GCH or Electric Heating for Extension

Can I ask about heating for an extension to be built? I live in a modern house with GCH. We're extending which I guess will increase the floor area of the house by 25-30%. We've been chatting to someone who's done similar about the heating. He has used modern storage heaters (Dimplex Duoheat) in his extension. He feels these are fantastic but the main reason he did this was that he was worried about extending his microbore central heating system. He had heard that if you extend a microbore piped GCH system too much, you can develop problems with balancing the system etc. I like the look of these new storage heaters - but before I take the plunge, any opinions on this as an option rather than extending the GCH system? TIA, Paul

Reply to
Paul
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On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 14:11:34 -0000, "Paul" strung together this:

To be honest, any heating system can be over expanded. Your mate obviously doesn't know too much about heating and rather than taking advice on the subject decided to go for the far more inefficient and not as controlable electric option. Without knowing your system and how it is all piped up and what's in at the minute I couldn't say what you can and can't do for what cost. What I will say is that on most domestic extensions the limiting factor is usually the boiler, the pipework is easily sorted to cope. It may cost a little more to upgrade the boiler but after the initial expense of this you'll recoup the cost in having a more economically heated extension and depending on the age of your boiler it could also be a great efficiency improvement in general.

Reply to
Lurch

Under no circumstances would I allow electric storage heaters anywhere near my house! Not only are they expensive to run (even off-peak electricity is dearer than gas) but they're also a nightmare to control - giving out heat when you don't want it, and vice versa. The latest models are better than their predecessors - but still not very good!

Assuming that you have adequate boiler capacity to heat the extension, it would be a good idea to extend the main flow circuit into the extension in

22mm pipe - just using micro-bore for the final drop to each radiator. That would be far better than having long runs in microbore.
Reply to
Set Square

This is rubbish. The system will need rebalancing, but that's part of fitting additional radiators anyway. It might be necessary to use larger pipework for some part of the new runs depending on heat load and distance, but that wouldn't need wholesale replacement of any of the existing microbore.

If the boiler is a combi and house isn't enormous, chances are it has plenty of spare heating capacity.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

"Paul" wrote | I like the look of these new storage heaters - but before I take | the plunge, any opinions on this as an option rather than extending | the GCH system?

Go for GCH. Storage heaters in the extension will look cheap and be inconvenient.

Microbore is limited in the heat it can carry. Your existing microbore rads will be plumbed individually back to a distribution point, either a manifold or 'ordinary' flow and return pipes from the boiler. You will need to run pipe from your extension back to this manifold (hopefully there will be spare taps on it) or the ordinary flow and return pipes, rather than just teeing into a nearby radiator.

Owain

Reply to
Owain

Thanks folks - I think that's pretty clear and I'm swinging back towards extending the GCH system. Paul

Reply to
Paul

On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 17:48:11 -0000, "Paul" strung together this:

Good man, you know it makes sense!

Reply to
Lurch

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