skint and no heating

[noseall]

I see the forum bullies are active.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

I see the forum bullies are active.

Yes, today at 7:47 AM.

 

[transam]

I see the forum bullies are active.

Yes Noseall you are still active

 

[G1zm0]

You got that free (taxpayer-funded) heat pump organised yet?

its a 7.5.grant and still has 4k to pay.

 

[ericmark]

I look at the cost of central heating to run, and the cost of a small oil filled radiator and the like, and it does seem central heating is an expensive way to heat a room. I pay around £800 a year for oil, only used for half the year, so £800/26 = £30 a week, or £4.40 a day.

If I assume 8 hours working and 2 hours travelling then want room warm for 14 hours, at 30p/kWh that means a 1 kW heater on for 14 hours and we break even.

 

[ericmark]

By change I came across this Channel 4+ documentary by Guy Martin. It starts by as with most talking about insulation and draft proofing, then it starts to get into the nitty-gritty of humidity. We are told the ideal relative humidity (RH) for a home is generally recommended to be between 30% and 50%, and to heat the home keeping below the 50% limit, we need to either except some drafts, or fit heat recovery unit of some type, or use a dehumidifier.

I tried fitting an extractor fan with a humidity switch in my fathers bedroom when we fitted a step in shower in the room, it did not want to switch off. Once the sensor gets wet, it is not sensing the air any more, but drying out, and once the relative humidity hits around 85% we start to get water forming on the sensor, so the sensors basic stop working at 85%.

Getting the house more humid is easy, add some plants, but making it less humid is hard.

 

[johnny2007]

By change I came across this Channel 4+ documentary by Guy Martin. It starts by as with most talking about insulation and draft proofing, then it starts to get into the nitty-gritty of humidity. We are told the ideal relative humidity (RH) for a home is generally recommended to be between 30% and 50%, and to heat the home keeping below the 50% limit, we need to either except some drafts, or fit heat recovery unit of some type, or use a dehumidifier.

I tried fitting an extractor fan with a humidity switch in my fathers bedroom when we fitted a step in shower in the room, it did not want to switch off. Once the sensor gets wet, it is not sensing the air any more, but drying out, and once the relative humidity hits around 85% we start to get water forming on the sensor, so the sensors basic stop working at 85%.

Getting the house more humid is easy, add some plants, but making it less humid is hard.

Sometimes the boss puts the heating at 20⁰ and humidity in the house goes below 50%.
My throat starts getting dry and I cough, hot flushes, burning feeling on my feet and dry eyes.
Maybe it's because I grew up in a coastal town, but I think best humidity level in the house is around 65% and temperature at 18⁰.

 

[ericmark]

Utility room 12.9°C at 64% relative humidity, and flat 16°C at 51% RH, but heated rooms 18.7°C at 49% RH (my bedroom) and 22.1°C at 41% RH + 23°C at 48% RH (my living room) both in the same room. Plus 20.5°C at 51% RH the hall. How accurate the Bresser, Wiser, and Nest units are I don't know.

But the question is more down to when the %RH is too high.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

We are told the ideal relative humidity (RH) for a home is generally recommended to be between 30% and 50%, and to heat the home keeping below the 50% limit, we need to either except some drafts, or fit heat recovery unit of some type, or use a dehumidifier.

I would suggest that is nonsense, and neither achievable, nor desirable. My humidity sensor/recorder, is on my landing. At this moment it reads a very acceptable 61%RH. It's record varies between 50 and 70%RH. The human body will find the atmosphere too dry, and uncomfortable, if it falls much below 50%RH.

 

[fixitflav]

I would suggest that is nonsense, and neither achievable, nor desirable. My humidity sensor/recorder, is on my landing. At this moment it reads a very acceptable 61%RH. It's record varies between 50 and 70%RH. The human body will find the atmosphere too dry, and uncomfortable, if it falls much below 50%RH.

I have gas boiler/rads CH.
According to the Met Office site RH for the next week where I live varies between 44 and 92%. At outdoor temperature 10°C and indoor 20°C indoor RH is around 1/2 those figures. Doesn't seem to cause me any problem.

 

[ericmark]

I had a problem with mould in the bathroom with my house in Mold, and the RH was in most rooms around 75% which is on the high side, but the R in RH stands for relative, and it means the readings are dependent on temperature. So the problem was, bathroom was on an outside corner of the house, and so two cold walls, and north facing so no sun warming.

