How does anyone retain heat in an Edwardian House?

thedrumdoctor

FreeBear said:

 The only "period" feature to retain is the picture rails, skirting, and window/door architraves, so easy enough to remove & reinstate.

I forgot about these! I guess it makes the IWI a more invasive exercise than doing it externally.

thedrumdoctor

BUFF said:

So what do you have the TRVs set to? As a very rough guide (it does vary by manufacturer), 1 is usually in the region of 10-12C, 3 is usually in the region of 18-20C & the top (can be 5 or 6 depending upon manufacturer) is usually in the region of 28-30C.

Aha....I didn't know that. Ours have coloured backgrounds on the numbers - green and red - and they're all on number 4 (the last number with a green background). I remember having them on red years ago but it made the rads much too hot to the touch. Accidentally touching them at that setting was like touching the outside of an old steel kettle.

BUFF

photo of your TRVs?

Especially if you also have decorative plaster coving (& you want to retain the character)  as well IWI is complicated & expensive too.
However, as I mentioned earlier you are generally looking at a roi for ewi of 20+ years.

Assuming that it isn't already a condensing boiler then I wouldn't be surprised if a modern condensing boiler & controls, properly set up & run knocked off 25+% or more of your gas consumption for heating. Even more if your current boiler has a permanent pilot and/or you are willing to make behavioural changes.

Alnat1

The TRV setting doesn't make any difference to the actual temperature of the radiator, it will simply close off the flow when the room reaches the temperature on the setting.

The temperature of the radiator is altered by the heat of the water in it, the boiler flow rate adjusts that. The most efficient boiler setting is around 50C which allows the boiler to condense. Rooms will take a bit longer to warm up with a lower flow temperature so you might need to up the flow temp in cold snaps.

thedrumdoctor

BUFF said:

what make/model of boiler do you have?

Its a 2004 Glow Worm Micron 100FF (stone-age by today's standards probably).

do you have a programmer & room stat(s) in addition to your TRVs?

There's a versatile enough programmer for the boiler, but no room thermostat control.

How much gas do you use annually?

From Dec 2021-Dec 2022 I have used 2676 units of gas.

Our timer runs from about 6am to 8pm in week day mornings and 4:30pm to 9:30pm.

On weekends it's roughly the same, except it comes on later in the mornings and a bit later in the evenings.

When the prices went through the roof I knocked off an hour per day which did reduce the consumption a little bit, but my gas bill for Dec 2022 was just under £434.

thedrumdoctor

macman said:

There will be gas boilers still being installed for decades to come, just not in new builds post-2030. There may be some hydrogen added to the methane mix, if enough green hydrogen can be manufactured. Clean electricity will become a larger part of the mix, but gas will still be needed: the majority of UK houses are heated and hot watered with it. Electricity is still 250% more expensive than mains gas: do you really think that gulf is going to be closed any time soon? 
Installing a more efficient condensing boiler and controls has never been so cost-effective, as at current unit prices you will earn the capital expenditure back very quickly.

No, I don't think the gulf between them will close in a realistic time for me to benefit. The hydrogen thing sounds very interesting and I'll never forget James May driving a hydrogen powered Honda Clarity on Top Gear a few years back. In fact, hydrogen is being experimented a few miles up the road from me at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.

macman said:

Installing a more efficient condensing boiler and controls has never been so cost-effective, as at current unit prices you will earn the capital expenditure back very quickly.

It's clearly time for me to get serious then about replacing it. I've been saving up for a few years now and could probably afford something really top-rated as far as efficiency goes. Pain in the !!!!!! will be the gas pipe situation as our current boiler is on I think, 12mm diameter - or at least thinner than what's being installed today. But I've been told the supply can be re-routed around the outside of the house and fed in through the boiler wall with the wider pipes. An engineer tested the gas pressure coming into on our boiler a couple of years ago and said it was pretty poor.

macman

2676 units of gas: but which units: 100's cu ft or cu m? Metric or imperial meter? We really need your annual gas usage in kWh, not meter units, it's on your annual statement.
Rerouting the gas supply as you describe is relatively trivial, we had the same solution to fit an uprated combi.

BUFF

thedrumdoctor said:

BUFF said:

what make/model of boiler do you have?

Its a 2004 Glow Worm Micron 100FF (stone-age by today's standards probably).

do you have a programmer & room stat(s) in addition to your TRVs?

