On 2007-10-18 12:44:05 +0100, Owain said:

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My home heating bill would be something like £4500 a year...that would
mean that ANYTHING I did to save a therm or to would be worth paying
serious money for. Solar panels, heat pumps, paying the wife to shut
the windows every time the heating is on..

Can't you put microswitches on the windows so the heating doesn't work
unless the windows are closed?

Owain

Dreadful idea. This is done in apartment buildings in Germany and I'm
told that typically *all* the heating in an apartment is disabled if
*any* window is opened. Siemens (was Landis and Staefa) even make
control systems to do this properly, but of course it's normally wired
with one switch per apartment for cheapness and so people tend to
disable them, close doors and turn off radiators as appropriate.

Meanwhile in Russian cities with district heating, the common practice
is to turn on the heating on Oct 1st come what may. Multiple
occupancy buildings often don't have much by way of controls so people
use the windows as thermostats until it starts getting cold.