I have a new L-shaped (cavity wall - uninsulated) building comprising four stables, a hayshed, a workshop and the last bit at one end (16 ft by 22 ft) which will either be an office or a snooker room. I want to have some sort of trickle heat in this office area (possibly thermostated) just sufficient to keep damp away. Does anyone have a sensible solution for me bearing in mind that electricity costs are fairly high here?
Many thanks
Gerry
You haven't said how far this is from the house, Gerry, but if it's a reasonable distance you could heat it from the house system assuming that the boiler has enough capacity.
I had a similar issue in approximately the same space for my workshop.
First of all, make sure that the area to heated is well insulated. I used 50mm Celotex panels to do this, fitting them inside studding and applying ply to the faces. Plasterboard could be used for what you have in mind.
I then installed 150mm plastic soil pipe in a trench between the building and the house and ran two well insulated 22mm plastic barrier pipes through them.
At the house end, a stainless steel plate heat exchanger (GEA Ecobraze) with the primary made a zone on the heating circuit via a zone valve , and the secondary side going to the outbuilding. There is a flow switch in the secondary side to control the zone valve.
The workshop has panel radiators plus a pump, thermostat, heating pressure vessel and filling loop, so it is run totally separately from the house circuit. The reason for doing this was so that anything happening to the circuit in the outbuilding including freezing, leak etc. cannot compromise the house system. As a precaution, I did use a corrosion inhibitor and antifreeze product (Fernox Alphi-11) in the secondary circuit, so the temperature would have to drop to -20 or so for there to be a problem.
When the workshop requires heat, the thermostat operates the pump and then the secondary circuit flow through the flow switch opens the zone valve in the house and fires the boiler. The arrangement works very well and is cheap to operate.
Previously, before insulation, the space took about 12kW of fan heater to keep barely warm at huge cost. Nowadays, it seldom needs more than 3kW provided by gas. The thermostat has a timer with frost, economy and comfort settings which can be set at whatever temperatures I like and changed manually or automatically. I have mine set to background level, and then a PIR detector for when I am using the workshop causes the temperature to be raised.
.andy
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Should have had the rads doing background heating with the PIR switching in fanned Myson heaters, as these warm up the place very fast. Ideal for moving in and out of the place. They could be directional towards where you most sit/stand.
The last thing that I need in a place where woodworking including finishing is being done is fan heaters. I also want an even temperature throughout the space. The radiators are oversized and heating is rapid. Generally I set the minimum to 10 degrees and the operating temperature to 18 degrees and there is little thermal mass since the walls are ply. The design was carefully thought through for the intended purpose.
As a generic solution for an office/games room , it could be reasonable to use fan heaters if one doesn't mind the noise or cost and is short of space.
.andy
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Wood burning stove?
If you are doing woodworking a wood stove is ideal to dispose of sawdust and scrap..
Agreed, and I did look at that, but to have enough material to run one you have to be working quite a lot of material and then to store it during the year for the winter.
For my pattern of use, which at the moment tends to be weekends plus a few hours in evenings during the week, getting a stove going would be a PITA. I guess with a multi-fuel stove it could be interesting.
Probably for somebody who woodworks for a living and has a small shop used all day, every day, it can work quite well. I know of production shops in the U.S. with 4 or 5 people who have briquetting machines to compress the chips and dust and then burn the briquettes in a suitable furnace. .andy
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"The Natural Philosopher" wrote | > The last thing that I need in a place where woodworking | > including finishing is being done is fan heaters. | If you are doing woodworking a wood stove is ideal to dispose | of sawdust and scrap..
Mmm. Sawdust, varnishes, paints, solvents ... and a wood stove.
Owain
The fastest way to start a wood fire is with a blow lamp. 0 -full blaze in about 2 minutes with carpentry chips. Wet lumps of trees take a bit longer...
Yup.
Thank you all for your useful ideas - that will work - I am only about 30 feet from the end of the house - I hadn't thought of using the main system.
Slán Gerry
You're welcome.
Do note the point on separating the systems with the heat exchanger, though, and don't be tempted just to add it in. This is to avoid compromising the main system if something bad happens to the outside one.
I used a GEA Ecobraze stainless steel heat exchanger Model 18
I guess that the UK office GEA Ecoflex +44 1909 551 107 covers Ireland and could point you to a distributor, Otherwise, there are some UK suppliers like DPS.
For the building to building ducting , I based the design on something I found in a design note in the Northern Ireland Building Regulations. I can send you a copy as a Word or PDF file if you drop me an email.
One thing to watch is the overall pipe length and the amount of heat required in the building. Calculate the building requirement first using a heat loss program (e.g. Myson or Barlo radiators) and work out the water flow. I didn;t need a lot of heat, so 22mm was OK, and the pipe runs are similar to yours.
I put the heating pressure vessel, filling loop and pump all in the workshop and then the only components of the secondary loop in the house are the heat exchanger and flow switch. You can do the rest of the design using Ed Sirett's sealed system FAQ and treating the heat exchanger as the "boiler".
One reason for the flow switch arrangement is that I wanted to have a separate zone for the heat exchanger so that I could have the boiler heat it separately if I like but also that I didn't need to run an electrical control circuit between the buildings. Workshop thermostat runs the pump, flow switch in house operates and zone valve opens.. I could have used a wireless thermostat and put the receiver indoors I suppose, but I wasn't confident of the operating range.
.andy
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What make and model t/stat?
Siemens (Landis & Staefa) Rev 100.
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