There's a versatile enough programmer for the boiler, but no room thermostat control.

How much gas do you use annually?

From Dec 2021-Dec 2022 I have used 2676 units of gas.

Our timer runs from about 6am to 8pm in week day mornings and 4:30pm to 9:30pm.

On weekends it's roughly the same, except it comes on later in the mornings and a bit later in the evenings.

When the prices went through the roof I knocked off an hour per day which did reduce the consumption a little bit, but my gas bill for Dec 2022 was just under £434.

OK, so a non-condensing conventional boiler with a SAP of just under 80% when new, probably less now.

You said that you had a room 'stat in the hallway set to 19C?

I am going to take that as cu m which is ~30,000kWh per year.

A new condensing boiler & load/weather compensating controls will make a significant improvement/saving in usage.
I would stick with a hw tank (the next replacement cycle is likely to be a heat pump & thus require stored hot water) but if you can afford it a switch to  a modern unvented hw tank  (unless that has already been done). A combi also typically requires more gas supply than a conventional/system boiler.

FreeBear

thedrumdoctor said:

elsien said:

Do you still use any of the fires, and if not have you got a Chimney Sweep to block some of the draughts from there? Although if you’ve got a condensation problem then that would seem to imply lack of ventilation?

All the fires have long been blocked up. We have a gas fire in one with the necessary vent in the chimney stack.

Condensation is indeed, down to lack of ventilation - though we had lots of new air-bricks installed when we bought the house because we had to have the floorboards on the ground floor replaced because of wet-rot (caused by condensation.

Don't suppose you had any insulation put in under the floorboards when they were replaced ? It would have been an ideal opportunity, and if Buildling Control had been involved, they may well have insisted on it.

thedrumdoctor said:

FreeBear said:

 The only "period" feature to retain is the picture rails, skirting, and window/door architraves, so easy enough to remove & reinstate.

I forgot about these! I guess it makes the IWI a more invasive exercise than doing it externally.

Disruptive, but insulating internally does have a few plus points as well as downsides..

You can do one room at a time to spread the cost. Insulation can be wrapped around the window reveals to kill potential cold spots. You get nice smooth walls (if the plasterer is any good). Skirting and other timber trim can often be salvaged with minimal damage and reused - Much easier to strip off old paint and get the base coats on before sticking back on the walls.

Downsides - You may well need to relocate sockets and radiators. If you are attaching anything heavy to the wall, some thought needs to be given to providing adequate support for the fixings. Kitchens and bathrooms can be problematic on that point. Using 12mm plywood instead of plasterboard in places (i.e. above the windows) spreads the load and can make it easier to fix stuff to the walls (curtain rails for example).

Insulating the walls externally comes with its own set of problems - Window sills need extending, downpipes (foul and rain) need moving, and detailing around the roof line & door/window openings is vitally important. If you have bay windows, any insulation in that area can look piggin' ugly. You also need to be careful about the insulation materials used and the finish that is applied - With solid brick walls, this usually entails the use of woodfibre or cork boards with a lime render to allow the walls to breath.

markin

thedrumdoctor said:

BUFF said:

Out of interest what temperature are you heating to & is that the same in all rooms?
Do you keep internal doors shut so that different spaces are at different temps.?

The thermostat for the boiler is in the hallway on the ground-floor and is set to 19c. The thermostats on the radiators don't have temp gauges on them, only simple 1-6 dial settings. Not all of the internal doors are shut because we have cats and dogs, so you can never tell if you've shut a cat in a room. The cats also need 24/7 access to the cat-flap. Yes, keeping all the doors shut would be best during this weather, but it's simply not practical with animals. We do tend to keep doors shut in rooms we are using for extended periods, like the lounge in the evening. These houses were only designed for heating one room at a time anyway!

Unless you can get some form of grant it's unlikely to be cost effective to go with EWI unless you can put up with a likely ROI of 20+ years.

I didn't realise I was looking at a solar-panel type level of investment on cladding or IWI...That ROI time-scale makes it a better idea to ditch the house with its 'desirable' postcode and find a property built for modern living.

internal is far easier and cheaper even if you don't diy it, For around 1k a room if you do diy it, If you don't need a stud wall for strong shelving you can just slap up insulated plasterboard extend the sockets and re-plaster.