ABC Tools
Home Heating Cost Simulator illustration

Home Heating Cost Simulator

Estimates what it costs to heat your home and answers the classic question: does turning the heat down at night actually save money? Yes — the saving is roughly proportional to the reduced indoor-outdoor temperature difference during the setback hours, damped by the thermal mass of the building. Enter the floor area, an insulation level, indoor and outdoor temperatures and your energy prices, and the simulator computes the steady-state heat demand, the daily and monthly bill for your heating system, the setback saving, and a side-by-side monthly cost comparison of gas, oil, electric resistance and air- or ground-source heat pumps — including how a heat pump’s COP drops as the outdoor air gets colder.

Read the full guide to this tool

Sets the overall heat-loss coefficient: 3.5 / 2.2 / 1.2 / 0.4 W/K per m² of floor area.
Seasonal average over the heating period.
The coldest stretch you want the numbers for.
Per kWh of fuel energy — gas bills usually state it directly.
How far the thermostat drops at night; 0 disables the setback.

Notes

  • Steady-state model: heat demand = U × (T_in − T_out), with U bundling walls, roof, windows and ventilation into one W/K figure from the insulation preset — real houses vary, so calibrate against a past bill if you can.
  • The setback saving uses the reduced temperature difference over the setback hours at 70% of the naive value: thermal mass keeps the house losing heat while it coasts down, and the morning reheat claws some back. It still always saves energy — a colder house loses less.
  • The air-source heat pump COP is interpolated from a typical curve (≈4.2 at +10 °C down to 1.9 at −10 °C), so its ranking against gas depends directly on your climate and the electricity-to-gas price ratio.
  • Hot water, cooking and appliance use are not included — this is the space-heating share of the bill only.

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