Buying a House with Old Fashioned Air Vent Heating.

hobnobs_mummy

We are currently looking at putting an offer in on a 3bed semi which has the old style air vent heating.
Does anyone have any experience with this sort of heating? or know how much it would cost to install radiators instead?

Gwhiz

hobnobs_mummy wrote: »

We are currently looking at putting an offer in on a 3bed semi which has the old style air vent heating.
Does anyone have any experience with this sort of heating? or know how much it would cost to install radiators instead?

I'm renting a house at the moment with warm air heating (vents in the floor blow out warm air) if that's what you are talking about.

I do not like it because it is noisy and dries the air out considerably. The upside is it warms the house quickly.

hobnobs_mummy

Gwhiz wrote: »

I'm renting a house at the moment with warm air heating (vents in the floor blow out warm air) if that's what you are talking about.

I do not like it because it is noisy and dries the air out considerably. The upside is it warms the house quickly.

Thanks for your reply

We have a baby daugheter who is just about to start crawling so i'm also a little concerned about the vents being at her height. There are some in the walls high up and some below, but none in the actual flooring.

seraphina

We looked at a house with this style of heating and I think it's quite a good idea - you get more useable space in a room as you don't need wall space for radiators. As the air is recirculated through the heating ducts, you can get dust and allergen filters which means that the houses stay cleaner.

hobnobs_mummy

Thanks Seraphina Good to know you can get filters too.

Sunnyday

We had it in our last house and loved it, given a choice i`d go back to it like a shot.

Rooms were warm in 5 minutes and it was very economical to run, the lower vents are usually where the warm air blows out and the higher ones are usually air intakes. The lower ones usually have a slider to close the vent if needs be.

Parts are usually very reasonably priced as is a whole replacement system which we eventually had done as we really didn`t want rads.

Good site here which we bought from http://www.johnsonandstarley.co.uk/Default.asp

Think about it - no leaking rads or having to bleed the system, no having to have furniture in certain laces as the best spot is taken by a radiator and cheaper maintainance costs (can you tell i miss mine:D)

All i had to do was pull out a filter every week and hoover it - my kinda job

HTH

SD

EDIT - in winter a clothes airer fully loaded will only take a couple of hours to dry all your washing - bonus!

hobnobs_mummy

Thanks Sunnyday, could you put it on timer like normal boiler heating? so set it to come on in the night or when out of the house for when you get home?

hazyjo

My parents had it (so I lived with it from age 9-ish to 21 when I moved out). They changed it all to central heating about 8 years ago as my mum hated it (they still live there).

I do remember it being very hot all the time, but I don't think my mum ever worked it properly. She'd just crank it up to full to get it hot, then turn it off when we started melting. Either too hot (and I mean HOT!) or too cold. Personally, I didn't mind it, but it doesn't suit everyone.

Oh, and you can hear other rooms too as the vent shafts seem to connect throughout the house - my sis and I used to put our ear to the vent to hear conversations in other rooms. Proper little spies lol.

Jx

tealady

I know someone who had had this system for years and loves it for all the reasons mentioned above.
Also if you have rads put in you could end up with workmen having to lift up parts of all floors in the house, could you live with that whilst the work is going on?

Jowo_2

Our cat loved it and used to park itself in front of the vent in the hallway (because my father yelled at it when it hogged the one in the lounge).

Sunnyday

hobnobs_mummy wrote: »

Thanks Sunnyday, could you put it on timer like normal boiler heating? so set it to come on in the night or when out of the house for when you get home?

Our model had a timer but we never used it so when we replaced it we didn`t bother with it as it cost a bit less without. I always used to leave the thermostat turned down really low in winter so if the room temp dropped the heating would click on any way.

I forgot about the cats loving it - thanks for reminding me Jowo

I much prefer the warm air to radiators, wish it was an option in this house.

SD