Data at DataDryad

Analysis

A series of informal polls were run between 2017 and 2022 inclusive, asking followers to report if their central heating system was on or off (or otherwise). These micro-survey results are individually reported, and collated to capture, for example, what fraction of central heating systems are left on all year. Results are roughly in-line with UK government surveys/reports suggesting that a significant fraction (single digit percent) of UK central heating systems are permanently left on, controlled only by the thermostat.

One drive for the survey was to probe this fraction, since then heating can end up running unnecessarily on borderline days, or even cool days well away from the main heating season.

Description of the data and file structure

Poll data CSV, one survey record per row, with fields: poll start date, duration (d), Twitter link, total count, on count, off count, what-is-off count, other count.

The structure is:

• A header line.
• One line per data record, each record being one poll result.
• The records are in ascending date order.
• The (poll start) date is in YYYY-MM-DD ISO 8601 format.
• Each line/record contains comma-separated values for:
  • poll start date
  • poll duration (days)
  • Twitter poll link URL
  • vote count total
  • vote count "on"
  • vote count "off"
  • vote count "what's off?"
  • vote count "other"
• The last ("other") value is nominally redundant.
• An empty field represents a missing datum or zero count or not applicable.
  • The duration of initial polls was not recorded.
  • The "other" question was not asked on later polls.

The CSV file stands alone, but links out to the Twitter polls.

The data is described and analysed in https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-survey-UK-central-heating-on-off-dates.html

Sharing/Access information

This is a section for linking to other ways to access the data, and for linking to sources the data is derived from, if any.

Links to other publicly accessible locations of the data:

• https://www.earth.org.uk/data/UKCHOnOff/UKCHOnOff-poll-data.csv

Data was derived from the following sources:

• Twitter polls created by the author.