Warm air heating in a house- views?

AnotherJoe

Its a lot of disruption to put in radiators and you lose wall space as well. Warm air is also much simpler so there is far less to go wrong, basically the boiler. You dont need to be concerned about pipes or radiators.

A house I owned had it, it was fantastic, I loved it. Warmed up very quickly. It also had a function which allowed you to circulate air without warming, was very good in heatwaves, a sort of poor mans air con. When the boiler failed (it was 25 years old) I had it replaced with another warm air boiler.

IMO the main reason people dont like it is its unfamiliar to them in this country. Go to USA or Canada, its standard (often allied with aircon) , and I reckon if you proposed to heat up water and pump it around the house into big flat metal containers fixed to the walls they would laugh at you.

I advise you try it for one winter, and only look to switch if you think its not for you after actually using it.

theartfullodger

£4,732:67.

Cheers!

Marmaduke123

There's good warm air and there's poor warm air! Lennox is good in my experience.

My parents had a Lennox system installed in the house they moved to in 1961, and it was trouble free for 20 years at least. I don't know about after that, as my mother moved out. There were sufficient outlets in each room to keep the house comfortably warm. It was quick to warm up, but similarly quick to cool down when the heating went off - the fabric of the house never warmed up as it does with radiators. They had an immersion heater for hot water. Big benefit for my father was that it is a dry system - no possibility of leaks.

We moved to a house with a cheap warm air system in the late 70s. It just had outlets up a central core, so everywhere not near a grill was cold. It broke down the first winter, and we had radiators installed as soon as we could afford it.

I wouldn't worry at all about moving to a house with a Lennox system though.

silvercar

Disadvantages are that you have no control over heating to individual rooms and that large rooms will have cold spots where the heating just doesn't reach.

What put me off was that to take the system out, all the pipes need either removing or leaving vented to stop damp. This would be a major upheaval. The one we looked at had the vents in the floor. So the floor would need to be lifted, filled, relaid.

Gigervamp

silvercar wrote: »

Disadvantages are that you have no control over heating to individual rooms.

In the house that I lived in with warm air heating, you were able to open and close the vents in each room.

Marmaduke123

Gigervamp wrote: »

In the house that I lived in with warm air heating, you were able to open and close the vents in each room.

That was my experience too, in my parents house. You could have them partially open too, it wasn't a case of open or closed. The vents wetre in the floor and there were no cold spots either, but there were several vents in each room.

Back to good warm air like Lennox, or cheap 1960s poor type like in our house.

hazyjo

I grew up with it, although it was changed to rads several years ago. House was built in 1979 I seem to remember.


1. Be prepared for lots of static!
2. You can hear each other through the vents. My sis was far nosier than me and often had her ear glued to it.
3. It gets hot quickly - although often it's too hot, then when you turn it off, it's freezing. We didn't often find a good in-between for the entire house.
4. Not always possible to place things in front of the vents like you can with a radiator.


Mum hated it but I didn't mind it.


Wouldn't rule it out entirely if looking, but if I liked two houses and one had rads, it'd prob sway me.


Jx

AnotherJoe

Gigervamp wrote: »

In the house that I lived in with warm air heating, you were able to open and close the vents in each room.

My experience also.

dc197

I had hot air heating when I lived in the USA.
It is very quick to start, you get hot air in just a few minutes.
But I found that it's also quick to cool. Once it turns off, the rooms chills rapidly compared to a room with radiators.
It's also very slightly noisier than radiators, but you get used to it.
Not as good at drying wet gloves on a winter's evening.
The first few seconds after it turns on gives a blast of room-temperature (ie cool) air as the ambient air is displaced by the hot air; this can make you shiver if you're in front of the vent.

Edit - one more thing.
Air heating systems can be adapted (if they do not already support it out of the box) to blow cold air in summer. A/C as well as C/H.

Craig_Duncan

Hi - we're thinking of purchasing a semi-detatched with warm air heating (no idea what system is in situ) although premises are ex-local authority built early 1980s just when warm air fell out of fashion in UK. From photos it appears to be floor grills.

I've grown up on wet gas central heating systems (which I always thought was a bit odd in Scotland owing to freezing/burst pipe risks) and as echoed in some of thread comments wasworried about things like dust (wife is asthmatic) as well as yo-yo hot/cold and jet engine noise etc.

From my researches online, I thought I'd share a couple of links. I cannot vouch for either and simply share for information (saves us all having to google) :

miketheboilerman.com/warmair
- this was the first site I came across that looks to be independent and not affiliated to any supplier etc. Useful links within it for spare parts etc.

And also a link for 21st century warm air systems including the UK distributor for Lennox who I see get a thumbs up in previous thread comments. ( gasflowlimited.co.uk/gas-warm-air/lennox-g61mpvt/ ) Having read the sales blurb, it seems to me that modern warm-air systems are more efficient and quieter that their ancestors.
And the option to include air filtration down to 1micron (ie hospital grade) takes care of the dust/pollen etc issues.
Also option of external air con but living in Scotland Im not certain we are quite needing aircon just yet.

My question is whether any warm-air users have experience of the air filtration on warm air systems and whether it "does what it says on the tin"?