You need to understand thermal storage. A two cyl' stat thermal store does not cycle the boiler and one long efficient burn. Large boilers on direct rad systems are prone to excessive boiler cycling. This is very inefficient and the controls wear down fast.
The CH can be on a Smart pump with TRVs on all rads. No central nuisance wall thermostat.
Isn't it a shame we are reduced to this now, the moment we start costing baths, showers, boiling water for coffee, flushing the loo and other every day things the enjoyment goes out of life.
When standby first became popular it enabled us to turn TVs on without leaving the chair, well worth paying for.
Regretfully we all will cut back dramatically but end up paying the same (or more) and the power companies will make the same profits for supplying less of the product.
Geoff Lane
Makes me wonder.
My combi boiler is range rated at 14kw, if I was to put it on 28kw would the rads warm up quicker?
My TRVs don't seem effective at all, probably cheap ones used by builder doing my extension a few years back.
Geoff Lane
Trouble is reheating a cold house can be counterproductive.
Geoff Lane
Maybe an electric blow heater to reheat then CH to maintain temperature could be an option.
Geoff Lane
On Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:39:18 +0000 someone who may be Geoff Lane wrote this:-
Counterproductive?
Certainly some types of construction react slowly to heat input. The two extremes are an underground building or castle and a hut. Different heating systems are best in these types of building. However, most houses are somewhere between these extremes.
In what way do they seem ineffective?
About £50 ISTR. Dead easy to use if you can program a video recorder. especially useful if you're (semi) retired like me as you can gradually work downwards half a degree (or finer) at a time until you find a comfortable setting, and it has manual override available at any time. Mine has 5 timer periods per day: wouldn't be without it now.
Mine definitely make a real difference. The bedrooms and landing, I keep on 2 and they are just cool, but never feel cold or damp. The bathroom is on 5 and is toasty. The downstairs hall hasn't got one and as you come down the stairs, you can feel the difference and the lounge is also set to 5.
What I do is occasionally turn them all up and down rapidly. I don't know if it makes any difference, but I *think* is might just stop them sticking and frees any crap that might have become trapped in the restricted valve space.
Anyhow, I'm convinced they have been very worthwhile addtion.
Andy C
My thought exactly: a day too late tho - great time to see how long the snow stays on your roof and to find "hotspots". Almost all the dormer bungalows around here lost their snow WAY before 'regular-roofed' houses, and the benefit of my recently increased loft insulation was readily apparent. May well be that the insulation in the OPs 'roof' isn't very effective at all - nowhere near current standards.
If you have flat rooves built a while ago (in the 70's in my case) you'll have an inch of fibreglass and that's it. That's costing me £100 a year at least I reckon. I have 50m2 of ground floor extension like that - it'll cost me a well over a grand to back-fill with Celotex/reboard & plaster so it's not quite worth it yet.
Oh, and tumble driers: absolute energy oigs. If you have Economy 7 make sure you run them overnight. I have an 'A' rated drier which dries with cold air - takes 4x as long but uses 1/3rd the energy. I run that overnight on economy 7.
Our dishwasher and washing machine use hot water from the combi boiler on short pipe runs (WM is right next to the boiler) and so don't use (peak rate) electricity to heat their water.
Kettles: only boil what you need; keep lids on when you boil veg. rinse hand-wash dishes in cold water after a swill in a bowl of hot, not under running hot water. Do a lot of hand washing up at once: start with the cleanest things (glasses, cutting boards, cups) then move gradually to the dirtier things, even at the end of the wash the water should be warm enought to deal with grease in frying pans and roasting trays.
Don't heat the whole damn oven to cook a couple of silly burgers just because the instuctions say you can. Fry them or buy something that isn't so wasteful on energy. Bake taters in the microwave: uses 25% of the enrgy (IIRC) ditto with veg.
However, in my experience the biggest consumer of energy in the whole house is the wife. While I wear two shirts, a sweater and two pairs of socks, she wants to swan around in her nighty.
Check you are not being charged for imperial gas measurements, given a metric meter, or your gas supply is not supplying your neighbours, or something.
-- Jason
Watch and read this:
-- JJ
On occasions it is definitely chilly and the rads feel cool until I loosen the securing collar which actually opens the valve fully. I have tried switching thermostats but same effect.
Anything below high setting and the rads run cool.
Geoff Lane
Don't taste as good though, can't beat crispy skins :)
Geoff Lane
I use a combi quick and crispy. Most veg tastes better in the microwave, especially frozen peas.
In message , "dennis@home" writes
IMO, most veg doesn't taste better from the microwave, frozen peas and such like are fine, but most things such as carrots and broccoli I don't like the texture somehow. Much prefer them steamed
Cook 'em through in the microwave and crisp the skins in the oven. You'll still use less power as the oven will only be on for 15 mins rather than the 45 to an hour for baking spuds normally.
Can be tedious rather than difficult to initially program (they do come with a default profile though) but once set they are more or less fit and forget. You just need to give a bit of thought to the evices programing and your life style. Most have some form of easy manual temperature and time adjustment from the current settings. They all vary a bit so you need to shop about reading instruction manuals to find one that fits your desired feature list.
It may be that the valve pins are getting stuck in. Can happen with some types as they age.
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