[Misc] Have you put the heating on yet? (2022/23 edition)

[Icy Gull]

Point of interest. If you keep your house cool (I’d say cold!) does it not promote damp and mould?

 

[Motogull]

Ours went on last night. CH on a timer. 2 hours early am, then mid afternoon into evening. It was F cold on my ride this morning. The Mrs reported a nice 'taking the edge off it' in the bathroom with welcome warm towels.

Open fire keeps the social room warm. Leccy blankets mean not getting into a bed that was beginning to feel like had just been made from bedding stored outside.

 

[Curious Orange]

I took advantage of the poor weather yesterday and replaced a bit more of the old insulation in the roof.

I've also knocked the thermostat program settings down half a degree throughout the day as I noticed it was a bit too warm last night. If that works okay I'll do the same for the other days of the week.

 

[sams dad]

Central heating not on yet, but lit the woodburner in the sitting room yesterday evening.

 

[LamieRobertson]

Point of interest. If you keep your house cool (I’d say cold!) does it not promote damp and mould?

Isn’t it all about the humidity?

 

[mikeyjh]

Point of interest. If you keep your house cool (I’d say cold!) does it not promote damp and mould?

Yep - I thought it would be a good idea to switch off rads in spare bedrooms but yes, it does start creating a damp problem especially if your house is not very well ventilated. Our is a 1990 build so has plenty of insulation but it's not very clever insulation, if all the windows are closed it's pretty much air tight!

 

[LamieRobertson]

Nov 22 is FE day…so not really overly concerned about heating being on….used it to take the chill off the house first thing and help get washing dry

 

[Si Gull]

Our boiler stopped working yesterday, luckily after the other half had showered. After trying to diagnose the problem for a couple of hours I finally cracked and contacted the plumber. Fortunately he couldn't make it until later as it turned out I had inexplicably knocked the gas tap to Off whilst topping up the boiler pressure. Still can't work out how I did it or why I decided to check it! Expensive mistake and serious aggravation, from Mrs Gull, averted.

 

[nicko31]

Point of interest. If you keep your house cool (I’d say cold!) does it not promote damp and mould?

It doesn't help. I used to live in a Victoria terrace, definitely more prone to damp than my now more modern house. Reckon if you dry clothes in the house and have poor extraction in the kitchen and bathroom it promotes it. Trickle vents windows or properly functioning air bricks also work

 

[Hugo Rune]

The temperature on Friday night/Saturday morning could dip to 2oC. My heating is going to have to fire up big time (for the first time this Autumn).

 

[Bozza]

Just to add to the above, it feel

16.5 v 13.8 here.

I've just filled out a "contact us" form for a local insulation company

The insulation man visited this morning.

There's no cavity wall insulation in the front of our house, which we kinda expected. However, the extension at the back - which we inherited with the house - is relatively new so would be expected to have insulation. It doesn't, which the chap was somewhat taken aback by.

He estimates we're currently losing c35% of our heat through the walls.

A quote for cavity wall insulation will be heading my way soon.

 

[pb21]

The insulation man visited this morning.

There's no cavity wall insulation in the front of our house, which we kinda expected. However, the extension at the back - which we inherited with the house - is relatively new so would be expected to have insulation. It doesn't, which the chap was somewhat taken aback by.

He estimates we're currently losing c35% of our heat through the walls.

A quote for cavity wall insulation will be heading my way soon.

Did he say what it would be reduced to if the walls are insulated?

 

[Bozza]

Did he say what it would be reduced to if the walls are insulated?

Sorry - I'm not entirely sure I understand the question.

 

[pb21]

Sorry - I'm not entirely sure I understand the question.

If yore losing ~35% of the heat you put in at the moment through the walls without insulation, what would it be with insulation? Interested as I am not convinced our house is insulated (moved in a few months ago).

Were in a 2018 new build, now in a 1960s box and it is a very noticeable difference!

 

[Bold Seagull]

Point of interest. If you keep your house cool (I’d say cold!) does it not promote damp and mould?

