A lot of the newer central heating installation don't even have thermostats anymore. They have what's called a WAR module on the outside and one temperature sensor on the inside. The WAR determines the heat of the water in the furnace. eg. At 10° outside, the water temp is 30°C, at 0°C outside, the water temperature is 35°C. The temperature sensor on the inside then determines when the circulation pump starts running and the heating begins or stops.

There's one thing I haven't brought into the equation yet: water temperature. With the older systems, which are used to quickly heat up rooms with the use of radiators, the water temperature is usually 60°C or more. Then when the thermostat is switched on, the water quickly needs to be heated to that temperature and kept constant until the correct temperature is reached. This consumes a lot of energy.

In my house, what is called a "low-energy-house" (=term that is used by the government), the water in the tubes is only heated up to 30 - 35 degrees, but then kept constant, in other words, the system is never turned off. At the end of the year, my system will have consumed less energy than the first mentioned, and that is why our government is now pushing new home builders to invest that extra euro to reach the "low energy house" standard. Because it IS more expensive: you need to insulate a whole lot more and make sure the house is air tight - because of this you now also need a ventilation system, which was not needed up to 5 years ago - but all those costs can be recuperated in an X amount of years (in my case: 7 years), and since the heat pump is claimed to last 25 years, the rest is pure profit.

Why am I saying all this? Because I want to make my point that it is not necessarily more expensive to let the heating system run at the same temperature all the time instead of turning it off/off every day, providing you did the homework and insulated the house, made sure it's as air tight as possible and use a heater of less Kw which uses low water temperature and an over dimensioned radiator as a heat release system. (like eg. floor heating tubes are because essentially the whole floor is a radiator then). Then, and only then will the bill at the end be less, and significantly less than a normal house with an old school heating system (trust me: I know because I live in such a house and it's me who pays the bills )

I'm not saying you can stop heat transfer/thermal conductivity, that was never my intention to claim and if it came across like that then I apologise. I know you can't do that, it's a law of physics and as Scotty always said: "you cannae change the laws of physics!" But you can bend them a bit to your advantage, by using modern techniques.