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Green Building Bible, Fourth Edition
Green Building Bible, fourth edition (both books)
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General: How cool should a house get?

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1 to 23 of 23

  1.  
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2007
     
    Typical Victorian terraced house rarely falls below 14 even in winter

    A 1970/80's timber-framed house regularly gets below 7 by the morning in winter without the heating on

    Is there any case for heating unoccupied houses? Or occupied ones at night?

    How cold should a house be allowed to get?

    How thermally stable should a home be designed to be or doesn't it matter?
  2.  
    Doesn't W.H.O recommends 18 degC minimum in an occupied house for health reasons and higher for the young and old?
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2007
     
    Water used to freeze by my bedside at night in winter regularly when I was a child ----- explains a lot!!!
    •  
      CommentAuthorted
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2007
     
    I grew up in a Georgian (1765 - I still have the original indenture) house in Bath. My bedroom was in the attic. The only thing between me and the outside was wallpaper, hardboard and roof slate. There was no insulation and no central heating.

    The insides of the window panes were always covered in ice in the winter.
    • CommentAuthorchuckey
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2007
     
    For an unoccupied house, normally one has a "frost stat" on the central heating to stop the water pipes freezing. If the water is turned off and there is no water in the house, then, providing there is a reasonable amount of ventilation, let the house freeze. If the ventilation is missing there is a possibility of condensation forming and staining the decor.
    Frank
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2007
     
    Frank, rarely seen frost stats in houses -- and are you saying that freezing is OK for an empty house?
    • CommentAuthorBluemoon
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2007 edited
     
    Ice on my bedroom window when I was a child in an 1880s terraced house. Inefficient open fireplace downstairs. Mind you, we had proper winters in the 1940s and 50s.

    There is a frost setting on all of my rad' 'stats.
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2007
     
    What good are they if the boiler is not firing? Or worse if has to fire all the time and cycle just in case it is needed???
    • CommentAuthorBluemoon
    • CommentTimeSep 23rd 2007
     
    We set the boiler to fire several times a day when we are away.
  10.  
    I too have childhood memories of frost on bedroom windows, going to bed virtually fully clothed with socks and hot water bottle etc, and that was only in the 1980s. Personally, I think half our problems with energy come from a perception among a large part of the population that it is now unacceptable to have to wear more than a T-shirt indoors even in the middle of winter. This is a product of cheap energy and thermostatically controlled central heating systems.

    I don't think 15degreesC indoors is unacceptable in winter if you dress for it and would save a vast amount of energy.
    • CommentAuthorTuna
    • CommentTimeSep 24th 2007
     
    I understand that it is more efficient to maintain a steady temperature than to heavily cycle the temperature of your home. In other words, it's better to keep things ticking over than to wake up on a cold morning and have the heating firing away to regain a comfortable daytime temperature. If you have high thermal mass, allowing the structure to get too cold means you'll always be fighting to get a comfortable and condensation free environment indoors.

    On the other hand, if the building is unoccupied, other than the risk of freezing pipes, I'd turn everything off. In our caravan we have an electric heater on frost setting left on in the bathroom if we leave it, but otherwise let things go cold. Whether that's logical or effective, I've no idea!
    • CommentAuthorchuckey
    • CommentTimeSep 24th 2007
     
    All houses with central heating should have a frost-stat set to 5 deg C, to protect the header tank and pipes from freezing. My neighbours cottage has had an electric heater put in as well as the frost stat, because it gets really cold and windy here here and the pipe runs in the loft are long (but insulated). When I bought my cottage, unoccupied for 2 years there was no water in the place at all, the whole CH system had been drained. Most places (like cities) are sheltered and do not have the week of -5 deg C and high winds that we have here, so most CH systems survive without a frost stat.
    Frank
    • CommentAuthorTheDoctor
    • CommentTimeJan 4th 2008
     
    my three year old daughter's bedroom is rarely above 14 degrees in the winter, as is mine.
    I have the window at least partially open in the bedroom most nights.
    Cant stand sleeping in the warm. Warm duvet and cold air makes for a fantastic nights sleep.
    I grew up without central heating, and neither myself or my brother succumb to half the coughs and colds that are always flying about.

    It is not all about increasing the efficiency of the house, but using a hell of a lot less as well.

    All bedrooms are at one end of the house, and are minimally heated (not when the windows are open!)
    the living area of the house (when it is finished, will be extremely well insulated and efficient and cosy, and also we are then only heating half the living space to 18 degrees or so, rather than the whole house.

    i cant stand staying in friends houses where the WHOLE house is at 22 degrees 24 hours a day, and they think it is normal. They also see it as a god-given right to walk round in pants and a vest all day in the depths of February in Scotland
    (ok, maybe i'm abnormal!) Put a wooly jumper on!
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeJan 4th 2008
     
    I agree the water beside my bed used to freeze in winter when I was little sometimes solid! never had a cold in my life yet.
    • CommentAuthorarthur
    • CommentTimeJan 7th 2008
     
    Are there issues due to the effect of large swings between day and night time temperature on relative humidity and the effect of this on timber? I've been wondering about this because of a piano. I don't use central heating in the room much but is it good for it get so cold at night?
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeJan 7th 2008
     
    In general the relative humidities found inside homes are always low enough not to have an adverse effect on the timber or to cause mould growth.

    I worry about large fluctuations of temperature but they seem not to cause problems to the fabric.

