Heating Traditional Homes: Continuous vs. Timed Heating

Introduction
When it comes to keeping an old house warm, homeowners often debate whether it’s better to leave the heating on continuously or to use it only at scheduled times. This question is especially relevant for traditional homes in the UK and France, which commonly feature thick stone or solid brick walls, older heating systems, and less insulation than modern builds. These older buildings have unique thermal characteristics – they can retain heat due to heavy construction, but they can also lose heat through drafts and uninsulated surfaces. In this blog post, we delve into the science and practical considerations of “heat or not to heat”: continuous vs. timed heating. We’ll explore common beliefs, expert findings, and tips for balancing comfort, cost, and the health of your home’s structure.

Continuous vs. Intermittent Heating: The Common Beliefs
A popular notion is that keeping your heating on low all day uses less energy than turning it on and off, because it prevents the house from getting icy cold. Proponents argue that reheating a cooled-down house uses more energy than maintaining a steady temperature, so continuous heat should be more efficient. In older, chilly homes, the appeal of never letting the temperature drop is understandable – no one likes coming home to a cold house or waking up to freezing floors. In fact, some heating installers advise clients to heat continuously for “healthy” walls and comfort, rather than letting the home cycle between warm and cold. This aligns with the intuition that an old stone house acts like a thermal battery, slowly absorbing and releasing warmth.

However, many energy experts and organizations say this is a myth. According to the UK’s Energy Saving Trust, the best way to save energy and money is to heat your home only when you need it, rather than keeping the heat on all day. The reasoning is simple: any time your home is warmer than the outside, it’s losing heat. The higher and longer you maintain that temperature, the more total heat loss occurs through walls, windows, roofs, and drafts. In other words, you pay for heat that literally leaks out of the house. As money-saving expert Martin Lewis puts it, leaving the heating on low constantly means your boiler must continually burn fuel to counteract ongoing heat losses, which is inherently inefficient.

This especially applies if your home is poorly insulated or draughty – a common trait of traditional buildings – where much of that constant heat will escape and “your boiler [will have] to work even harder” to keep up.

So which view is correct? The truth lies in understanding your building’s characteristics and finding a balance. Let’s break down the factors at play.

Heat Loss, Insulation & Energy “Leakage”

Heat escapes through various parts of a house (typical loss percentages shown above). Without sufficient insulation, a home continuously loses heat through the roof, walls, windows, floors, and draughts, meaning a boiler must keep replenishing that lost heat.

Fundamentally, a heated house behaves like a leaky bucket. Heat flows out through any available path: thin single-glazed windows, uninsulated solid walls, the roof, gaps under doors, etc. The rate of heat loss is proportional to the temperature difference between inside and outside. This means a warm house on a cold day is constantly losing heat to the outdoors – faster when the difference is large, slower when it’s closer. If you keep your home at a high, steady indoor temperature all day, you’ll experience continuous heat loss. For a poorly insulated property, the losses are significant and the boiler/furnace has to frequently kick in to replace that escaping warmth.

By contrast, if you only heat at specific times (morning and evening, for example), the house is allowed to cool down when no one is home or at night. While you do have to reheat the space later, the energy saved during the off-period often outweighs the extra energy needed to warm the house back up. Why? Because during the off period, the overall temperature difference (and thus heat leakage) was lower. A French energy site illustrates this with an “energy sieve” analogy: in a badly insulated house, continuous heating means large constant losses, whereas with intermittent heating the temperature drops and slows the losses, yielding a net savings despite the reheating spike. In fact, the less insulated your house is, the more you gain by turning the heat off when you can – the energy you don’t use during off-times is energy you don’t have to pay for.

Think of it this way: if you’re pouring water into a leaky bucket, you can pour slowly but continuously (continuous heating) or in shorter bursts with pauses (timed heating). If the bucket leaks quickly (an old, uninsulated house), continuously pouring wastes a lot of water, whereas stopping the pour at least when you don’t need water will waste less over time. For a tight bucket (a well-insulated house), the difference between continuous and intermittent pouring is smaller – the bucket holds water (heat) well either way.

