What do/did you have your heating at & the knock on of not using it?

B0bbyEwing

Nothing more than curiosity here that's all but the knock on may drift in to another topic of its own? I don't know.

After a discussion with folk I work with, I was surprised at how high (my opinion - they'll think I'm quite low) they seem to have their heating. 20c-25c seemed to be the range. One guy was quite proud he has "everything up full whack". 

I used to have all the rads up at Max, which (without checking to see if i'm right) was 5 on the Danfoss TRVs and 6/max on the Drayton TRVs.

Then towards the tail end of last winter, through MSE I learned I really didn't need to do that & started knocking them down.

We spend a bit of time in the kitchen/diner (there's no shut off, it's all open), living room & then main bedroom (but who wants that hot?) and box room is where the PC is which I'll spend a bit of time on, so everything got knocked down:

Kitchen/diner 2 rads got set to 3.
Living room 2 rads got set to 3
The one at the front door where the wireless heat setting display thing is is on Max.
The 1 rads in each of the bigger bedrooms were set to 2 with the box room being 3.
Can't adjust the towel rad. Or probably can but there's no dial, so that just got left.

That was the end of last winter. Heating would be 18c, heating on at 6pm & off at 9pm/10pm.

Since the whole hoo-ha over energy this year, the back bedroom and master bedroom are down to 1 on the dials, box room is 2. Rest stay as they were for now.

Heating is set to 17c to see how we get on & if we feel that's perfectly fine which I think it is, we're going to try 16c & see how we get on.

Heating now goes on 7pm & off at 9pm on the dot.

Fire (as wood is free at the mo) is also being used more than it was. When it is, all downstairs rads are turned off (or to frost setting).

We also held off as long as we could before we started putting the heating on. Aside from 1 day where I felt on deaths door & was shivvering so bad it looked like I was being electrocuted & didn't care, it didn't properly go on until December.

The knock on effect .......... black spots on the ceiling. Kitchen, top of the stairs, bathroom, box room, master bedroom. They've all got it. It's happened in the past but this year it's worse than it ever has been.

Which is todays job - bleach rub. 

Can't win. Hold off with the heating to save some cash but end up with mould marks. Stick the heating on to try keep it at bay but empty your wallet. 

Don't expect a lengthy post like that from others. Just curious.

EssexHebridean

The black mould is very not good - and a sign that something - either the ventilation or the temperature levels - isn’t right. It can also be harmful to health so well worth looking into sorting it IMO. Remember also - the bleach might hide the problem, it’s in no way curing it though. I’d suggest trying a slightly different cost/savings balance. 

Olly_J

Maybe stating the obvious, apologies if so, but condensation is the result of water evaporating into the air of the house, and then being deposited onto surfaces, because they are cooler than the air i.e like happens with a bathroom tap. Thus the mould will be growing where this is happening.

Hence its worth thinking about how much water you are putting into the air, drying clothes, showers, cooking and such, and seeing if you can reduce this water load, drying outside, even if partially, making sure bathroom doors are closed and the extractor is working.

Equally condensation will be worse worse when there are large temperature swings in the house, again as air cools down it cannot hold as much moisture, so having a night setback temperature, rather than turning your heating off will help to reduce this.

The bulk of daily energy is used returning a cold house to the warmer set temperature, it does not actually use very much to keep it a 1-2c degrees lower overnight, rather than plunging and dumping out all the moisture. Equally check your loft insulation, as cold ceilings upstairs suggest that you may not have enough keep the warmth in.

B0bbyEwing

EssexHebridean said:

The black mould is very not good - and a sign that something - either the ventilation or the temperature levels - isn’t right. It can also be harmful to health so well worth looking into sorting it IMO. Remember also - the bleach might hide the problem, it’s in no way curing it though. I’d suggest trying a slightly different cost/savings balance. 

Appreciate that kind of reply.

Just a FIY - I'm not bleaching as a 'fix'. I know that ventilation & heat will be more of a solution than bleach will. The bleach rubbing is just for the visual - it doesn't look very nice when you see black marks, so I'm just trying to get rid of that.

We could crank the heating up at cost.
Or I suppose we could have the windows open & be cold. 

I'm genuinely not sure of the best solution to be honest. When we leave the house to go to work we leave the windows on night lock but obviously that's not working (or maybe it'd be worse without it, who knows). 