    Re: piano it will probably be alright is it steel framed?
  17.  
    Posted By: tonyIn general the relative humidities found inside homes are always low enough not to have an adverse effect on the timber or to cause mould growth
    Except one hears lots of cases in the UK where people complain about mold growth on walls and especially in cupboards and behind furniture. My experience in the UK was that there was always some black mold in the bathroom.

    A piano needs a fairly constant relative humidity to stay in good condition and to maintain a stable tuning. As much as there is a cast iron frame, there are many wooden components, especially the sound board, which can crack if there are wide swings in humidity. The tuning pins are help in a wooden block too and will also suffer if the humidity changes much (let alone the shafts of the hammers etc.). There are companies that make systems that go inside a piano to try and maintain a stable humidity. Temperature and humidity swings are the worst possible environment one can subject a piano to.

    Paul in Montreal
  18.  
    i have often heard people say as tuna does that it is more efficient to keep a house/room/ hot water tank at a constant tempreture than to reheat when needed. this is nonsence. heat loss is proportional to the tempreture difference between the inside and outside of the building/ tank. so all the time an object is hot it is losing energy if it is allowed to cool it loses the energy that is stored in it but as it is cooler it does so at a lower rate than an object maintian at a high tempreture. An object allowed to cool will only lose energy untill it reaches the tempreture of its surroundings. the energy that it takes to reheat to the orginal tempreture will be the same that it has lost. to maintain a high tempreture it is nessacerry to continually replace eneregy lost at a high rate. Other than the convenience of not having to wait for the tank or room to warm up there is no reason not to switch it off. Suprisingly difficult to convince people though.
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeJan 10th 2008
     
    In hard water areas scale is deposited every tine a hot cylinder cools slowly. The additional extra cost is small ( zero in winter) and quality of life better wit hot water always there.

    I always set back the heating when unoccupied or at night but it only fires up at 6 in the morning when it is very cold -2 or below. I set to 15^o C.

    It is pretty uncomfortable waking up in house at 7^o C typical in many modern timber frame homes built in the 70/80's again quality of life comes into it.
  20.  
    Posted By: tonyI set to 15^o C.


    Ouch - that's one thing I don't miss about the UK - people living in freezing cold drafty boxes with the windows permanently open in the vain hope of reducing condensation.

    As for set backs, they work well for the typically massively oversized heating systems that seem to get installed these days. The huge change the system is requested to make works well as it has to fire long and hard to bring the temperature back to something resembling a comfortable level. Where setbacks don't tend to work well is where the heating system is a correctly sized heatpump that has auxiliary heating. The reason is the rate-of-change requested by the recovery from the set back often would bring on the auxiliary heating, thus greatly reducing the COP. Systems with "intelligent" thermostats wouldn't suffer from this, but the end result is the run time is about the same as leaving the temperature at a constant level.

    The original question was about temperature set backs and pianos. This is the worst thing you can do to a piano - a stable temperature and relative humidity are a piano's best friends.

    Since I work from home, I have the thermostat set at a constant 21.5C, winter and summer (well, only when it's really hot and humid in the summer). This is below the recommended level of 22C (for heating) in Canada though!

    Paul in Montreal
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeJan 11th 2008
     
    Even though I set for 15 the house rarely falls below 17 at night with no heating -- beauty of thermal mass. I cant believe that you have 21.5 through the night!
    •  
      CommentAuthorOlly
    • CommentTimeJan 11th 2008
     
    My heating is off at night, I've not got a clue how cold it gets, but I have 2 duvets for when it's really cold!

    I'm frequently away from my flat for 2, 3 or even 4 days at a time (I should point out that there's nothing in it worth stealing if any burglars are reading :bigsmile:), I drop my thermostat by 5 degrees down to about 15C or so if I know I'll be away to save on heating, if I switch the heating off completely it takes ages to warm up when I return.

    I'd like to control my heating remotely, so that I can switch it on online or via SMS, because no matter how clever my heating system is, it can't possibly know when I'm coming back because I rarely do myself. There is an assumption that houses are occupied by people who all live there permanently and work 9-5 which is probably becoming less and less common these days and I suspect half the systems in the country have reverted back to default settings and are heating when they needn't be.
  23.  
    Posted By: tonyI cant believe that you have 21.5 through the night!


    The bedroom is slightly cooler than the rest of the house - around 20C - which, in winter my wife finds too cold and in summer too hot :wink: It's very difficult finding a temperature that's right! It's not as hot as it sounds. Humidity in winter here is quite low - the house isn't as dry as it was prior to fixing a lot of the air leakage but it's still drier than houses in the UK. Even when it's -20C outside, there's no condensation on the windows. Dry air feels cooler than moist air at the same temperature.

    I must admit, though, that it did take some time to acclimatise to the different temperatures here. In summer, quite usual to have a temperature of 25C or more inside (if the air conditioning isn't running). I now find that 23C in the bedroom in summer is bearable, but only because the air conditioning removes a lot of the humidity. Before we had the system installed, it would get to the mid 30s centigrade and, with the humidity, this is very uncomfortable for sleeping.

    I find an even, unvarying temperature, more comfortable to sleep with. Prior to the installation of the GSHP, we had an oil furnace and radiator system that did have setbacks. I found that when the heating came on in the morning, the rise in temperature would make me more sleepy. We did experiment with setbacks with the GSHP too - but only a couple of degrees. I feel it is more comfortable just maintaining a constant temperature, except it we're away where we do set it a couple of degrees lower, depending how cold it is outside. If it's really cold, we don't do the setback as the recovery would end up energizing the auxiliary heat and hence counteract any savings from the setback in the first place.

    Paul in Montreal

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