heating home at night

whatnots2015

A bit of an unseasonable question but I've been reading recently about heating and ventilating homes and the "ideal" temperatures or habitable ones. Until recently our gas central heating was on from the moment we got up to the moment we went to bed but we can't heat the house above about 15 degrees in midwinter even with electric heaters and dehumidifiers in every room. We would like to buy but cannot move away from this health hazard as property investors snap up places so quickly so it looks as though we are stuck in cold, damp private rented property. I'm wondering whether having the gas central heating on at night as well would make it any warmer or any less damp. We have the windows open a little all the time as there are no air bricks, trickle vents etc and whilst it is draughty, it was 15 degrees indoors even before we started doing this on the advice of our landlady who wants us to "do our bit" whilst she is apparently doing all she can about the cold and damp.

lisyloo

If you are in rented accommodation why haven’t you moved?

Slithery

Does the property have a current EPC?

user1977

You shouldn't need the windows open all the time (even without dehumidifiers running). Does the place warm up if you close the windows?

[Deleted User]

whatnots2015 said:

A bit of an unseasonable question but I've been reading recently about heating and ventilating homes and the "ideal" temperatures or habitable ones. Until recently our gas central heating was on from the moment we got up to the moment we went to bed but we can't heat the house above about 15 degrees in midwinter even with electric heaters and dehumidifiers in every room. We would like to buy but cannot move away from this health hazard as property investors snap up places so quickly so it looks as though we are stuck in cold, damp private rented property. I'm wondering whether having the gas central heating on at night as well would make it any warmer or any less damp. We have the windows open a little all the time as there are no air bricks, trickle vents etc and whilst it is draughty, it was 15 degrees indoors even before we started doing this on the advice of our landlady who wants us to "do our bit" whilst she is apparently doing all she can about the cold and damp.

If there is gas central heating why are you using electric heaters? What is your landlady doing ti tackle the damp issue? 

Jeepers_Creepers

If you can't raise the internal temp above 15oC with the existing heating (and extra), then that suggests either your CH system is inadequate, or the house is appallingly insulated/draughty to a huge degree.

Which of these is the case is tricky to assess from this side of the screen. However, if you can tell us things like the sizes of the main rooms, the size and type of rad in each, and how hot the rads actually get (in terms of the scale: 'hottish, but I can keep my hands on it quite easily', to 'pretty hot and I can only hold my fingers on it for a few seconds' to 'very hot - I can't really touch it for more than a second', etc), then we should be able to give an idea.

A few general points:

1) Keeping the heating on for longer, say overnight even at a reduced level, will use more energy. Yes, it might make the house a bit faster to warm up in the morning by it having kept the 'fabric' of the house warmer overnight, but this will be seen in increased energy costs. This is a simple fact. Heat is lost at a rate which is dependent on the temp difference between inside and oot. Increase that difference, and you'll increase the loss.

2) 15oC is completely unacceptable. No-one can be expected to live in this for any reasonable amount of time. Obviously the ideal solution is to move, but I suspect this isn't easy to do? If you cannot move, then have you tried heating just one 'living' room properly in the house, and letting the others remain cool?

3) WHY is the house so hard to heat? What age and style of house is it? Is it draughty?

4) Cracking open the vents at night is a good thing, especially if the house is older. As the temp drops inside at night - as the heating is turned down - the air cannot hold on to the moisture that's been put into it by 'living' - cooking, bathing, sweat (sorry), etc. - and this moisture will condense out of the air on to the coldest surfaces it can find, usually windows panes first. There's only 2 ways to prevent this - one is to keep the house warm (very costly) and the other is to vent that moisture away (cracking open windows). Yes, ventilating will cool the rooms further, but it'll also help to keep them dry. It's why gawd gave us duvets.

5) Ventilation is important even in modern houses in order to keep it dry. However, if your house is naturally ventilated (ie 'draughty'), then it shouldn't really be necessary to also crack open windows. You can judge this by watching the amount of condensation on the windows each morning; a thin edge of moisture along the bottom of the panes first thing, which is easy to wipe away and doesn't return during the day is fine - I probably wouldn't bother venting further, unless it's a warm sunny day and it's fine to give a good 'airing'.

6) Cold and condensation are different things. We don't heat our bedroom during winter, but we do have the windows on 'vent'. So our noses are cold even when the rest of us is toasty, but we wake up to essentially dry windows - the thin lines of cond which do form are easy to wipe away, and don't return during the day.

Anyhoo, can you tell us about the type of house, rooms and rads, please?

And house many rooms, and what's your annual gas bill?

MovingForwards

If you cannot move then look to go old school on the property.