Bathroom is a nuisance. We could do with a new one to be honest (I'll stop a little short of saying we need a new one but we're not far off). There's actually no proper vent in there. The vent is basically the window but you're then waiting on all that build up deciding to leave the room itself rather than it being escorted out of the room via a proper vent.

Interestingly, the spare bedroom used to get black spots but my wife hit the ceiling with Dulux [either kitchen or bathroom white, I can't remember which] and it hasn't come back since. It probably will do one day but 3-4 years on it's still good.

luvchocolate

I have kitchen and bathroom windows open during the night...and always open when bathing or cooking. 
Bedroom window open on rising until about 3pm then heating on at 16/17
Until 7pm then turned off. 
I've lived in 22 houses and never had condensation or mould 

chris1973

Met office puts the humidity level outside at between 74% and 93% for the next 24 hours. Isn't opening the windows just letting more heavily moisture laden humid air into the house and then trapping it when the window is closed again?

chris_n

chris1973 said:

Met office puts the humidity level outside at between 74% and 93% for the next 24 hours. Isn't opening the windows just letting more heavily moisture laden humid air into the house and then trapping it when the window is closed again?

Depends what you do with the air once it gets into your house, it is only at 74-93% at the temperature it is outside. If you warm it up and keep it warmer than it is outside the relative humidity will go down as warm air can hold more moisture. If you let it get colder than when it came in then you will start to get condensation as at 93% it is close to being saturated anyway.

k_man

chris1973 said:

Met office puts the humidity level outside at between 74% and 93% for the next 24 hours. Isn't opening the windows just letting more heavily moisture laden humid air into the house and then trapping it when the window is closed again?

Depends on the temperature

E.g. 98% RH at 5°C reduces to just over 40% RH at 18°C (once warmed inside the house).

So cold damp air from outside, is actually relatively dry compared to the air inside

EssexHebridean

We had similar issues with the bathroom and kitchen before they were redone. Having to open a bathroom window to vent the steam out while you were in the shower in the middle of winter is not something I ever want to return to, quite honestly! I can definitely sympathise. We made a point of wiping down the tiles round the bath after showering, and ensuring that pools of water were left sitting in the bath - that helped a bit. Wiping condensation off the windows each morning too - and when wiping down then wringing as much water as possible out of the cloth you’ve used - microfibre cloths are great for this as they can be wrung very thoroughly.

A proper extractor fan in the bathroom and an extracting cooker hood in the kitchen has made the most incredible difference to us - In fact I’d go so far as to say it’s some of the best money we have spent on the place. It might be worth considering getting at least the bathroom done ahead of getting the rest of it replaced even.

I think it should also be said that some buildings simply seem to be more prone to getting the black mould than elsewhere - and once it’s there, it’s a devil to get rid of. That others have never had it could well be as much down to luck as to do with anything they are doing - or not doing. 

ariarnia

EssexHebridean said:

The black mould is very not good - and a sign that something - either the ventilation or the temperature levels - isn’t right. It can also be harmful to health so well worth looking into sorting it IMO. Remember also - the bleach might hide the problem, it’s in no way curing it though. I’d suggest trying a slightly different cost/savings balance. 

agreed. at 17 degrees its not the cold thats causing mold. its a damp or ventilation problem. assuming the house is actually at 17 and its not just the spot where the thermostat is. 

our house is heated to 15 on average most winters (this winter we have the mil staying so the heating is up a little higher but i'm avoiding looking at the stat). and no mold. 

things that might help are moving furniture a good couple of inches away from the walls and having a day a week where you open the windows early in the day and let everything blow through for an hour (we time it for when we're going out so the windows are open when we're getting ready. close them when we're heading out the door. then by the time we're back the house is warmed up again.)  

and you dont need a hole new bathroom doing just to fit an extractor vent on an external wall... 

B0bbyEwing

EssexHebridean said:

iping condensation off the windows each morning too - and when wiping down then wringing as much water as possible out of the cloth you’ve used - microfibre cloths are great for this as they can be wrung very thoroughly.

We got one of these years ago: https://www.kaercher.com/uk/home-garden/window-vac/wv-1-16332010.html
Makes light work of all that window juice. Just need to give a bit of a mop around on the surroundings afterwards.

ariarnia said:
assuming the house is actually at 17 and its not just the spot where the thermostat is. 

According to the ThermoPro thermometers I have dotted around, we're actually warmer than that.