The Role of Insulation

Insulation and air-tightness slow down heat escape. A well-insulated traditional home (perhaps one that’s had retrofits like loft insulation, cavity or internal wall insulation, better windows, etc.) will hold its temperature much better during off-periods. This means if you turn the heat off, the house cools more slowly, and it won’t take as much energy to reheat later. In such a scenario, the savings from not heating continuously will be relatively smaller (because you weren’t losing that much heat anyway), but there’s still no penalty for turning it off beyond some comfort lag. On the other hand, if the house is a thermal sieve (“passoire thermique”), it cools rapidly once heat is off. Here, you save a lot by not trying to maintain high temperature all day, since the interior would relentlessly lose heat and force the system to keep running.

Experts note that the degree of insulation is a key factor: “The more insulated the building, the less heat escapes and the more the interior temperature stays stable when heating is off. The energy savings from intermittent heating will be small [in a well-insulated home]. Conversely, in a leaky building, the interior cools quickly when heating stops…that’s where a programmer yields the most benefit. In other words, intermittent heating is most advantageous in a poorly insulated old house, because you avoid pumping heat into a structure that can’t hold onto it well.

Thermal Mass: How Traditional Walls Retain Heat

What about those thick stone walls and old brickwork? Traditional French farmhouses or British period homes often have high thermal mass. Materials like stone, brick, and thick plaster absorb heat slowly and release it slowly. This can work for and against you:

Slow to Heat Up: If your heating is off and the house cools down, it can take hours to warm those big walls back up. Even if the air heats relatively quickly (especially with radiators or forced air), the surfaces might stay cold for a long time, radiating chill into the room. Many old-home dwellers know that scenario: the thermostat says 20 °C but the stone floors and walls feel cold. This is why people say “it takes a while to heat up” a stone house. If you run a short heating cycle, much of the energy might go into charging up the walls, not just warming the air. By the time the walls are comfortably warm, your heating period may be over.
Slow to Cool Down: The flip side is once those walls are warmed through, they act as a heat reservoir. They will keep rooms warmer for longer when the heating is off, gradually releasing stored heat back into the interior. In an 1800s stone cottage scenario, if you’ve heated all day, the building fabric itself is warm by evening; turn off the boiler and the house might only drop a few degrees overnight rather than plummeting. This can make continuous low-level heating seem effective – the home never gets bone-cold, and the heating system may cycle on only occasionally to top up. Heavy, massive construction retains heat, so temperature fluctuations are smaller.

Crucially, thermal mass affects how beneficial intermittent heating is. Consider two extremes: a medieval stone castle vs. a lightweight prefab hut. In a massive stone building, an overnight heating shut-off might only let the interior temperature fall a little, because the walls were storing heat – thus, you don’t save much fuel by turning the heat off for those hours (and you avoid the risk of the castle getting damp or chilly). In a flimsy low-mass structure, turning off the heat makes temperatures plummet quickly, so you save every minute the heating is off, but you’ll also notice the cold sooner. As one source humorously put it, “it’s pointless to install a sophisticated programmer in a stone castle – it just won’t cool enough for big savings… whereas a lightweight building’s consumption is almost directly proportional to heating hours”.

For many traditional homes, which tend to be on the heavier side, this means continuous heating at a low level can indeed maintain comfort with the walls gently radiating heat. Yet, unless those walls are also well-insulated, they will still leak heat outward eventually. The heat retention moderates the indoor swings but doesn’t eliminate energy loss. In practice, homeowners often compromise: for example, one UK family in a 200-year-old stone cottage found that if they kept heating on all day the house stayed toasty, but their oil consumption was too high, so instead they heat for a few hours in the evening to warm the house and then rely on residual warmth and a wood stove to carry them through the night. The house never drops to the frigid teens Celsius anymore, but they avoid burning oil 24/7. Their experience highlights the trade-off: comfort vs. cost, and finding a sweet spot where the house’s thermal mass helps maintain livable temperatures without constant firing of the boiler.

