Warm air heating.

With good design and installation noise transmission can be eliminated. Sounds like you got a dud one, which most were 35 years ago.

Reply to
IMM
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I had a flat with gas fired warm air heating and it was excellent. There was a little noise from the fan but I soon sorted that one out. There is an air filter which you have to clean periodically.

You have vents which could be in the walls or floors but they take up much less wall space than radiators. The system really heats up the house quickly, which is ideal if you're out much of the time and want some quick heat when you come in.

The disadvantage is that it doesn't heat the water at the same time, so you'll need a separate water heater, but this could be an on-demand one.

The one snag I found was that as I had a first floor flat with an entrance on the ground floor, the entrance lobby never got warm. I got round this by installing an electric storage heater and switching to Economy 7 tariff. I also had a time switch on the immersion heater to heat the water overnight.

Reply to
Richard Porter

Unforced air in under floor heating ducts was the first carbon fuel mass heating system in the UK (or whatever it was called then) in about 100 AD.

Before that, having the cows underneath the bedroom was considered as good as it got.

Still more interesting than a Combi, even today.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

In message , IMM writes

They've had that for years

I'm not drinking coffee, you're lucky

J & S electronics is poorly designed, primitive and fairly crap

Warm air fans are OK if kept clean.

Dust can knacker the bearings quite quickly

Warm air fans are not cheap to replace

Reply to
raden

In message , ":::Jerry::::" writes

Prolly because it's taken almost verbatim from the J & S website

Reply to
raden

I did have a *quick* look before posting the comment but couldn't find the proof !..

Reply to
:::Jerry::::

You wouldn't say that if you'd seen the original installation. The position of the unit on the ground floor was such that the flue took 2 right angle bends in the void between the ceiling and floor above before going up through the airing cupboard followed by a couple of 45 deg. bends before escaping through the roof. There was no way that any new unit could utilize that flue and comply with current regs. To re-position the heater unit to meet flue requirements would have involved the installation of extra heating ducting which would have been very disruptive. If we were to spend a substantial sum on upgrading the heating then we also wanted it to heat the 3 rooms which were not fed by the original system, this would have involved even more serious surgery to walls and floor joists. Much more than a case of _just_ getting a new replacement modern modulating unit.

Whilst it might have been possible to get a good warm air system it would have been much more expensive than a radiator system. We had already planned to move house within about a year and I'm quite sure that we would not have recovered our costs on the selling price. So despite having been happy with the warm air system while it lasted, it just had to go.

The popular perception of warm air heating systems is that they are noisy and inefficient, this may or may not be justified but your average house buying Joe public expects to see a modern combi system and will regard anything else (no matter how superior it might be) as a negative point. Hence replacing with a radiator system was the most cost effective solution for us.

Reply to
Mike Clarke

It is. Do you search the internet for these cheap rads that inevitably fail? And haven't you heard of inhibitor which will prevent corrosion?

Perhaps you'd also give details of how you prevent room to room transmission of noise at a reasonable cost with a ducted system?

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Would you care to give details on how this works?

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Maxie, they have.

The external controllers they use a decent. Their modulating controls work quite well.

The filters keep them clean.

That is why they have filters.,

Reply to
IMM

Warm air was the first in "mass" take up. In the 1950s small bore hearting systems were introduced by the coal board. Wet systems in homes have been around for a long time, but they costed a fortune being mainly piped in iron and many being gravity.

Whole estates were fitted with warm air.

Prolly becaue IMM has worked with these systems.

Reply to
IMM

So you were wrong, the first mass heating system was wet, warm air only came after the war, mass means that many people have it - perhaps you really mean popular or affordable ?

IMO the only warm systems you have worked with are one bellow your nose and the one you sit on !

I have my own thoughts as to just what you know, needless to say, you are not old enough to have done the above by yourself - you might have helped 'daddy' though....

Reply to
:::Jerry::::

In message , IMM writes

QED ... look it up

Reply to
raden

No need to Maxie as I know what it means...and because IMM has worked with these systems.

Reply to
IMM

In message , IMM writes

'Nuff said

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Reply to
raden

Wonder what he used to cut the trunking...

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

BES part number 13489?

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

In message , chris French writes

Ok thanks for the various comments - it's ok I can happily ignore IMM's ramblings - otherwise all very useful.

The point I really take away for this is that it might work ok, but we should be prepared for the possibility of serious maintenance, or replacing it with a wet system. I'll worry about this more if we actually consider purchasing this (or another property with WAH)

Reply to
chris French

The bungalow that my father designed and built about 30 years ago was designed with warm air heating. And it was well designed by an expert at the time. So all of the rooms get a good balanced amount of heating and it was a really good system. Downsides were that there was a bit more dust, the system was old and therefore less efficient,and there was no hot water heating circuit.

My experience of other warm air heated houses are that the systems are crap! Usually there mass produced council or similar housing on estates, where the wau was at the bottom of a central "core" to the house. The main rooms all had a connection to and received an amount of heat from this core. And often it was electric storage heater based and just inadequate (storage heater block also have a best before date!) .

Back at home; the *30 year old* wau finally died about 6 months ago - the combustion chamber cracked. Apart from servicing and consumables it's been largely reliable for those 30 years. But we've had a hell of a lot of trouble getting a new system (it's being installed next week - hopefully). First plan was to get a replacement WAU. But the only ones we could get in n.Ireland were industrial spec and noisy (others didn't have any local support / Oil fired). Second plan was to convert to a wet system with rads (expensive and messy with concrete floors - which also ruled out ufh) Also because of floor to ceiling windows in a couple of rooms there was nowhere to put rads esteticically.

Current plan is back to warm air. But we've getting a conventional oil fired boiler, heating water. The water heats a fan coil unit (water to air heat exchanger with fans) which "plumbs" into the existing air duct work. This also has the advantage that we've specified an chiller unit for summer cooling. It's really a commercial HVAC system for offices and shops.

The fan coil is detailed at

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(anyone got any experience of these units or manufacture?)

The boiler will also supply a couple of rads and the indirect hot water cylinder. This half of the installation is quite straight forward and can be serviced by any reputable heating engineer. The fan coil and chiller units are maintained by a local company.

Hopefully in about a weeks time it will be all up and running!

-- Peter D

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Reply to
Peter D

They have a good reputation.

I like in-line heater batteries heated by a normal boiler. The DHW can be run off the same boiler as you are doing. Also heating only air handling units are that expensive, if you look around, just being a metal box, fan and copper heater coil.

What exactly have you got? heating and chilling. Any fresh air? Any heat recovery? Are you having an electrostatic air filter? Humidification? De-humidification?

Let us know the outcome. Where else could you get whole house air conditioning using a 30 years heating system? I doubt you will reget it.

Reply to
IMM

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