My House is taking ages to heat up

FreeBear

coffeehound wrote: »

Could you start using a fireplace to have a fire and really bang some heat into the building on cold evenings?

An open fire will put much of the heat straight up the chimney. A decent wood or multifuel stove will be 70-80% efficient, and properly sized, would help heat up the house.

A turn of the century house is likely to be solid wall construct and riddled with draughts - Insulating the walls is going to be expensive, but cutting down the draughts can pay dividends. Seal any gaps around the windows/doors and along the skirting boards. Put down a thick carpet with a good quality underlay - I used wood fibre boards topped with 11mm foam underlay (perhaps a tad too thick really).

Block off any unused fireplaces with a chimney sheep (or old duvet) during the winter months - Take the plug out in the summer to get a bit of air flowing.
Get the heating system serviced and check that the radiators are properly balanced. If the radiators are ropey old 1970s ones, consider replacing them with modern ones suitably sized for the rooms.
Thick heavy curtains will also cut down on heat loss through the windows even if they are fairly new double glazed ones.

It is possible to heat an old property to a comfortable temperature without spending a fortune on energy to do so. But plugging the draughts and improving the thermal efficiency takes time (and a bit of money).

Fire_Fox

Ms01ma wrote: »

Right I’m pretty clueless when it comes to stuff like this

However my house is taking ages to heat up (tonight 2.4 hours to go from 17 to 19)

It’s a big house (250m2) 4 bed detached from 1910, massive ceilings and massive rooms (so I do understand it’s always going to take a while / cost a fortune)

I have a baxi megaflo 28 boiler with hive heating. thermostat is in the hallway

I’m using 33000 kWh of gas a year and only ever have the thermostat to 19/19.5

Any suggestions welcome thanks

Welcome to MSE.

How well insulated or poorly insulated is your house (window treatments, window structure, loft, walls, draught proofing)? When was the central heating system last serviced/ last balanced?

Do you need to heat the entire house at once, or do you need different areas warm at different times, or can some (unused) areas be minimally heated?

Is the 17C to 19C increase in your hallway? If yes, what temperature are you actually getting in your living areas? What temperature does your household feel is acceptable for these areas?

Economical ways to heat people rather than large open spaces include electric underblankets on beds, heated throws on chairs and sofas. These cost about as much to run as an older style lightbulb.

HTH!

Ms01ma

Thanks it’s set at 70

Ms01ma

RelievedSheff wrote: »

Unfortunately with a big old house you are never going to get it toasty warm. We have previously rented a large 1890 villa and it was never warm in winter despite a massive gas bill as the boiler valiantly tried to achieve the impossible.

Does your house have any insulation? If not it would be worth looking into this.

Thanks it does have some cavity wall, some loft insulation but nothing under the floors

Ms01ma

tacpot12 wrote: »

I would suggest you need a heating engineer to check how the system is operating and whether he radiators are big enough, but before you get them to come, I would check that you have no cold draughts in the house. So check all the windows and doors to see where cold draughts are coming in and block these off.

Thanks will do, we get our boiler serviced every year but not the system. I know in some rooms the radiators aren’t big enough

In our bedroom it’s massive and quite new but doesn’t heat correctly (2 plumbers couldn’t find anything wrong)

In the kitchen we only have room for 1 it’s quite large but it’s got 3 exterior walls and a massive vaulted ceiling with lots of windows

Ms01ma

FreeBear wrote: »

An open fire will put much of the heat straight up the chimney. A decent wood or multifuel stove will be 70-80% efficient, and properly sized, would help heat up the house.

A turn of the century house is likely to be solid wall construct and riddled with draughts - Insulating the walls is going to be expensive, but cutting down the draughts can pay dividends. Seal any gaps around the windows/doors and along the skirting boards. Put down a thick carpet with a good quality underlay - I used wood fibre boards topped with 11mm foam underlay (perhaps a tad too thick really).

Block off any unused fireplaces with a chimney sheep (or old duvet) during the winter months - Take the plug out in the summer to get a bit of air flowing.
Get the heating system serviced and check that the radiators are properly balanced. If the radiators are ropey old 1970s ones, consider replacing them with modern ones suitably sized for the rooms.
Thick heavy curtains will also cut down on heat loss through the windows even if they are fairly new double glazed ones.

It is possible to heat an old property to a comfortable temperature without spending a fortune on energy to do so. But plugging the draughts and improving the thermal efficiency takes time (and a bit of money).

Thanks we do have a very nice and large wood burner in the living room. I’ll have a look at the rest we have just done the hall in wood floor with a good underlay

PasturesNew

Ms01ma wrote: »

It’s a big house (250m2) ....only ever have the thermostat to 19/19.5

Any suggestions welcome thanks

That is a monster sized house.
"only ever" have it at 19? I set mine to 16/17.

I don't think 2.4 hours from start to warm all over is excessive for an older house of such size and going to such a high temperature to be honest. You can improve it with tweaks and checks as given above, but it is what it is: very large, very old, very warm.

Ms01ma

I’m assuming that even switching radiators off in unused rooms makes no odds as the boiler will just be hammering at full power regardless

Ms01ma

PasturesNew wrote: »

That is a monster sized house.
"only ever" have it at 19? I set mine to 16/17.

I don't think 2.4 hours from start to warm all over is excessive for an older house of such size and going to such a high temperature to be honest. You can improve it with tweaks and checks as given above, but it is what it is: very large, very old, very warm.

Thanks makes me feel better lol, with a 3 year old 16 is too cold. I need to look into the radiators and the balancing as the boiler is going full pelt and it’s a big boiler

RelievedSheff

Ms01ma wrote: »

Thanks it does have some cavity wall, some loft insulation but nothing under the floors

What thickness do you have in the loft? You can always add extra for not a lot of money. The recommended thickness for loft insulation has increased over the years.

I'm surprised you say you have cavity insulation because our old large villa was solid 210mm brick wall with no cavity (well there is a tiny cavity between the two skins of brick but it certainly could not have been insulated!

Do you have double glazing? If not could you fit some temporary secondary glazing to the rooms that you use?

As others have said sealing off draughts will also help keep the heat where you want it.

We had TRV's fitted to all of the rads in the villa and turned them right down in the rooms that we did not use so we were not wasting heat to heat rooms we would not use. This did help a little bit.

Like you though we were using circa 35000kwh of gas to heat that villa. When we moved to the 1930's semi that dropped drastically to 12000kwh. We don't know how much we will use in the new build yet over the winter but since May we have used 780kwh which is considerably less than we would have used for the same period in the 1930's house.