Warm air heating in a house- views?

dragonsoup

Had one in our 1980s house.

On the plus side it warmed the house up very quickly.

On the con side it also cooled off very quickly and was quite noisy. Like living in a giant fan heater.

I didn't exactly dislike it but I wouldn't buy another house with it.

r2015

I had warm air heating for 24 years.


It was in the kitchen.


There is the disadvantage of 2 pilot lights if you have gas heating the hot water. Mine were using about £100 of gas a year.


3kWh for the hot water and 5 kWh for the heating a day.


Also if the ventilation has been "upgraded" by BG you will find the temperature of the room where this ventilation is, drops drastically when the heating is off.


BG, during one of their services, decided the ventilation was insufficient, it came from the underfloor void, and told me if I didn't add extra ventilation, the heating would be condemned so I had to make a hole in an outside wall in the kitchen.


Standing at the sink doing the dishes when the gas fired there was an almighty draught. This vent eventually got covered up, after all it never needed it for 20 years.


During the night when the heating was off the temperature in the kitchen would sometimes drop to 9 deg C while the rest of the house stayed at 15 deg C.


The final straw for me was when I was told I would need a new one piece flue with no joints as mine went through the ceiling and upstairs floor and up to the attic venting to the roof ridge.


Admittedly there was slight corrosion where the flue went through the roof.


No one other than BG would service it and was costing me nearly £300 a year.


So I replaced it with a combi boiler and radiators and am at present saving 8 kWh of gas a day.

catterlen

I'll make sure to ask the question about services and costs in that case- and possibly also the ventilation. I think I'll also have a walk around the estate and see if the neighbours still use the system or not as well.
Thanks for all the replies- very useful.

r2015

I think I'll also have a walk around the estate and see if the neighbours still use the system or not as well.

Most of the people on the estate where I stay have replaced it.

I think out of the 40 houses there is only one who still has it.

This year 10 house have had it replaced since the start of the year.

red_imps_2003

The only experience of warm air heating I have had in in my in-laws' house (similar vintage to the one you are looking at buying; late 70s I think), which I lived in for a while between homes. Like a few others above, I didn't like it. That said, I have since been made aware of some of its advantages that I had not previously considered. One of these is that one of the reasons their lounge seems so spacious is because it has no chimney breast nor hearth protruding into the room. This increases the usable square footage far more than I realised and also makes the layout of furniture more flexible than in any house I have lived in. The swift heating of the rooms is probably a big plus too, as they could just leave it off while they were out and warm the place up again in minutes when they got back in. They also get around the issue of radiators where a lot of the heat gets trapped behind the curtains when the nights draw in (this may just be my inaccurate perception). I do like the fact they don't add extra water pipes through your home in the way wet central heating does, given the number of leakages we have experienced as home owners. I hadn't really appreciated that side of things back then.

The things that got to me though were:

The noise (especially after I had gone to bed). It wasn't like a jet engine or anything, but you certainly noticed when it switched on and off. It was on its last legs in the time I was living there, though, so yours may not be so noticeable. Also, the radiators they have installed subsequently are noisy in a different way (you can hear when the boiler is on, particularly at night, and it bangs and clanks like hell as the pipes warm up and cool down).

As somebody above mentioned; it did dry my skin badly. I do have dry skin anyway, though, so you may not find it a problem. My in-laws didn't seem to suffer the same issue, as far as I could tell.

The temperature variations. As above, I found it didn't keep the temperature very even. It reminded me of a fan heater where the room goes cold very quickly as soon as the warm air stops being circulated. It could be that they didn't have it set up properly or perhaps a better thermostat may have improved things.

The vent in the bathroom was too small for the size of the room. It was smaller than a letterbox and didn't put out much heat. The room was flippin' cold in winter! Again, that may be particular to their installation, though, and possibly tied in to the age of the system.

I think, on balance, I still prefer radiators, but I have become more amenable to ducted air since I was living with it some fourteen years ago now.

catterlen

So, I went round the house today and am going back tonight with my husband, as he couldn't get there earlier.
The heating was on whilst I was there, and didn't seem to noisy. However, I looked at the boiler/ heat exchanger system as much as I could- there are 2 separate systems in 2 separate and apparently disconnected locations. One for hot water, and one for heat- is this a usual setup?
The heat exchanger main system has a metal flue in the cupboard presumably going into the loft, which is surrounded by a red sheeting type material. I will ask the vendor if I can photograph so I can add on here as I don't know if this would be asbestos or not.
So, the vendor also says they haven't had it regularly serviced, just empty the vent or filter that someone mentioned previously. Their BG engineer for the gas fire they have said that as long as the flame is blue, the warm air system is fine?
Should I have any other questions when I look at the system again? The idea of the warm air seems reasonable to me, and I like no rads etc- I think the only thing really bothering me is the idea of failure I.e. If it goes, it has gone and you have no heat. However, I suppose having the hot water system separate is quite useful.

catterlen

Ok apparently I can't stick a photo on here but the other stuff I found out is as follows: house built in 1971, system is Lennox.
1)It has a red cracked sheet type insulation around the metal flue- looked to me like fibreglass sheet but am not sure, would anyone know if this is (un)likely with property age? The syetm is as old as the house.
2)Some of the vents in the bedrooms had what seemed to be light pulls- I wasn't clear if these were for closing vents or operating the system in each room?
Some of the rooms had round ducting to outer walls - are these the vents for the system?

8-of-us

Hi Catterlen, I'm following your posts with interest as we're off to view a house tonight with the same heating system, its new to me so I cant help with anything you've asked but thanks for raising the questions you have.

catterlen

No problem- it is proving an interesting system to find out about!
It looks as though there are newer replacement system boilers out there that look quite efficient- I am looking into this and will let you know if I get any figures for costs and replacement of the original heat exchanger unit.

sonirohan

Hi All,

Similar question - planning to buy a property with a Hot Air Vent system....Any estimates on costs of changing to a standard Gas Central Heating would really help ...