Cost and Energy Efficiency Considerations

From a pure energy-cost standpoint, most research and expert consensus lean toward timed (intermittent) heating being more economical in the majority of situations. The UK Energy Saving Trust’s formal position is that “leaving the heating on all day [even at a low setting] leads to greater heat loss and higher overall costs” – you should only heat your home when required. In plain terms: heat what you need, when you need it, and don’t pay for heat when you’re not benefiting from it.

To be fair, the cost difference between the two approaches can vary: if you have all rooms set to a moderate temperature and your heating system only kicks in occasionally (thanks to good insulation or mild weather), running it “continuously” might not cost much more than scheduling it – essentially, the thermostat would make it operate in a similar pattern anyway. But if keeping the system “on” means it’s frequently firing to maintain temperatures, you’ll see higher fuel or electricity usage over the day compared to a scenario where it was off for long stretches. Think of an old house on a very cold winter day: maintaining 20 °C throughout might require many boiler cycles, whereas allowing it to drop to say 15 °C while you’re at work and overnight will use significantly less energy overall. Even though some extra fuel is needed to reheat from 15 to 20 °C in the evening, that amount is typically less than what would have been spent keeping it at 20 all day when nobody was home.

A 2024 French analysis backs this up: they debunk the idea that “cutting the heat costs more because you have to reheat the cooled house.” In fact, for the same house, the energy saved during the off period usually outweighs the extra needed for reheating, especially if the house is not well insulated. It emphasizes that intermittent heating becomes more beneficial as insulation quality decreases (the more your house “wastes” heat, the more you save by turning the heating off).. The conclusion was that continuous heating is not more economical from a scientific perspective, except perhaps in special cases, whereas intermittent heating – with some precautions – usually yields fuel savings while still maintaining comfort.

Modern Boilers, Heat Pumps, and Efficiency Quirks

One wrinkle in the simple logic above comes with modern high-efficiency heating systems. Condensing boilers (common in both France and the UK since the mid-2000s) and heat pumps operate most efficiently at lower output and steadier run-times. A condensing gas boiler, for instance, achieves peak efficiency when returning water is cool enough for it to condense moisture and recover latent heat. This often means it likes to run at lower flow temperatures for longer durations, rather than short high-temperature blasts. Similarly, heat pumps (which draw heat from air, ground, or water) are better at maintaining a low-level heat supply; they aren’t as efficient when constantly stopping and starting or when asked to raise the temperature quickly by a large amount.

What does this mean for continuous vs. timed heating? Some heating experts argue that if you have a modern condensing boiler or a heat pump, the “low and slow” approach can maximize the system’s efficiency. Instead of forcing your boiler to cycle on/off, you set it to maintain, say, 18–19 °C constantly with a lower water temperature, and it will condense more and waste less heat up the flue. The idea is that the efficiency gains of the appliance could partially offset the extra heat loss from running all day.

A service called Heat Geek in the UK champions this method in certain cases: they note that for households who are home a lot (evenings and weekends) in older buildings, running the heating continuously at a low setting (with all rooms’ radiator valves open and the boiler turned down) can be comparable in cost to on/off heating, if it allows the boiler or heat pump to run in its most efficient regime. This is not a universal truth, but rather a nuanced point: the type of heating system and how it’s set up can influence the optimal strategy.

