Thoughts on heating and the like..

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yesterday, I noticed that despite me being stripped to a T shirt, in a workshop type room I have, the thermostat that controls the winter heating in that room, was ON..Ok it wasn't actually controlling anything because that whole zone is switched off for the summer, but it seemed to say that the temperature was a mere 16C.

Now in WINTER that room needs to be up around 20-22C for comfort..

Is it merely that the rain was puring down, and the humidity was shockingly high?

It occurred to me that a dish of water in each room in winter, would make the place SEEM warmer by dint of raising the humidity to the point where sweating would not cool the skin so much.

On another pint, I need - and with energy prices where they are at - to control my UFH a little more precisely.

Currently the master thermostat is inappropiately located in the kitchen, where the AGA renders UFH almost uneccesasary. I want to use a radio type remote thermostat to control the overall zone, located in the living areas, and use the existing kitchen stat to control the kitchen alone.

This requires some extra bits.

Firstly, what kind of radio stats are there? one with feed-forward intelligence might be nice, but simple is OK too - I can do the rest by adjusting the zone timing.

Secondly, the kitchen stat needs to shut off a couple of zone valves on a Polyplumb manifold..these have a screw thread outer and a plunger that shuts the flow down and which is rotated to balance the flow.

I am sure that these exist because the manifolds are designed to utilise something, but and ordinary motorized valve it ain't and there is no way to fit those.

[meow2222]

But in winter we dont cool by sweating, at least not to a very significant extent. High RH also reduces comfort, causes condensation, mould and rot.

It is a popular myth that humans are thermally like a wet bulb, in reality we are somewhere between wet and dry.

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think that's not right. We DO ALWAYS cool by sweating. Its just that in the winter the rate is low enough/himidity low enough to leave the skin dry.

I agree.

However I wasn't proposing to go to the extreme of having a winter turkish bath in the hots necessitate a bit more heating input for comfort than many people suppose.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Very likely -- humidity (and wind chill where present) are much more important than temperature for human comfort percention.

This is done in large computer rooms where people are required to work on a long/continous basis. The temperature is typically 21, but the aircon cooling makes the humidity low and there's quite a draft, which means you can end up shivering in such rooms even when you've you're dressed for, and comfortable in, an office which might be slightly cooler. This is handled by using humidifiers in such rooms, which make a dramatic difference to the perceived "room temperature", although they don't in reality change it at all, of course.

The trouble with doing this in something like a house which wasn't designed for artificial humidity control is that you are bound to have some cold spots, and you will get condensation at those points.

BTW a wet bulb _is_ quite a good approximiation to a the human percention of temperature (even in winter, contrary to what I read in another article), but you need to add in the effect of wind chill (which makes no difference to a wet bulb). One way to do this would be to use a heated wet bulb. You could even add in the effect of hard work making it feel hotter by increasing the heating power applied to the bulb, just as happens in humans.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Those are called windows. ;-)

With UFH most of the rest of the house is pretty even temperature wise.

I may simply put some vases full of flowers around the place.