thermostat on 15 °C.

It is not necessarily cheaper to leave the boiler on but you may not be saving quite as much energy as you think, because of the extra energy used the following day.

Using the thermostat and timer

To have your boiler effectively switched off overnight without isolating the power there are two options.

Thermostat

You can set the thermostat to its minimum temperature or a mid-range going to bed in the evening. This leaves a safeguard for extremely cold nights.

Timer

Modern boilers have a timer. You can set it to go on and off at different times every day of the week. The timer overrides the thermostat, so even if the temperature goes below the setting, the heating will not come on.

Pre-heating

The timer and thermostat should not affect a combi-boilers preheating process. You could hear your boiler fire up, even when the heating is off and you’re not using hot water. This is normal and is to ensure you have hot water as soon as you turn it on.

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