To summarize the factors that influence costs and efficiency, consider these key points:

Insulation Level: As discussed, a well-insulated house retains heat well, so leaving heating on continuously doesn’t waste as much energy; an uninsulated or drafty house will burn a lot more fuel if heated nonstopenergieplus-lesite.be. Intermittent heating is most beneficial in leaky homes, whereas in a snug home the difference might be modest.
Thermal Mass: Older, heavy masonry buildings cool slowly. Turning the heat off for a few hours might only drop the temperature slightly, so you save less fuel (and pre-warming the house again is easier)energieplus-lesite.be. Lightweight buildings drop fast, so you save more by turning off, but must reheat more laterenergieplus-lesite.be. Traditional homes with high thermal inertia fall in the first category – they inherently moderate temperature swings.
Heating System Type: If you use a heat pump or modern condensing boiler, continuous low-grade heating can run the system in a more efficient mode (condensing more or avoiding on-off losses). By contrast, a standard older boiler doesn’t gain efficiency by running continuously – it will simply cycle on and off as needed to hold the temperature, with no special efficiency bonus, so you might as well turn it off when not needed.
Heat Emitter Type: Homes with radiators or convector heaters experience relatively fast temperature response; they heat the air quickly when on and cool fairly fast when off. These systems lend themselves to on-demand heating because you can warm the house in a short time.. In contrast, systems like underfloor heating or thick radiant floors have a slow response – they take a long time to heat up and cool down – which aligns better with continuous or at least longer heating cycles. Most traditional UK/French homes use radiator-based central heating (which responds faster), but if you have, say, an old house retrofitted with underfloor heating in a new slab, you might favor keeping a constant low heat to avoid long warm-up times.
Occupancy Patterns: It sounds obvious, but your daily routine matters. If nobody is home for large portions of the day, keeping the heat on is largely wasted energy. On the other hand, if people are home most of the time (e.g. retirees or work-from-home situations in a big old house), then maintaining a baseline temperature might make more sense for comfort – you’d be using energy either way since the house needs to be warm for occupancy. Many choose a middle ground of a lower “setback” temperature when the house is empty (more on that below).

In general, for cost-saving and energy efficiency, the majority of scenarios point to timed heating as the winner. A formal experiment advice from MoneySavingExpert suggests trying it both ways and checking your meter: run your heating constantly at a low setting for a week, then run it on a timed schedule for a week (in comparable weather), and see which uses more energy. This empirical approach accounts for your specific house and system. Most often, you’ll find the constant heating uses more units of energy.

But the comfort difference is also something to factor in – which approach kept you feeling cozier or which fit your lifestyle better?

Comfort and Living Conditions in Old Buildings

Saving money is important, but so is living in a comfortable, healthy environment. Traditional buildings have some particular needs in this regard. Let’s look at comfort, condensation, and how continuous vs. intermittent heating affects the building itself.

Comfort: Consistent Warmth vs. Temperature Swings

One clear advantage of continuous heating is consistent comfort. You don’t experience those chilly periods waiting for the house to warm up. Every room can be kept at a stable, cozy temperature whenever you need it. For someone working from home in a big old house, or families with young children or elderly members who feel the cold, this is a big plus. No one likes shivering at 5 AM waiting for the radiators to catch up! With timed heating, especially if programmed too conservatively, you might endure some cold mornings or come home to a cold house if the schedule wasn’t set just right.

On the flip side, scheduled heating (when done smartly) can maintain comfort while avoiding unnecessary heating. The key is to program the system (or use a smart thermostat) so that it pre-warms the house before you wake up or return home. Modern controls can even learn how long your house takes to heat up and turn the boiler on early so that by the scheduled time the target temperature is reached. In both the UK and France, programmable and smart thermostats are common solutions to balance comfort and efficiency – they “ensure your home is warm when you need it and saving energy when you don’t”.

Using features like multi-period scheduling or phone-controlled thermostats, you can fine-tune the heating to match your routine, minimizing the discomfort of a cold house. Yes, the temperature will drop when off, but ideally only when you’re asleep (and don’t mind bundling under a duvet) or away.

Another comfort aspect is that continuous low heating avoids large temperature swings, which some people find unpleasant.

With intermittent heating, you might experience a cycle of warm when on and noticeably cooler by the end of an off period. In a big stone home, for instance, the upstairs might remain reasonably warm between heating cycles (especially if heat from one period slowly diffuses through the structure), but some rooms could get quite nippy by early morning if the heating’s been off since midnight. Some occupants mitigate this by using supplemental heat in critical areas (e.g., an electric heater or a log burner in a living room during off hours) rather than heating the whole house all night.