If you decide to keep your house cold over winter the key thing to consider is ventilation. Your external wall inside surfaces will be colder, therefore the dew point i.e. the point at which vapour changes from a gas to a liquid will likely be on the surface of the wall. Ventilation is key as if you give vapour the opportunity to escape before it condenses then you shouldn't have a damp problem.

If course, if the house is cold, you are less likely to open trickle vents, open windows for purge ventilation a couple of times of day, and all that vapour builds up from normal things like breathing, making tea, running hot water etc. The problem isn't the house being cold per se, it's not being ventilated enough as well as being cold.

 

[Bold Seagull]

The insulation man visited this morning.

There's no cavity wall insulation in the front of our house, which we kinda expected. However, the extension at the back - which we inherited with the house - is relatively new so would be expected to have insulation. It doesn't, which the chap was somewhat taken aback by.

He estimates we're currently losing c35% of our heat through the walls.

A quote for cavity wall insulation will be heading my way soon.

If yore losing ~35% of the heat you put in at the moment through the walls without insulation, what would it be with insulation? Interested as I am not convinced our house is insulated (moved in a few months ago).

Were in a 2018 new build, now in a 1960s box and it is a very noticeable difference!

So, what I think the insulation man is trying to say, is that heat loss through a house can be expressed as typical:
25% Floors
30-35% Walls
15-20% Doors and Windows
25% Roof

Or a variation of those allocated percentages. So a fully insulated house would still lose heat at approx. those percentages, it's just that the overall heat loss is much less, but the walls would still account to a third of the overall heat loss.

So the insulation salesman is correct in saying walls account for 30-35% of a house's heat loss, however he would be incorrect in stating that adding insulation would save or be a 35% difference in the heat loss.

@pb21 – the answer to your question would be very much dependent on the construction, width of the cavity and type of insulation. For example a rendered masonry wall with 100mm cavity filled with a BASF Wall-Tite foam insulation will have a much better u-value than say a typical brick cavity with 65mm void filled with insulation fluff. A good insulation installer supplier should be able to give you the u-value of your present wall, and the uplift. That can then provide the calculation of how much of the 35% heat loss through your walls you'll actually save.

 

[Fungus]

We had cavity wall insulation installed two years ago, and my new spreadsheet tells me our gas consumption was reduced by a third in the first year afterwards. This year we’re down by another third, just by being more careful. Our house was built around 2000, so we expected it to already be insulated, but the builders avoided it on the technicality that we’re in an “extreme weather area” on the exposed side of a hill. We’d already replaced the original boiler and draughty double glazing, but this made a huge difference. We’ve also installed a ventilation system, to avoid damp problems.

 

[Bodian]

We had cavity wall insulation installed two years ago, and my new spreadsheet tells me our gas consumption was reduced by a third in the first year afterwards. This year we’re down by another third, just by being more careful. Our house was built around 2000, so we expected it to already be insulated, but the builders avoided it on the technicality that we’re in an “extreme weather area” on the exposed side of a hill. We’d already replaced the original boiler and draughty double glazing, but this made a huge difference. We’ve also installed a ventilation system, to avoid damp problems.

Before we moved in to our house 20 years ago (Edwardian Terrace) I noticed some holes in the external wall. So, I asked the Conveyancing folk to ask the seller if it had cavity wall insulation. The response, rather bizarrely, was along the lines of 'that's up to the buyer to find out'. I still wonder what that meant, as how better to find out than ask the owner??! Still don't know if it has had it or not, but when we had an energy assessment a while back they told us it wouldn't be worth doing anyway, as we didn't have enough wall on that side of the house.

 

[Bodian]

In contrast, it was 13.8 degrees when I got out of bed this morning but I didn't feel cold. Cool, yes, but not "bbbrrrrrr it's bloody freezing" As I type Hive says it's 14.7 degrees but, again, it doesn't feel cold. I'm just in a t-shirt, hoody and shorts.

14.7 degrees and you're wearing shorts? Blimey. My legs don't appear till it's in the 20s.

 

[nickjhs]

Bizarrely I will be using the heating again tonight. Its only been off for a week and it is the third week of Nov. This is shaping up to be a very changeable wet and humid summer, 9c today and then 24c on Sat with 20mm of rain. But we don't have climate change , nope nothing strange going on here.