Smart Home shenanigans

Continuing the discussion from Yet another thread for the purposes of awarding a cockpunch:

Sounds like our house & we have radiators!

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My other houses have radiators and can heat up at about .75C/hr, plus I don’t have to leave them on 24/7 to be vaguely comfortable…

If anyone is considering hot water under floor heating, take my advice and run for the hills! :scream:

My parents had hot water underfloor heating a couple of houses back. Worked very well, and economic to run. You just had to avoid going numptie and turning it off. the brother in law did once, but late autumn so not the end of the world. It did prompt a sign in the control cupboard. If you don’t know what it is, fucking leave it alone.

NOT the AA strapline

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If you want to keep your house continuously warm for long periods (months) and if it’s decently insulated then it pretty much doesn’t matter where you inject the heat into the house. Radiators, ducted air, underfloor, it all comes down to buying your heat as cheaply as you can and leaking as little of it as possible to the outside. If you switch it off then it’ll take a long time to go cold and an equally long time to warm up again.

If, on the other hand, the house doesn’t need to be warm for more than a few hours a day (because you all sleep in one room and you all go out to work five days a week) then you want a system with a quick response time. It’ll cool down quickly (but who cares - you’re out or kipping ?) and it’ll warm up quickly (this matters when the first of you gets home or gets up). Because you’re not heating it most of the time you can save money. But underfloor won’t work for this. Nor, sadly, will any but the largest heat-pumps (they’re low-powered, so need to run for long periods).

In principle we could match a low-power heat source to a short-term, high-demand lifestyle if we had an efficient high-output heat store. It’s a bit like renewable electricity sources - everything would be hunky-dory if only we had a really good storage option.

VB

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I can’t fault it’s economy when it’s running and you’re living there, but if you pop away for a week or two over the colder months, you have to leave the thing running (ok you might turn the 12 thermostats down a couple of degrees)…

The other thing you can’t do with UFH is remote control heating, just not viably possible imo…:unamused:

I fear you’re right. For anyone whose lifestyle involves wanting to turn the building’s temperature up and down on shortish timescales (hours or even days) UFH’s advantages do start to evaporate.

I would dearly love to run a heat pump here. But ours is a relatively large (4-bed) house with relatively poor insulation (Victorian detached with uninsulated solid floors and walls) and just 2 people rattling around inside it. We turn the heat up and down a lot. A heat pump really wouldn’t cope with this.

The advantage of not having to dedicate quite long lengths of wall to radiators would be appealing though.

VB

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image

I’d need twelve! :grinning:

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Only need one per heating zone.

I’ve got a dual zone heating system and have seen an improvement already, it is quite clever how it learns patterns and the amount of time it takes to heat a room.

As I said I’d need 12, plus found this quote…

Whether you have a zoned system or not, the Nest Thermostat works with most types of heating, but it’s not compatible with electric radiators or underfloor systems.30 Aug 2017

Forget about all that. Just get @coco to build you a phono stage to keep you nice and warm…:smirk:

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:fire:

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Flagrant advertising. Well played sir! :slightly_smiling_face:

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:+1:

Surely that’s “Flammable advertising”?

Heating control systems still have a way to go IMO - they need to understand your diary better (assuming you keep an online diary well). They also really need to allow individual control of each room, and ideally allow heat to be transferred from one room to another, as well as into storage. But it will come, soon. Quite exciting really.

Rad stats :thinking:

Better than nothing. We have them on all but one rad (you really don’t want them all to close !). But they try to stabilise the temperature 6" above the floor and very close to the wall. Better is coming http://www.housetechsolutions.co.uk/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIy4TC7viv2AIVprXtCh0_TQATEAAYASAAEgI5lPD_BwE

VB