In summary, continuous heating maximizes comfort but at a cost, while timed heating can maintain adequate comfort with a bit of planning and perhaps a tolerance for cooler periods (many find sleeping in a cooler bedroom ideal, for example). Each household might have a different comfort threshold – the “right” approach keeps you warm enough without overspending.

Condensation, Damp, and the Health of the Building

One of the strongest arguments in favor of keeping some heat on in a traditional building is to prevent condensation and damp problems. Old houses are often more prone to moisture issues: they may have solid walls that get cold, single glazing, or inherent humidity from things like old cellars or ground moisture. When warm moist air inside hits a cold surface (window glass, or a cold wall), condensation occurs – water droplets form, leading to damp patches and eventually mold growth.

Intermittent heating can exacerbate this because of the warm/cold cycling: during the heating-on phase, the air warms up and can hold more moisture; then if the heating goes off and the temperature drops, that moisture can suddenly deposit onto those now-cooling walls and windows. Repeating this cycle daily might lead to chronic condensation issues in winter.

A modest, constant background heat helps keep the fabric of the building above dew point, meaning surfaces won’t get as cold and moisture-laden air is less likely to condense on them. The Property Care Association (PCA) – specialists in damp and timber preservation in the UK – explicitly advises that “a modest but constant background heat is preferable to intermittent heating” in order to maintain a higher ambient temperature in building materials and reduce condensation risk. In practice, this might mean never letting the house fall below, say, 12–15 °C even at night or when away. Many local councils and housing authorities echo this: they recommend keeping some heating on in cold weather to avoid mold growth, especially in older or less-insulated homes.

The idea is that preventing your walls from getting too cold (and damp) not only protects your health (nobody wants black mold on the plaster) but can also save energy in a roundabout way: a dry wall is a better insulator than a wet one. If condensation soaks into the walls, it can increase thermal conductivity (a damp wall loses heat faster). Plus, you’ll later spend energy re-evaporating that moisture when you heat up again.

The French perspective is similar. As noted in a 2024 French energy guide, many heating professionals prefer continuous low heat largely to prevent the indoor humidity from reaching saturation and causing condensation/mold in poorly insulated homes. When a house cools down too much, the relative humidity rises (since cooler air holds less moisture) until water starts condensing on cold surfaces. Therefore, one should avoid letting the house “freeze” entirely. The guide suggests not dropping the indoor temperature below about 12 °C even if you’re away, as a precaution against moisture problems and also to protect pipes from freezing. This is essentially a background heating strategy: you can still turn the thermostat down and save energy, but maintain a minimum base temperature in the house to keep the fabric dry and safe.

Ventilation is the other half of the equation. Heating alone won’t solve damp issues if excess humidity isn’t dealt with. Old buildings need a combination of heat and ventilation – the heat to raise surface temperatures and drive out moisture, and ventilation to carry that moisture away. Simply cranking the heating intermittently without ventilation could make condensation worse in off cycles. So, if you’re doing intermittent heating, it’s vital to also ventilate (use extractor fans in bathrooms/kitchens, or open windows briefly) to expel humid air. And if you opt for more continuous heating, you should still ensure some fresh air flow to avoid stagnant humid air. In essence, the formula for a healthy old house in winter is often background warmth + ventilation + insulation where possible.

Insulation (e.g., adding internal or external wall insulation, secondary glazing, etc.) helps eliminate the cold surfaces that cause condensation in the first place.

To recap, from a building health standpoint, continuous low heating can be beneficial: it keeps the structure warm and dry. Intermittent heating is not “bad” if managed carefully, but one must avoid letting the home get too cold and damp. If you notice condensation on windows or walls each morning after the heating has been off, that’s a sign you might need either a higher minimum temperature or better ventilation. A compromise some make is to never let the thermostat fall below, say, 14 °C, even during off periods – this provides a floor temperature that prevents extreme chill and moisture issues, without heating to full comfort level all the time. It’s also common to use dehumidifiers or positive ventilation systems in older buildings as adjuncts, so that moisture is controlled without relying solely on heat.

