I hope everyone has topped up with antifreeze and that includes their wiper washers. Use a mix of alcohol and water to free the windows of frost. Squirty bottles at the ready. Don't forget to give the bonnet a going over before you drive off too.
See that all know where the stop tap is for the water in your house and make sure you do the decent thing with your elderly neighbours. Never leave them lying in the street.
You / are / joking I hope, unless you want problems with the vehicles paint work don't ever (even diluted) radiator anti-freeze into your washer bottle.
Here is an ADVANCED WARNING of severe weather affecting Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales, issued by the Met Office at 09:36 on Sunday, 25 January 2004. This warning is the second update to that issued at 09:00 on Friday 23 January 2004.
Much colder weather will begin to spread south across the country on Monday and the Met Office is expected substantial snowfall in some areas. Accumulations exceeding 10cm are likely in places with drifting where strong northerly winds develop. It is still difficult to predict where the heaviest falls will occur, but the risk remains greater from Tuesday onwards. Eastern and northern areas appear most at risk, and there is a risk of exceptionally severe conditions with accumulations of more than 15cm. Dangerous driving conditions are expected and some untreated roads are likely to become impassable.
For inquires regarding this warning - please contact your regional Met Office. Transmitted by the Met Office, at 09:36 on Sunday 25 January
This warning will be updated around 09:00 tomorrow Monday 26 January 2004.
1) Fit a frost stat. These override the time clock of a CH system if the temperature drops below a preset minimum (which you set like a regular room thermostat - 2-5 degrees is typical but others like it a bit higher). That way you don't have to worry about updating the time clock - the heating will fire up based entirely on the prevailing temperature within the building (at least, in the room where the frost stat is located).
2) Leave the CH on 24x7, but wind down the room thermostat to say
10-15 degrees.
PoP
Sending email to my published email address isn't guaranteed to reach me.
Well that is what he said, what he / meant / might well have been what you suggest (and I suspect he meant that also) but there are many who seeing his message might just do as he suggested literally - hence the warning...
I live in West Sussex and I'm still waiting for the storm force gales forecast to do structural damage, that the Met Office helpfully 'warned' us of a couple of weeks ago :-) This will be a good test of South Centrals new trains. Last week the
17:52 London Bridge to Bognor stopped just south of Billingshurst 3 days on the trot because the 'computer had crashed' ('Sorry folks, bear with us while the train is rebooted' - which took longer than win 2K)
We dont want to encourage people to steal steal them and paint their coats red and their legs white and put fishing rods in their hands for the duration do we?
Then, when you come back, it will take days for the house to warm up and much of the savings you made by leaving the heating turned down will be lost as you re-heat the structure of the house.
If Ben lives in a stone-built castle with walls 15 feet thick maybe, but then it would take days to cool down too. A modern well-insulated house made of ticky-tacky with much lower thermal capacity will feel warm again within an hour.
But I agree 5°C is too low if the weather is really cold. With 5° air temp at the roomstat there are bound to be many other places in the house where the temp is below zero. It might be enough to protect the rads and boiler, but the header tank, rising main and cold water tank in the loft are extremely vulnerable and any deadlegs on the hot and cold water services could also be at risk. Also, with all the windows closed there's no ventilation and the vapour from those last-minute showers and damp towels will be condensing everywhere, maybe turning to ice on windows. I would feel much safer with a min. setting of about 12° to 15°. Let's hope it doesn't happen, like Andrew's gales.
I once made the mistake of switching the heating of here and it did take days for the place to become comfortable again, stone built but only 18" thick. The heating now stays on 365 days/year.
Our place was warm within the normal couple of hours it just wasn't comfortable as the stone sucked the heat out of the air and caused even more cool drafts than normal.
The (unoccupied) barn has it's room stat set at around 8C. There is a frost stat as well at about 4C, which kept the frost out of the tanks/pipework with -10C or lower outside. The 8C room stat is used now as that keeps the damp at bay better.
And whats the problem with that? Every winters night with a half decent frost when I was a lad I'd be succking an (old) penny and sticking onto the ice to melt a hole in the window ice to peer through. Central heating makes people soft.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Liquorice" Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 10:41 PM Subject: Re: Icy weather
I once made the mistake of switching the heating of here and it did take days for the place to become comfortable again, stone built but only 18" thick. The heating now stays on 365 days/year.
Our place was warm within the normal couple of hours it just wasn't comfortable as the stone sucked the heat out of the air and caused even more cool drafts than normal.
The (unoccupied) barn has it's room stat set at around 8C. There is a frost stat as well at about 4C, which kept the frost out of the tanks/pipework with -10C or lower outside. The 8C room stat is used now as that keeps the damp at bay better.
And whats the problem with that? Every winters night with a half decent frost when I was a lad I'd be succking an (old) penny and sticking onto the ice to melt a hole in the window ice to peer through. Central heating makes people soft.
That's cool winter bedroom temps! Whimps.
-- Cheers snipped-for-privacy@howhill.com Dave. pam is missing e-mail
I agree with that all Dave. I'm 2 young for the old penny but used to melt a face shape with fingertips. I had a bedroom with no central heating and old rattly sash windows that "you could drive a horse and cart" through the gap between them.
We have a Rayburn Royal which was on all the time apart from 2 weeks in the middle of the middle of summer when we'd be away. It took about a week for the 3 foot thick stone walls to stop absorbing heat at a great rate - and that was summer time.
In a modern house I'd say keep the same temperature but reduce the hours it is on to say 6 hours in the middle of the night. If you do switch it off, get a neighbour/friend to switch it on full for 24 hours before you arrive home.
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