Anybody tried this?
The coldest room in our house is the bathroom because there's no flippin' insulation above the ceiling, in accordance with convention because the HW header tank is above it.
This morning I got thinking about this (dangerous, I know!) and it struck me that the room would be warmer and the heating bills probably lower if you had the full thickness of insulation throughout the entire attic including under the tank and dropped an aquarium heater into the tank running off a mains tranny and set to something like 5 degrees, or whatever is the normal winter incoming water temp. Of course the pipework has to be properly lagged etc etc. as well as the tank itself. This would protect the tank from freezing in very cold weather.
Stoopid idea or worth considering?
Moving on, I can't help thinking that this idea of leaving no insulation under then tank belongs to an era when few houses had central heating and tanks were metal not plastic. In those conditions I could see the water in the tank and surrounding pipework freezing but nowadays, even with a very high standard of insulation in the attic I reckon a fair amount of heat must get through and you would only risk freezing if you went away for a couple of weeks deep in winter. In those circumstances I always turn off the mains.
The only time I've ever had a freeze was this winter when it hit minus 12 and an unprotected pipe froze in the garage attic. I'd been meaning to lag it for years so I knew straight away what had happened. Five minutes with the blowtorch sorted it and I lagged it there and then.
The coldest room in our house is the bathroom because there's no flippin' insulation above the ceiling, in accordance with convention because the HW header tank is above it.
This morning I got thinking about this (dangerous, I know!) and it struck me that the room would be warmer and the heating bills probably lower if you had the full thickness of insulation throughout the entire attic including under the tank and dropped an aquarium heater into the tank running off a mains tranny and set to something like 5 degrees, or whatever is the normal winter incoming water temp. Of course the pipework has to be properly lagged etc etc. as well as the tank itself. This would protect the tank from freezing in very cold weather.
Stoopid idea or worth considering?
Moving on, I can't help thinking that this idea of leaving no insulation under then tank belongs to an era when few houses had central heating and tanks were metal not plastic. In those conditions I could see the water in the tank and surrounding pipework freezing but nowadays, even with a very high standard of insulation in the attic I reckon a fair amount of heat must get through and you would only risk freezing if you went away for a couple of weeks deep in winter. In those circumstances I always turn off the mains.
The only time I've ever had a freeze was this winter when it hit minus 12 and an unprotected pipe froze in the garage attic. I'd been meaning to lag it for years so I knew straight away what had happened. Five minutes with the blowtorch sorted it and I lagged it there and then.
