Gas/electricity heating cost comparisons

[The Natural Philosopher]

That's what I did with the UFH.

The whole corridor and stairwell is open, has no stat and is entirely heated by the ground floor UFH. This works and since its totally central to the house, I leave it unregulated. I don't hardly run the upstairs conventional heating at all really. Heat rises, bedrooms need to be cooler..

The rest of the ground floor is a pair of connected living/dining rooms, and the master stat is in there.

The only other stat on the UFH is the kitchen because with an Aga in it, it needs to be more or less unheated otherwise, except in depths of arctic blast.

Only heating in the whole house at the moment is the aga, and teh electrical gubbins. Probably about 1.5-2KW in toto.

[Mike Lane]

The Natural Philosopher wrote on Oct 4, 2010:

I see, thanks. So the radiator temperature should always be as low as possible consistent with adequate heating?

[Alan]

In message , Pete Zahut wrote

But surely the opposite now happens? You adjust the temperature in your hall or the rest of the house and the room that gets hot will become too hot

[Dave Liquorice]

Only if you set the stat in the hall to something silly like 20C instead of say 15C. As has been pointed out the extra heat sources in the average living room can mean that it reaches and remains above the stat set point before the rest of the house is suitably warm and as the stat is satisfied by the extra heat the rest of the house then cools further.

[Mungo "Two Sheds" Toadfoot]

A good point but did I mention that I have a woman who bears living with me? Not the most technical things, women, generally. Perhaps I should set the 'stat and remove the temperature dial? A coathook next to it with a selection of woolies and cardies hanging on it, maybe?

Si

[chris French]

In message , Alan writes

no, because that room will have a TRV on the rad.

The real point here is there is no single 'right' place. It very much depends on the house, the heating system, the temp you like, how you live in the house eg we are rubbish at closing doors lots of the time, and this idea that everyone is holed up in the sitting room with the door shut, so the rest of the rooms can be cooler doesn't hold a lot of the time now does it.

Which is why wireless stat is so useful, as you can move it around and try things out. As it happens, I did this in our old house in Leeds (3 bed semi ) and ended up with it in the hallway :-)

In our current house, which is a bit of an oddly shaped largish Victorian house. (Basically an L shape effectively 1 room deep plus hall/landing/corridor on each L. which means we have a lot of 'circulating space for the room space, compared to a more rectangular house) I have yet to find a sensible place for the stat at all really, that does an effective job. It's in the hallway, and works because it's set on the cool side and there are external 3 doors, plus a very large single glazed window on the stairs. Basically, comapred to the rest ogf the house it never gets a chance to get hot really :-)

But a more sophisticated control system is the answer I suspect

[Dave Liquorice]

Take the knob off an shift it round on the spindle so that an indicated 20C is actually 15C. B-) Better still get a programable stat, it might take a bit of trial an error to get the temperature profile(s) right but once happy there will be less requirement to adjust the stat leading to it being left at a silly high temperature. Also if it is fiddled with most resume the set profile from the next set point.

Our programmable stat is set to 18.5C from 0700 to 1800 but there is a set point around midday which cancels any "tweaks" done in the morning. Generally though it's not tweaked, it just works.

[Roger Mills]

Also, many programmable stats have a settable offset - so you can set

*that* to indicate 20 when it's really 15.