The biggest hidden cost for parents this winter lies with irresponsible children secretly cranking up the temperature at home.

Despite the nation’s best efforts to conserve energy and beat rising fuel bills, it seems that sneaky offspring are cranking up  the thermostat to keep them warm whilst eating ice cream and to help them avoid wearing jumpers at home.

That’s the conclusion of the latest research completed on our brand new website Yourhottopics.com, which uses real time tweets to assess the state of the nation on all things temperature related (www.yourhottopics.com).

Twitter is revealing a snapshot of a population that is:
•    Wasting their money through inefficient management of their heating
•    Confused about how to keep the whole family warm and cosy while remaining energy efficient
•    Battling with flatmates, partners and children to control the temperature, with a third constantly too hot or too cold

Of the 5,000 heating related tweets posted in November (upto Nov 19th), nearly two-thirds (64%) were from people who were too hot or too cold. A quarter (24%) were confused about how to work their heating, with frustrating consequences, and the remainder of tweets (12%) were from people too concerned about rising energy prices to even consider putting the heating on.

Confusion over how to effectively manage temperature at home while remaining energy efficient is causing stress in UK households with flatmates, spouses and now children fighting over the thermostat.  Research shows it is also leading people to experience a sense of paranoia about putting the heating on at all.

The energy specialists at Glow-worm are advising people to take 3 simple steps to ward off the chill this winter and manage their costs without getting hot under the collar.
1)    Make sure your home is well insulated.  Check out your loft; sort out any draughts from poorly fitted windows and doors.
2)    Watch out for hot zones. The main rooms you use during the day should be at a minimum of 21°C (70°F) but at night your bedroom should be at a minimum of 18°C (65°F).  Adjust your thermostat so you don’t spend the day too cold and the night too hot.  Adjust radiator settings to suit the comfort levels of the individual.
3)    Get acquainted with your central heating system. By spending 10 minutes getting to understand how your boiler works you will be able to set your heating to a temperature that suits everyone in the household.

The Hot Topics Index is available to view at www.yourhottopics.co.uk.  To feature your own experiences on heating, boilers or energy prices simply send a message @yourhottopics to become part of the first twitter based national based experiment.

If you’re a journalist and you’d like more information please contact Sally on glowworm@digforfiredmg.co.uk