So 75% RH at 20°C gives a dew point of 15.4°C so any surface below 15.4°C is going to be wet.

92% RH at 10°C means dew point is 8.76°C
44% RH at 20°C means dew point is 7.37°C
38% RH at 21°C means dew point is 6.14°C my room at the moment.

So if we look at the coldest surface in a room, we want the dew point to be lower than that. Not the air, it is surfaces we are looking at, specially any absorbent surface.

So let me look at my parents house in the late 50s, the window frames were steel, and single glazed, so the coldest surface in the room, non-absorbent, so water would run down the windows, and at the bottom was a small tray, and a small hole leading to outside, so the water ran down the windows and was directed outside, so acting as a dehumidifier. With no requirement for any refrigeration plant to get a surface below due point.

So we are looking at a trade-off, which costs the most? Energy lost through the windows, or energy to run a dehumidifier.

So step one, we don't want to produce the moisture to start with, clearly we can't stop breathing, but we don't want anything which burns fuel that does not vent the combustion produces outside. Gas cookers without a vented to outside cooker hood are out. And even with a cooker hood, you are taking air you have paid to warm, and throwing it away.

This was the argument with vented tumble driers, my vented drier had two options 1 kW or 2 kW and with the 1 kW setting it would take around 90 minutes to dry clothes, so 1 kW x 1.5 hours = 1.5 kWh. The heat pump drier 650 watt and 2.5 hours, so 1.625 kWh so it seems the vented drier is better. But then we look at other factors, the heat pump drum is bigger, so it dries more clothes, and it does not suck out air I have heated with my central heating, it is more automated I don't need to feel the clothes to see how dry, and don't need to leave a window open to put the pipe out of, and I don't need to lock the utility room door, to stop intruders getting in through the window, and it has a delay start timer, so I can dry overnight with off-peak, and is less likely to go on fire, so I feel happy drying overnight. But at first glance, it seems the vented is more economical than the heat pump drier.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

I look at the cost of central heating to run, and the cost of a small oil filled radiator and the like, and it does seem central heating is an expensive way to heat a room. I pay around £800 a year for oil, only used for half the year, so £800/26 = £30 a week, or £4.40 a day.

If I assume 8 hours working and 2 hours travelling then want room warm for 14 hours, at 30p/kWh that means a 1 kW heater on for 14 hours and we break even.

We're having our first winter with a heat pump radiator system after five with assorted electric heaters. Mains gas isn't an option here.

Our bills are lower AND the place is vastly warmer. Plus it's all timed and automatic, a luxury that's not an option with heaters. I've had it split into 4 zones, we have the heat following our daily patterns, it's transformed the place.

A heat pump creates about 3 units of heat from every 1 unit of electricity. Yes there'll be some losses from pipework etc, but it's still going to cost vastly less to run. About the same as gas central heating.

The standard grants for heat pumps should make them make sense for anyone, a no-brainer for anyone without access to gas.

But much bigger grants for 100% of the cost are available for low-income working households - not just people on benefits. These schemes aren't advertised and are administered by local councils.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

60% RH is a sensible target for the UK. You won't have damp issues if it's usually 50-65%.

Anyone who's ever looked at a map will know that the UK is surrounded by water. You can achieve lower humidity in inland Europe and USA etc, in fact some buy humidifiers as the outside air is too dry for comfort.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I had a problem with mould in the bathroom with my house in Mold

Well, what can you expect but mould, in Mold

So the problem was, bathroom was on an outside corner of the house, and so two cold walls, and north facing so no sun warming.

Our bathroom is also on the north/east outside corner. When I replaced what was a single-glazed window, fitted with a silly wind powered vent, with decent DG - I added a through the wall automatic electric fan. I fitted it in what had been an older vent, which had been sealed up, so my new fan was blowing through a double air brick. It proved to be slightly inadequate, because, there was some very slight mould appearing....

A few years ago, I sorted that, by taking the centre out of the air-brick, and adding a proper automatic vent. We have had no more proplems with mould, depite the bathroom being well-used.

 

[ericmark]

Plus it's all timed and automatic, a luxury that's not an option with heaters.

Many years ago I had that with a simple fan heater plugged into a socket controlled by a wall thermostat in my caravan. This is the big question, is the heat pump better because installed correctly where the old central heating was thrown in, or because the heat pump is better.

Electric v electric, guess what, electric will win. The debate is when compared with other fuels.