Thick curtains on the windows (charity shop).
Draught excluder round the front door and back door with a thick curtain (Screwfix and charity shop).
Get some decorators caulk and the trigger, fill all the gaps around door frames, skirting, window frame surrounds (Screwfix).
If there's gaps around the window frames itself, buy the sealant and fill it all (Screwfix).

Is there carpet or floorboards? The former is warmer, but can leave gaps around the bottom part of the skirting.

What temperature are your radiators set to, it should say on the boiler.

What county do you live in and how much sun does the building get? 

What type of material is the building made from? Stone, brick, not sure as there's pebbles on it.

Is there wallpaper or bare painted walls?

Until the building warms up, you've no chance of being warm.

Provide more information, maybe a couple of photos if you're not sure and we can offer suggestions.

It makes a huge difference, for not much money. I've done the same on my old flat while I save to do the proper makeover.

Of course it would be nice if your LL paid for these things, but it doesn't sound like she's in any rush to do anything. There's always the option of reporting the LL, but you could end up having to move.

whatnots2015

Wow, thank you for all the replies. I’ll try to reply with some answers.

We haven’t moved away from here as my husband is autistic and resistant to change. Moving home is a big deal anyway for anyone but for him it seems like a distressing massive upheaval, especially so soon after leaving the family home to live with me. He is frightened of reporting the landlady.

The property does have an EPC but it’s full of mistaken assumptions, like the walls are assumed to be cavity and insulated, but it’s a Victorian stone built end of terrace house and they are solid and uninsulated. Allegedly it’s Band D.

Home was 15 degrees maximum in the winter even before we had the windows open all the time on the request of the landlady, who has a business premises opposite! We close the windows when it’s really windy and all the doors are rattling in the frames and then I switch on the dehumidifiers. It doesn’t seem to make much difference to the temperature on the thermometer.

We have electric heaters as well as the gas central heating as the gas alone just gets the temperature to around 15 degrees in the winter. The electric fire in the living room does get the room to above 20 degrees whilst it’s on; the electric heaters in the other rooms make a degree or two of difference. We can’t even keep clothes in the drawers and wardrobes as they go damp so they have to stay on clothes airers all over the place. We tumble dry them at the launderette after washing but they don’t stay dry in the wardrobes. The landlady has arranged for someone to check that a downpipe wasn’t blocked and that seems to be about it as regards sorting out the damp.

The landlady has at least had the legal minimum of an annual check on the boiler. The person who did it told me that the output on the boiler isn’t very high, so I would also think that the central heating is inadequate. As it’s a Victorian house I would say that it’s also appallingly insulated. There’s a cellar under part of the house with a coal chute providing a nice chilly access to the outside world. I believe that the legal minimum loft insulation for rented properties is 10cm but we got some more and the landlady hasn’t wanted to put it up in the loft.

The radiators do get too hot to touch but the living room is 4.5m by 3.5m and the ceiling is 2.5m high and the single radiator is only 1m by 60cm. When the windows are closed it doesn’t feel draughty though we can hear the wind bellowing in the chimney so I wonder if that has been appropriately blocked with a balloon. The landlady doesn’t appear to do things unless they are the bare minimum legal requirement.

Without cracking open the windows the bedroom windows were covered in condensation overnight thanks to our breathing which I used to deal with using a squeegee and cloth. Now we have no condensation.

We have five rooms in total: kitchen, living room, bathroom and two bedrooms, and the unheated cellar with the coal chute. We have prepayment meters for gas and electric so it’s nice and expensive. Our supplier has kindly collected statistics that tell us that we have used just over 20,000 kwh of gas over the last 12 months. I’ve paid about £1,000 for that.

We have blackout thermal curtains in most rooms but don’t have curtain poles in the kitchen and bathroom. We asked the landlady about putting up poles and she said that she would send someone around to help us but he didn’t turn up so I’m not even sure if we have permission. There don’t appear to be gaps around most of the windows apart from one bedroom which has a mouldy frame, so I guess that there must be a way for water to get in somehow, which again the landlady refuses to replace.

We have carpets in the bedrooms and living room and cushionfloor in the bathroom and kitchen. The cushionfloor in the kitchen at the back of the house is laid directly on the stone flags. We have a mixture of blown vinyl painted wallpaper and what looks like lining paper that has been painted. We live in sunny West Yorkshire and the front of the house gets sun for a few hours each morning. Sadly I cannot see any dials or indicators on the boiler, just the control to set the timer.

Thank you so much for your help! I’ve attached a photo of the kitchen wall. Can you spot where I leant the garden rake against the wall for a couple of days? We have all the furniture at least 15am away from the walls otherwise I shudder to think what would be going on behind the furniture.

Mardle

Do you have any extractor fans?