Zoning and Smart Control: A Tailored Approach

One strategy that both saves energy and maintains comfort/dryness is to heat different parts of the house differently. Most traditional homes have uneven usage – for example, you might spend all evening in the living room, while the formal dining room or spare bedroom stays empty. If you run a single heating schedule for the whole house, you could be wasting heat in rooms no one enters that day. This is where zoned heating or simply using thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) on individual radiators becomes very useful.

The user who inspired this post mentioned they keep their heating on continuously but each room is individually controlled. This typically means every room has a thermostat or a TRV that regulates that room’s radiator, or possibly smart radiator controllers. In such a setup, even though the boiler might be technically “on” all the time, it’s not actually firing at full power constantly – each room only calls for heat when its temperature drops below its setpoint. So if you like the lounge at 20 °C but you’re fine with bedrooms at 17 °C and hallways at 15 °C, the system can maintain those differences.

Continuous heating with zoning ensures you’re not overheating unused spaces, and in a way, it mimics timed heating because different rooms heat at different times as needed. For instance, the guest room radiator might stay off most of the day (saving energy) until perhaps an hour before bedtime if at all. Meanwhile, your living area might get steady heat from late afternoon into the evening.

With programmable TRVs or smart home systems, you can create schedules per room (e.g., bedroom warms up at dawn and in the evening, kitchen in the morning, etc.). This approach can give the best of both worlds: the system is always available to provide heat (no lengthy delay to start up from cold), but heat is only delivered where and when required. It’s an excellent approach for large old houses where you simply don’t need every corner at 21 °C all day. Many modern smart thermostats and radiator valves available in both the UK and France support multi-zone scheduling through apps, making it much easier to implement zoning without expensive separate plumbing loops.

Even without fancy gadgets, you can manually set some TRVs lower in rooms you’re not using – effectively those rooms will cool down (saving energy) while others stay warm. Just be mindful of extreme cold spots in the house, as very cold rooms adjacent to warm ones can in some cases become moisture trouble zones. It’s usually fine, though, to keep little-used areas cooler as long as they don’t drop to near-outdoor temperatures.

In summary, zoned control lets you partially heat continuously. Instead of an all-or-nothing whole-house heating strategy, you maintain comfort where you need it and avoid waste where you don’t. This is highly recommended for anyone with a larger or older home and can often be implemented by simply installing thermostatic valves on radiators (most UK and French hydronic systems can use these). The UK’s Energy Saving Trust and other bodies note that using your thermostat (and TRVs) smartly is key to saving money – “use your heating system only when and where required”. The days of one manual boiler switch for the whole house are gone; take advantage of modern controls to fine-tune.

Finding the Right Balance

After examining all the angles – physics, cost, comfort, and building health – it’s clear that the optimal heating strategy for a traditional building is often a balanced one. Here are some key takeaways and tips to help you decide on your approach:

