After taking the rad off the wall where I knocked through into the extension upstairs today, I have thought of a use for the spare rad. Can I put it in the outside utillity room? I would need to tee off the rad for the new bedroom run it down and outside. The distance to the utillity room is 2m away from the extension so would need to bury the pies for a 2m run.
Am I insane or is it OK to do? it would be usefull as the Dog lives in there and it would keep him warm when its sub zero!! If I'm doing it should I do it quickly out of the site of the BCO?
I take it teeing off the flow/return would be OK?
Cheers again, I'll slow down on here once the extension is done!! oh and after i've turned the current dining room into a downstairs bathroom !!! questions will be coming for a way of pumping the bath water up into the ceiling and out, but these can wait :-)
I'm all in favour of providing warmth for poor Dog but what you propose may lead to tears when the pipes freeze/burst and take out your house heating system.
I suggest you peruse Mr Andy Hall's most excellent solution to a similar scenario, involving a heat exchanger:
Use a heat exchangeer and antifreeze, or maybe one can put antifreeze in the main system - I dont know bout that. Use a separate control cct for the doggery, and insulate the kennel/outhouse.
Letting the dog live indoors would seem more sensible...
I might go for the heat exchanger idea, I'd need to thing about pumping and switching. Bob ( 7 yr ols stafford) prefers living "outdoors" he's got his dogflap in the utility room and can come and go as he pleases, I wouldnt put a dogflap in the house as most of the heat would escape in the kitchen. Kingspan is already in the garage ready to insulate the utility but I need heat to begin with to warm it up! how effective are the "low cost" electric heaters? and how costly?
If you have power at the outhouse, you can fit pump and a thermostat there which just runs the pump. Then at the house end fit a flow switch on the secondary circuit to detect the pump running. The flow switch opens a zone valve on the CH circuit which feeds heating primary water to the heat exchanger.
If there is no power at the outhouse, then you could run wiring for the thermostat or alternatively use a wireless type with receiver and all electrical bits in the house.
If the outhouse is fairly small, you won't need a large heat exchanger. For my workshop, which needs about 4kW, post Celotex, I provisioned
8kW of radiator capacity (IIRC) and used a 100kW heat exchanger because it was commonly available for use in heatbanks. A smaller one would have been fine I am sure in this application, but were more expensive.
This is really a trade off between capital cost - I reckon about £150 for heat exchanger, pump and controls (possibly a bit less) vs. buying an electric heater for about £30 and running it on electricity at three times the price of gas.
I took a long term view and went for the heat exchanger.
You can calculate the heatloss through the Celotex. Strictly speaking, one should take the U value of each component of a wall or roof, take the reciprocals, add these and take the reciprocal of the result to determine a combined U value. Even more strictly speaking, one should take into account surface effects etc. as well, but these are minor. Unless the walls and roof are fairly well insulated already, the U value of the Celotex is dominant and will only give a slightly pessimistic view of heat loss.
On the Celotex site, you can get the U value for the thickness you are using (or take 1/R value).
Let's say that you want the interior to be at 16 degrees inside when outside is -3 degrees, the temperature gradient is 19 degrees.
Measure the areas in square metres and multiply by U value and temperature difference to give the heat loss in watts. Add all these up and you will get a minimum value for the heat requirement.
This will give you the information for sizing an electric heater or a radiator and allow you to do the cost comparison. Obviously you will have to consider the timescale that you want to use for that.
Theres really no such thing. Advertisers have found a way to exploit peoples ignorance by suggesting their heaters are somehow more efficient or effective, but the fact is a watt is a watt, and all electric heaters are 100% efficient.
Having said all that, there is a 300% efficient electric heater.. a heat pump. Just like an a/c it sucks heat from one side and delivers it to the other. This would be roughly as cheap as gas, but beware that when it gets down close to freezing the efficiency drops significantly.
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