Mine are high. Purely because the missus is always cold and wanting the heating on. I could save a fortune if she wasn't cold blooded.

As was mentioned earlier.

Jumpers FTW.

Let her pay for the heating if she wants it so high. Though just see what temperature that they have their baths and you will see that the only solution is for the women to pay.

She already wear them.
Err... It's the bank of Dad I'm afraid, my money is her money. She only works two days a week. Child care and petrol takes most of her wages anyway.

Well it seems she would be better off not working, though I think that we should abandon the idea of married mans allowances and have fully transferable tax allowances. You could then both be better off and she could stay at home every day if that is better for the kids. It might make up for the loss of child tax credits.

Financially, she'd be as well off. She wants to keep her job open for when he goes to school in a year and a bit and she likes the mental stimulation.

That I can understand. Though five years with just kids and other mums can frazzle the brain significantly.

At least when she's at work, she's burning up someone else's heating bill

Do what I've done - turn it down and let her moan.

If you're cold, you can do things to get warm; if you're too hot, you can't do bugger all. Coldest preference wins.

She moans at me enough as it is.

Exactly, you can't take your skin off.

We're about to enter the exciting world of oil fired central heating / hot water.

Our new place has an immersion heater for hot water and an oil fired boiler which runs the central heating and hot water. There's no oil in the tank at the moment and we don't really need it right now but we're already budgeting for heating oil which we plan to buy at the end of summer when prices are lower. So far (with an electric shower) we haven't really needed the immersion heater on, I've boiled a kettle to do washing up which is really the only thing we need hot water for.

Electric meter was read when we moved in so we're being super careful until we get the first bill. With fish tanks and viv going 24 hours a day it'll be interesting to see what the bill is like, they don't use much electrickery but never having paid "bills" before we're a bit at a loss as to what it's going to cost.

I don't want to worry you Zippy but oil is an extremely expensive way to heat a building as there is currently no regulation of the domestic heating oil market so suppliers can set whatever price they want without worrying that Ofgem will stomp on them (mind you, the main energy companies don't seem to have many worries in that regard either).

Linky

It's worth checking out deals on oil during the summer (as it is for things like coal) as the suppliers don't sell as much so it's cheaper. You should also make sure your oil tank is secure as, with the high costs last winter, there were an alarming number of oil thefts from domestic premises. Make sure you home insurance covers loss of heating oil.

Thanks for that, it's not a worry because we thought long and hard about the pitfalls before we applied.

We know it's a risk and a PITA but the house we love has it and it's rented so there's no choice, good call on the oil tank security, we're in the process of securing it now while there's nothing in it. We've sussed out the prices over time and end of Aug is the best time to buy according to history so that's when we'll do it. We're also going to take this year as our baseline for how much it'll cost to keep us reasonably comfortable, Red hates the cold so we may be investing in more warm jumpers and slippers for him, but I tend to like it cooler so it shouldn't be too much of a problem for me. We have the immersion for hot water but with the electric shower we haven't been using it.

Haven't got any insurance yet but we'll add it to the list.

500 gallons of 28 second kerosene in August, let me see now.....£1260 I'll wager.

The Aga uses 7 cc's a minute on low fire, which is about 10 litres a day. Anything from £4.25 to £7.60 last year.
These numbers are only shocking when you realise there is another boiler for the central heating which runs at more like 15-20 cc's/min.