Don’t let the house get too cold: Avoid extreme off periods where the interior drops into the low-teens °C or below. This can invite condensation and damp, and will take a long time to heat back up. If you’re going away or not heating, consider setting a minimum thermostat setting (e.g. 12–15 °C) as a frost/condensation protection. As one guide notes, for each degree you lower the thermostat you save energy, but dropping below around 12 °C risks humidity and comfort issues. So, yes, turn it down – just not off in winter.
Use setbacks instead of all-day heating: Rather than either full-on or completely off, use scheduled setbacks. For example, maybe keep the house at 17 °C at night and during work hours, but 20 °C when you’re active at home. This saves quite a bit (roughly 5–7% energy savings per degree lowered, according to studiesgroupasol.com) while preventing the home from becoming an icebox. Many modern thermostats have an “Eco” or night setting to make this easy.
Improve insulation and draft-proofing: Every bit of insulation (roof, walls, floors) and airtightness you add reduces heat loss, making it easier to maintain comfort and making intermittent heating more effective. Plugging drafts and insulating cold surfaces will also reduce condensation markedly. An insulated historic house will hold heat longer, so you can afford to have longer off periods without sacrificing comfort. This can be tough in some old buildings, but even small improvements (thick curtains, draft excluders, secondary glazing film on windows) can help.
Ventilation is vital: Combat humidity through ventilation rather than just brute-force heating. Use extractor fans in bathrooms/kitchens or open windows for a few minutes daily to let moist air outgroupasol.com. It’s counterintuitive, but letting in cool dry air and then heating it is often better than keeping moist warm air trapped – the latter will dump water on your cold walls when the temperature falls. Some homes might consider a dehumidifier or a heat recovery ventilation system if condensation is persistent. A dry home feels more comfortable at lower temperatures, too.
Tailor to your life: If you’re home all day, a low continuous heat (with zoning) might make sense – essentially creating a comfortable baseline that never allows the home to get damp or chilly. If you’re away most of the day, take advantage of that and drop the heating for those hours. Modern programmable thermostats or smartphone-controlled heating make it easy to heat up just before you arrive. You can have warmth on demand without having paid for it all day.
Consider your heating system’s strengths: If you have a heat pump or a modern condensing boiler, try running it at a lower temperature continuously for a while and see if that feels more efficient (check your energy consumption). These systems may condense or modulate better when running steadily. Conversely, if you have an older boiler or electric heaters, there’s no efficiency gain in continuous running – better to use them only when needed.
Experiment and monitor: Every house behaves a bit differently. As suggested earlier, you can conduct your own experiment by measuring how much energy you use with different heating patterns. Also, pay attention to indoor humidity and any signs of mold – if you see condensation every morning, you might need a bit more background heat or more ventilation. If your heating bills are astronomical, maybe you can reduce the run-time or temperature in some zones without sacrificing much comfort.
Comfort vs Cost – know your priority: Ultimately, some homeowners willingly pay a bit more to avoid any cold periods (especially if the cost difference is small). Others accept wearing a sweater indoors at certain times if it means big savings. In a traditional home, you might find the cost is “virtually the same” whether you run the heating continuously at low or in shorter bursts – for example, a highly insulated cottage with a modern boiler might only differ a little either way, as the user surmised. But in another leaky farmhouse, the difference could be huge. Decide what balance of comfort and economy you’re after. There’s no one-size-fits-all, but armed with the understanding above you can make an informed choice.

Conclusion
Heating a traditional UK or French home can sometimes feel like an art as much as a science. These buildings have memory – they remember warmth in their thick walls and also the chill of winter seeping through old windows. The question of “to heat or not to heat” continuously has no absolute answer; it depends on your house’s insulation, its thermal mass, your heating system, and your lifestyle. Generally, turning the heating off when it’s not needed will save energy in most cases, especially in draughty old structures. But practical concerns like avoiding dampness and ensuring comfort mean that completely cold-soaking a house is seldom wise either.

Most experts advise a happy medium: provide enough background heat to keep the house healthy, and use timers/thermostats to bump the temperature up only when and where you need cozy warmth. By understanding how your traditional home retains or loses heat, you can fine-tune your heating strategy so that you stay warm efficiently. In short, heat smartly – neither being a slave to the thermostat 24/7 nor letting the icicles form on the inside. With proper management, even a centuries-old home can be both comfortable and economical to heat, proving that old dogs can learn new (energy-saving) tricks!

Sources: Continuous vs. timed heating myths and factstheradiatorcompany.co.uk moneysavingexpert.com; Martin Lewis on efficient heatingidealhome.co.uk; Thermal mass and heating patternsenergieplus-lesite.be energieplus-lesite.be; Damp/condensation and constant heat adviceproperty-care.org moneysavingexpert.com; French perspective on intermittent heating and humiditygroupasol.com groupasol.com; Heat system considerationsmoneysavingexpert.com moneysavingexpert.com.