I need to install some efficient heating in my house. I'm not in the market for a full gas central heating system, so I'm looking at other forms of natural gas heating. The most cost-effective way, I believe, would be to install a wall-mounted gas heater in the hallway. The heat would rise up the stairwell and warm whe upstairs as well as provide sufficient warmth downstairs.
Last winter, when I bought the house, I was using the gas cooker in the kitchen to warm the house, but resulting condensation gave me a lot of damp problems.
I'm now looking at wall-mounted gas heaters such as the Baxi range. Some are flueless, but I can only assume that a flueless fire would give me exactly the same condensation issues as my gas cooker did. Is that correct?
There are balanced flue models, but the idea of dawing cold air in from outside sounds ineficient to me. Do these use a fan to draw the air in? If so, that means one is relying on an electric fan, which could go wrong/die.
Would some kind of gas convector heater wuth a traditional flue be my best bet?
Can you explain how that happens please? (I can see that heating the house would reduce relative humidity but I can't see how a room sealed heater can be guaranteed to remove moisture from the house no matter what air flows it creates and whatever the starting difference between the air inside and outside.)
No it won't - it's sealed off from the inside of the house.
Balanced and fanned are similar, except balanced has to back onto an outside wall, whereas fanned can have a longer double piped flue so you can position it in other places too. Some balanced flue appliances don't need an electricity supply and can operate during power cuts.
I've had a couple (neither of them still current products).
Top of the range is Drugasar (or sometimes called just Dru in the UK). I had a 4.5kW one in the dining room when I moved in (no central heating then). It had a proportional control thermostat which maintained the room temperature accurate to about 0.1C (once I had pulled the thermostat phile clear of the heater - it had a long capilliary coil, but had been installed up the back of the heater). It had no timeswitch or remote switching facility, but I added that by taping 3 resistors to the thermostat phile, which when heated result in a setback temperature. Other than those resistors, it uses only gas so it worked during power cuts. It was near the end of its life when I finally got round to installing central heating, so it was chucked at that point. (The other option was to get a new heat exchanger for it.) The heat exchanger was enamelled pressed steel, so it heated very quickly, and could heat the room up from stone cold in a matter of minutes. It actually provided almost all the heating in the house when I moved in, but couldn't cope with the depths of winter.
When I last looked, Drugasar still did this type of heater (although now under electronic control). They have always specialised in the giant industrial ones at many 10's kW, but still did a 3kW home one.
I also had another one fitted in the main bedroom, which is a Potterton Profile. It has an electric thermostat and timeswitch. The timeswitch died quite quickly, and I adapted it to be under the control of my home automation instead. It is 2.1kW, but has a large cast iron heat exchanger, which will last much longer, but takes some time to heat up itself. When I installed central heating, the Potterton Profile still looked brand new (although about 15 years old at that point), so I kept it as a backup.
With regards to positioning, putting it under the staircase will result in all the heat going upstairs. Put it in a downstairs room, and it will heat that room and the one above it to some extent, mainly through the ceiling/floor. Heat escaping out the door will get to the rest of the house. However, it is hard to get any sort of uniform heating of a house from just one place, and non-uniform heating is a common cause of condensation.
You want one wtih a balanced draught flue. There are concentric tubes the combustion air is drawn in the outer one, the combustion products go out the middle one.
The old inefficent ones work by convection (heat is lost), there is no fan.
The new efficient condensing ones have a fan as insufficient heat remains in the combustion products to work by convection. As there is a fan, the concentric bit is not absolutely neccessary, some have two separate pipes.
It won't remove any moisture. It will however, by virtue of heating the air, reduce the relative humidity.
To reduce the moisture needs either aircon/ dehumidification, or ventilation when the absolute outside moisture content is lower than indoors.
Currently (summer) it is not much different indoors or out, but in the winter it is much lower outdoors. Dew point is a good measure. Now about 10deg, but in winter it is usually much lower, so ventilation is more effective.
That's what I meant by 'effect'. To most, excess moisure in the air means condensation on things. Which the OP complained about when heating with an open flame. Heating with a BF system will stop this.
In addition to the points made by others, you will find information on efficiency in the manufacturer's data as they are required to place it there. They will quote maximum input and maximum output figures from which you can calculate efficiency for comparison purposes. Don't expect any salesmen to know it's there though but it's generally on the back of printed literature available in showrooms and on t'web.
That's a useful tip - thank you. I guess the most efficient ones are the flueless ones, but I can only assume they add moisture to the air, so I'll probably go for a Baxi wall heater or two with balanced flues.
I think that you are wrong if you take into account, as you should, the mandatory ventilation required for a flueless gas fire. Which is not required for a room-sealed balanced flue fire.
Add into that the moisture release and it should be obvious that the balanced flue is the best available answer.
Isn't the internet wonderful? So many opinions, stated as fact!
So, here are some FACTS:
(1) Flueless fires are currently the most efficient types of gas fires available, even taking into account the mandatory 100cm2 room ventilation, as proven by builders' SAP ratings - typically 88%.
(2) There are no condensing gas fires or wall heaters.
(3) Balanced flue fires need no room ventilation, they are room sealed and use a concentric factory-made flue where the outer provides outside air for combustion and the inner exhausts the products of combustion. The temperature of the outside air is irrelevant to efficiency, as the incoming air is warmed by the outgoing products of combustion.
but are a disaster from the condensation point of view, which is very often a problem in homes which are unevenly heated by one or two gas heaters only. That's effectively what the OP was doing by using the cooker, and why the question was asked.
They certainly put the most heat into the room, but they also need a lot more fresh air and ventilation to remove the excessive moisture they produce. That makes them not very efficient as a way to comfortably heat a room, pretty good if its to grow stuff.
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