Try not to turn radiators off– let your rooms keep warm together

Often I find rooms in customer houses with radiators turned off, mostly in rooms that are used for storage. After all, it doesn’t make sense to pay to heat a room with nobody in it. However, this approach won’t really work with an air source heat pump, which is designed to keep your whole house at a comfortable temperature.

If you turn off radiators in certain rooms, you’ll throw out the balance of your system. Asking your heat pump to heat fewer rooms than it was designed to causes it to shut down more often, which makes it harder to maintain a constant temperature, and can end up using more energy. This is exacerbated by the way that the cold walls of one room start to cool the rooms next to it in a domino effect, increasing the workload.

It seems counter-intuitive, but the most energy-efficient (and cost-efficient) way to heat your home with an air source heat pump is to warm all of it. As an added benefit, you won't end up shivering when you need to go and retrieve something from one of your cold, unused rooms.