Charging for electricity

[Stewart]

[quote="Naomi"]Stewart - thank you for your informative reply. May I ask you a couple of things?

What are the temperatures that you set in the six time zones?

We use a Worcester Bosch DT10RF Digistat

2359 to 0700 16C hopefully occupants sleeping under high tog duvets
0700 to 1030 20C wake up and breakfast
1030 to 1200 16C cottage being vacated for morning activity
1200 to 1300 20C lunch
1300 to 1700 16C afternoon activity
1700 to 2359 20C dinner and cosy night in

Because the building is pretty well insulated temperatures are quick to rise and slow to drop so the change is subtle on the way down.

I have been searching the Internet everywhere for optimum temperatures without success. I realise that it will depend on where you are and in Scotland, the temps will need to be set higher than southern England.

You are really only concerned with the internal space temperature so providing your boiler is sized correctly for all the radiators hanging off it set the controller for guest comfort. The optimum comfort temperature for people is around the 20C mark (maybe higher if older and or sedentary). There is a controller in the range that additionally controls the water temp to the radiators depending on what the outside temperature is. This so-called weather compensation feature is common in offices and commercial buildings. I felt it was a refinment too far that was not necessarily going to save money

Have you rigged your thermostats so that guests can only alter the arrows up and down and not the master controls?

That's how we'd like it to be used but we cannot stop access to master control. That doesn't hapen often though.

Finally I cannot over emphasise that comfort is largely subjective and to an extent random depending on day, mood, time since last meal etc. If customers do not have the ability to control their space you will lose them.

The heating allowance idea does offer some protection agianst abuse