The insulation on the new house is pretty great. We’re under snow for 4-6 months of there and much of that daytime highs well below freezing. The heating will come on mid-late november. We don’t have a thermostat on the central heating. You set it at a level between 1 and 10 depending on comfort. Ticking over at the lowest setting 1 will keep the room above 20c on all but about the coldest week where the nghts dip below -15c. I’ve yet to go above 2.
Right now I’m happy to still have the windows open.
This morning I turned on the heating for 30 minutes and put the dehumidifier on to counter the dreaded autumn dampness. Living 150 metres from the sea and seemingly nonstop rain is not helping with this either.
Yes, there is so much rain. We too live near the sea and sometimes get the sea mist rolling up the field opposite. Our windows get condensation when we first put the heating on, despite being good quality double glazing.
It’s the opposite here. 90% humidity in summer swings to 15% humidity in winter so you have to run humidifiers in the bedrooms at night to stop your sinuses drying out.
The crossover in Autumn is just barely in our favour with the dew point a shade lower than the temp actually drops. But the wild extremes are pretty rough on a timber frame house.
Condensation before we went to tripple glasing was just insane though. Just masses of water (mostly from just a family breathing) running down the windows and running over the windowsill.
I have one window, in the bedroom that is exposed to the prevailing wind and gets lots of condensation despite having a radiator underneath it, which prompted me last year to buy a dehumidifier. My house is a 70s one, which would benefit from a heat recovery ventilation system but in the meantime, the dehumidifier is a good solution. I chose a low-energy one and I think the savings I make from not having to have the heating on with windows open to dry the house is a better option. Normally it is only on for an hour or so a day.
Also, I don’t have a tumble dryer and have found that in the winter putting damp washing in the conservatory with the dehumidifier dries the laundry well.
The Tado system has kicked the Heating in on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening.
This is all totally automatic, based on the demand vs. actual temperatures.
Just had attic ladder fitted, a long one to cope with the upstairs 3m ceilings, and flooring in the middle stage with an additional 300mm of brown rock wool insulation.
This goes on top of the existing 100mm of yellow glass fibre that would be placed when this old Covenant was restored in 2005. So complete renewing the insulation.
Fitted lighting over the weekend, a nice 1.5m LED batton light.
Further project to add further insulation for the remaining areas where there is still the existing 100mm, lag the plastic cold water tank & piping and insulate the skylight.
This should dramatically improve the insulation and heat retention.
That’s the spirit Lindsay, no faffing about! It was much more comfortable going down at 7.30 to make a pot of tea this morning, as we turned the heating on last night.
I’m going to put the heating on tomorrow onwards, at least that’s the plan at the moment. In the meantime I just put it on boost (ie one hour) whenever I feel too cold.
But really my concern is that the room humidity is getting high and two years ago I had a problem where one lighting circuit in the house repeatedly tripped the main earth leakage breaker suddenly one day. I rewired most of the circuit, so six different rooms, but it took me a few weeks and I never found where the issue was, so that was almost certainly condensation.
Now I’m in my late 50s I have to admit that I am feeling the cold more than I ever used to. Put the heating on for a couple of hours yesterday to take the chill off the house. I find getting our house up to 21 degrees then turning off keeps the house warm for a good few hours.
We haven’t put the heating on yet but we have just had our boiler fully serviced and all of our radiators bled and pressure checked ready for the oncoming British winter. We’ve also started to close in some of our windows. Also just had heated grips fitted to my Triumph Trident 660. In combination with my Oxford Dry2Dry waterproof Hamilton winter gloves, my hands are now like hot crumpets on my daily early morning commute.
Do you not have the functionality to have variable temperatures dependant on the room?
My thermostat is in the hall (the coldest room), the hall radiator has it’s flow restricted so that it takes longer to warm up giving the rest of the house’s TRVs time to get each room up to the desired temperature.
The living room is significantly warmer than the hall or bedrooms.
The highest gas consumption is the start-up (measured not guessed), once you are a couple of hours in the consumption drops dramatically.
I found no extra cost for leaving it on 24/7 so once the proper cold weather arrives it will get switched on and stay on until spring sometime.
As mentioned in a previous post my aircon is keeping us warm for very low cost. Eon claim that their electric is 100% renewable but I suspect there’s some smoke ‘n’ mirror tactics going on
At these moderate temperatures I’m probably getting 5kw of heat for 1kw of electric.
I have worked out that having two Petite Panthers is a good way to determine if the heating needs to be on.
Sprawled, not needed.
Snuggled up into a ball, turn it on.
Lying with feet tucked in, maybe.
We had a new gas ‘System’ boiler installed in March and I included a ‘Hive’ thermostat with the install. So since March and through the summer I’ve not really had a chance to test the heating.
The old wall mounted 'stat turned on the heating and the rads got hot sometimes very hot until the 'stat was satisfied. This was caused by a combination of the 'stat switch overlap of around 1.5’C and the old boiler was full flow max and only reduced to low flow when the boilers max water temp setting was reached.
The Hive and new boiler has much better/finer control.
The Hive is unattached so can move it around. At the moment (& I think its gonna stay there) is on the hall table.
It does not have a switch overlap, instead is a soft algorithm control. Although this means it turns on more frequently, it only runs for a short time. At startup the boiler first goes to low power, the rads get warm, the house warms and the Hive 'stat is quickly satisfied.
The room temp min/max variation is now less than 0.5’C undetectable to human comfort levels.
I’m now comparing previous years gas use by month and although not finished with that, gas use is notably less.
