Is your heating ON or OFF?

pattypan4

oh well. prepare for the worst and hope for the best

Novice_investor101

A few of the newspapers are predicting a lot of snow & freezing temps this winter. I quite like that sort of weather, but appreciate how hard it is for people who are less mobile. I was trapped in my house for a month in Dec 2010 because I had a broken leg & it was sheet ice for most of the month.

Heating is most definitely off. Anyone following my high humidity saga will know I finally stumped up £160 for a dehumidifier & what a difference it has made in less than 24hrs!
House temp saying 18.5c & I actually feel warm & comfortable. Usually I'd be wearing a jumper & putting the heating on would make the house feel stuffy.
It has sucked about 4 ltrs of water out of the house since yesterday afternoon & the humidity is down to 55% from over 70%.
It's really looking like this will reduce my heating bills as the house just feels warmer, & obviously dryer & no more need to put the electric fan heater on in the bedroom anymore. At 2.5p an hour to run, it is cheaper than running the heater too.

poppellerant

Novice_investor101 wrote: »

A few of the newspapers are predicting a lot of snow & freezing temps this winter. I quite like that sort of weather, but appreciate how hard it is for people who are less mobile. I was trapped in my house for a month in Dec 2010 because I had a broken leg & it was sheet ice for most of the month.

Heating is most definitely off. Anyone following my high humidity saga will know I finally stumped up £160 for a dehumidifier & what a difference it has made in less than 24hrs!
House temp saying 18.5c & I actually feel warm & comfortable. Usually I'd be wearing a jumper & putting the heating on would make the house feel stuffy.
It has sucked about 4 ltrs of water out of the house since yesterday afternoon & the humidity is down to 55% from over 70%.
It's really looking like this will reduce my heating bills as the house just feels warmer, & obviously dryer & no more need to put the electric fan heater on in the bedroom anymore. At 2.5p an hour to run, it is cheaper than running the heater too.

I don't like to rain on your parade, but I used to use a dehumidifier for a good few years. I have kept it in storage for the last two years, in a bid to get my bills down. Ever since, my electricity usagel has gone down and my gas (heating and cooking) has remained about the same.

I've learnt to open the windows for a brief time when I get up to get rid of the worst of moist air, then leave then on vent for as many hours as you can bear. One little trick I do is to put the heating on about an hour before I finally close the windows. If I'm producing a lot of steam by having a shower or cooking, I will open the kitchen window normally and perhaps another window.

A dehumidifier is nice and convenient for drawing the moisture out the air without having to open windows. But I find that there is nothing like good honest fresh air which costs absolutely nothing - that is until these cretins, known as Tories, tax it.

pattypan4

a de-humidifier definitely has a good place in keeping house fabric (walls) dry. It has more than one effect ie it raises the temperature, reduces moisture in the air and also reduces humidity to a level that does not encourages dust mites to multiply. No end of people get affected by increasing dust mites in winter. It is not just nice and convenient, it is a must-have for house maintenance and in maintaining good health. Everyone knows about vent opening, some people don`t have vents in windows. Just watch the wet run down windows in a cold winter, then watch the wood around get mouldy and eventually rotten. The unseen mould is very very bad for lungs and health and it can lurk on walls no matter how much bleach you use to clean it. Prevention is always better

SpikyHedgehog

Novice_investor101 wrote: »

A few of the newspapers are predicting a lot of snow & freezing temps this winter. I quite like that sort of weather, but appreciate how hard it is for people who are less mobile. I was trapped in my house for a month in Dec 2010 because I had a broken leg & it was sheet ice for most of the month.

Heating is most definitely off. Anyone following my high humidity saga will know I finally stumped up £160 for a dehumidifier & what a difference it has made in less than 24hrs!
House temp saying 18.5c & I actually feel warm & comfortable. Usually I'd be wearing a jumper & putting the heating on would make the house feel stuffy.
It has sucked about 4 ltrs of water out of the house since yesterday afternoon & the humidity is down to 55% from over 70%.
It's really looking like this will reduce my heating bills as the house just feels warmer, & obviously dryer & no more need to put the electric fan heater on in the bedroom anymore. At 2.5p an hour to run, it is cheaper than running the heater too.

A few years ago, my mini tumble dryer broke, and rather than get another one, I got a dehumidifier, and I love it. The tumble dryer had a hose so I had to have the back door open whenever I used it so the kitchen diner (with back door straight to the garden) would be so cold and damp. Now, I put the washing on the clothes horse and put the dehumidifier in front of it and it makes downstairs toasty warm.

