Your heating, is it stupidly confusing?

I assumed I am just an idiot but on talking to some friends it seems they have weird utterly non user friendly heating systems or boilers too. I downloaded a manual for mine and am still getting nowhere. Basically all I can do is switch it on and off manually. Timing it is impossible. Who designs this absolute shit, the idea of not being able to use an appliance seems so archaic...like how hard can it be to make a simple timer and a simple on/off switch?

Tell me about your heating...

My bedroom was 82 degrees when I woke up this morning, and that was with the window open.

that would make me ill for the rest of the day.

We have:

Boiler: New, various mysterious buttons
Radiators: Individual dial things
Allegedly wireless LCD thing: Flashes 21.5 constantly regardless of actual temperature in room, has various pictures of clocks and stuff but I have NO idea how to use them.

The worst thing is that even if you do everything right, it still takes 20 minutes to actually heat up, so there's NO WAY OF TELLING if you've managed to set things right except waiting! This is a new, modern system!

yeah we have the boiler with weird buttons, an lcd thing with a fucking mental display and weird buttons. all i can do is turn the heating on/off manually, and even remembering how i did that last winter is a chore, i've lived so much life since then that more useful or whimsical info has edged it off the cliff of time.

i want to ring the manufacturer and see if anyone can actually explain how it works.

estella OTM; I felt so gross this AM. Also it's impossible to dress for a cold(er) day when you're sweating in your skivvies. Seriously considering asking the LLs to turn the heat down but we might regret that in say December and then I'll feel silly.

we have a gas heater and a thermostat set to a particular temperature with an on/off switch. When you switch it on it starts heating in about a minute. It wasn't that cold last night, but it rained like a mf yesterday, and the heater managed to dry my jacket by morning.

Except for an electric oil-filled radiator I put in the bathroom, ours is either on full blast or off. It has an alleged thermostat control, but it acts like an on/off switch instead of a "run for a reasonable amount of time until the room is a comfortable temperature" control thing. So it is mostly kept off and there is much wearing of slippers and sweaters.

We have a boiler with some random buttons and individual radiators that all have 2 or 3 switches next to them to turn it on, then 3 dials each to figure out the temperature. All the switches, buttons and dials is pretty fucking annoying but we've figured out how we like it and just kept it that way forever. If anyone messes with it, they may die.

Withnail: Have you been at the controls?
Marwood: What are you talking about?
Withnail: The thermostats. What have you done to them?
Marwood: I haven't touched them.
Withnail: Then why has my head gone numb?

plug in, remain cold, watch the electricity credit drain away. Simple as that.

My heating is very simple. Jumpers. Lots of them.

my landlord unilaterally changed all the nice water-filled heaters in the entire building and replaced them with electric units. you can't dry your clothes on them and the heat is a weird dry heat. also you can't flip one switch to heat the house, you have to go around to each wall unit and fiddle with the aforementioned knobs and rocker switches. it fucking sucks. to add injury to insult, it costs us a lot more too since we're paying for the electricity.

does anybody have an opinion about heating one or two rooms of a house rather than the whole thing? i thought that was more efficient but the lovely emma b says that rooms don't stay warm if they're the only ones heated.

Time to move, Tracer; your landlord is an arsehole.

I dunno, Trace, early builders in Northeastern America really liked the idea, they made all their rooms small and low-ceilinged and separated by heavy doors to trap heat in the common rooms. I think they might have been onto something?

Our main bathroom with its separate radiator and a door that closes, definitely stays warm compared to the rest of the place.

moved into this flat a month ago and only had cause to put on the electric heater thing in my bedroom tonight: it doesn't work. The one in the living room does, as I've just found out when I've checked, but better get on to the landlords, ho hum (oh yeah and not being able to use the electric radiators to dry stuff on is a pain in the ass).

Where are you staying now?

I have a giant behemoth of a furnace in my house. It's the original Niagara natural gas furnace from when the house was built in 1946, and if it's even 30% efficient at this point I'll eat my hat. But control-wise, it's fine -- I replaced the old dial thermostat with a digital programmable one and it works just dandy. We set it fairly low overnight, then have it come on about 20 minutes before we get up in the morning, shut off when we leave, then turn back on before we get home. It can keep the house pretty toasty, but it costs $$$$$$$. Last winter, which was a bad one in Ohio, we had gas bills that were well over $400 every month.

so i have a halogen heater along the lines of this:

http://www.o-digital.com/uploads/2227/2289-1/Halogen_Heater_NSB100_B_216.jpg

and after a few seconds of buzzing and crackling there it just flickeringly developed a couple of thin black lines around it, one a couple of inches from the far left and one right next to the far right. is it just a wee bit broken but still usable, or am i very soon going to have a pile of ash where i once had a house?

oops, 'it' is one of the bars. the one that's on at all times the heater is on.

and now that bar isn't lighting at all. i'm feeling marginally less confident about keeping tolerably warm but marginally more confident about not dying in the middle of the night.