I do agree with poppellerant that fresh air is so good at airing out the house, but there's no point my opening the windows wide if I'm just getting rain back in as I would be today.

Novice_investor101

I do suffer from dust and pollen allergies, which is one of the reasons why I bought it. I only realised how high the humidity was downstairs because I took the bedroom hygrometer down out of curiosity and it showed 70%. The house isn't damp, but I think an old Victorian terrace that has double glazing, loft insulation etc etc can't breathe as it used to and moisture just gets trapped in the air. The high ceilings don't help.

Upstairs I leave the bathroom and bedrooms windows locked open 24/7 on the vent, even in winter. I only close them on the most coldest of days. I like the fresh air that circulates upstairs. Unfortunately, I cant do the same with the downstairs windows as I'm out all day at work, and that is where the humidity builds up.
In the 24 hours I've had it, it has cleared the excess moisture in the air downstairs, sorted out a wet patch on a wall and made the house feel a lot warmer and less stuffy. The heating came on at 4pm and reached a temp of 20c a lot quicker than normal, clicked off again and has not been on since. The house has maintained that temp into the evening, and I don't feel chilly even though the thermometer says 20c - like I used to. The machine has now stopped running continuously and is cycling on and off maintaining a level of 55% in the living room. The house may not actually be warmer, but it feels warmer.

SpikyHedgehog

Novice_investor101 wrote: »

I do suffer from dust and pollen allergies, which is one of the reasons why I bought it. I only realised how high the humidity was downstairs because I took the bedroom hygrometer down out of curiosity and it showed 70%. The house isn't damp, but I think an old Victorian terrace that has double glazing, loft insulation etc etc can't breathe as it used to and moisture just gets trapped in the air. The high ceilings don't help.

Upstairs I leave the bathroom and bedrooms windows locked open 24/7 on the vent, even in winter. I only close them on the most coldest of days. I like the fresh air that circulates upstairs. Unfortunately, I cant do the same with the downstairs windows as I'm out all day at work, and that is where the humidity builds up.
In the 24 hours I've had it, it has cleared the excess moisture in the air downstairs, sorted out a wet patch on a wall and made the house feel a lot warmer and less stuffy. The heating came on at 4pm and reached a temp of 20c a lot quicker than normal, clicked off again and has not been on since. The house has maintained that temp into the evening, and I don't feel chilly even though the thermometer says 20c - like I used to. The machine has now stopped running continuously and is cycling on and off maintaining a level of 55% in the living room. The house may not actually be warmer, but it feels warmer.

When my parents moved into a 3 storey plus cellar Victorian end terrace house, the open fires were still usable, so that was the only heating we had for the first few years. (While my sisters & I were Brownies, people came to ours to make & light the fire for Houseorderly badge as everyone else had gas fires or the amazing luxury of central heating :rotfl: )

Of course, you loose heat up the chimneys... but equally, the heat rises up the chimneys and warms the rooms the chimney goes through. The bedrooms at the top of the house were so much colder when they had the open fires replaced with gas fires.

VfM4meplse

Having read the last few posts I have gone from being convinced it is a good thing to being entirely unnecessary and then back again

Novice_investor101

VfM4meplse, if you mean a dehumidifier - I'm glad I bought it.
I've spent each winter wondering why I felt chilly even though the house was at 21c, & this has confirmed why - the air was saturated.
I like a bit of fresh air, but opening the windows when it's damp outside does nothing. & Opening the windows with the heating on to get rid of damp air, as was suggested by poppellerant, seems like an awful waste of money - I don't want to have to keep the windows open for as long as I can bear it, whilst chucking good heating out the window.

One other thing I've noticed, too.
My thermostat was never very accurate. I'd have to put it on 16c to get a room temp of 18-20c - it now measures, & clicks on & off, at the right temp. Saves me having to replace it as it wasn't actually faulty.

I can't sing it's praises highly enough.

pattypan4

Zone temperature control is getting there, to where I want it, where it will remain all year around. Nothing has needed to come on this morning, except the bedroom and en suite at 7 for an hour. I had to put the upstairs zone at 25 for that to happen but as I said, the thermostats are wrong everywhere. It will be nice and cosy when I go up to shower and change. It felt slightly cool when I came down, that soon went away when I had my big mug of tea and my breakfast. So far so good and I can stop fiddling with the thermostats now