Solutions for cold house

F1001

ComicGeek said:

F1001 said:

ComicGeek said:

F1001 said:

twopenny said:

Is there a void under the floor as per older houses?
Is there any insulation under the laminate?
What direction n,s,e,w does the room face?

I'm not sure what's underneath I still need to find a board or something to pull up (that I can put back). The room faces East and doesn't get a lot of light fully through to the back of the room so will always be a little bit colder than other rooms I guess. I was hoping the morning sun would help with some of the heating but the neighbour's extension has ruled that out!

The house was built by Barratts in 1997 in case anyone knows whether they would have added insulation at the time?

At that time they built cavity party walls between terrace houses, but didn't insulate them - so outside air circulates between the houses, virtually making the uninsulated party walls act like external walls in terms of heat loss. That was never factored into heating calculations for sizing radiators, so a lot of larger ground floor rooms like yours have undersized radiators - there's probably a lot of party walls in your layout, compared to first floor bedrooms above, so has much more of an impact.

If you post some information on the size of room and size/type of current installed radiators, that can be checked.

Ah I thought being a mid-terrace I might be warmer being surrounded on both sides! The room is 5.56 x 3.84 , there are two radiators about 90 cm long with front panel and grill - one near the french doors to the garden near the stairs, and one at the back of the room. Not sure how to upload a floorplan :S

How tall are the radiators?

What type of radiator is it - typically 3 types as below:

53cm in height , and Type 21 in this room

F1001

Just saw on another forum that someone's house was also built in 1997 and has 25mm thick Jablite type insulation under the ground floor concrete slab - enough to meet Part L with a reasonably good Sap rating and comply with building regs at that time. Without lifting up flooring i'm guessing that the floor has 25mm-50mm insulation. Is it worth adding more, or better use of money spent on other ways to improve heat retention?

FreeBear

F1001 said: Without lifting up flooring i'm guessing that the floor has 25mm-50mm insulation. Is it worth adding more, or better use of money spent on other ways to improve heat retention?

It will cost a small fortune to dig up the existing slab in order to put in more insulation. On top of that, the sheer disruption of the work will probably put you off. Whilst you could put a 25mm or even 50mm layer of insulation on top of the floor, you'd then need to raise the threshold on all the doors - More hassle & inconvenience.

Spend the money by insulating walls, roof, and perhaps fitting (very) low e sealed units in the doors & windows.

F1001

FreeBear said:

F1001 said: Without lifting up flooring i'm guessing that the floor has 25mm-50mm insulation. Is it worth adding more, or better use of money spent on other ways to improve heat retention?

It will cost a small fortune to dig up the existing slab in order to put in more insulation. On top of that, the sheer disruption of the work will probably put you off. Whilst you could put a 25mm or even 50mm layer of insulation on top of the floor, you'd then need to raise the threshold on all the doors - More hassle & inconvenience.

Spend the money by insulating walls, roof, and perhaps fitting (very) low e sealed units in the doors & windows.

Thank you for the advice @FreeBear !

moneysaver1978

Might be worth seeing if you can get a thermal imaging camera from your energy provider or hire one from Library of Things to help identify where the coldest spots are coming from.

The floor in our dining room seemed colder than others and it was due to the kitchen door (despite the door being a good 2 meter away) - granted it wasn't the main reason but as a stop-gap thing, we put in a draught thing at the bottom of the door and it made quite a difference.

ThisIsWeird

You certainly won't be adding any more insulation under the concrete!
A thermal camera sounds a good idea. See what the walls are like, as well as the floor.
You ideally want to find out if the floor is a cause of the coldness, and how. Is it actually 'cold', in which case it's lacking insulation, so the answer is to add as much as you can on top - and anything will make a significant difference - or is the floor draughty. Or, is your heating just not up to the task. 

F1001

moneysaver1978 said:

Might be worth seeing if you can get a thermal imaging camera from your energy provider or hire one from Library of Things to help identify where the coldest spots are coming from.

The floor in our dining room seemed colder than others and it was due to the kitchen door (despite the door being a good 2 meter away) - granted it wasn't the main reason but as a stop-gap thing, we put in a draught thing at the bottom of the door and it made quite a difference.

Great idea thanks @moneysaver1978 ! Just added myself to the Octopus Energy waitlist In the meantime will test out the other suggestions on here. Thanks everyone!  

ComicGeek

F1001 said:

ComicGeek said:

F1001 said:

ComicGeek said:

F1001 said:

twopenny said:

Is there a void under the floor as per older houses?
Is there any insulation under the laminate?
What direction n,s,e,w does the room face?

I'm not sure what's underneath I still need to find a board or something to pull up (that I can put back). The room faces East and doesn't get a lot of light fully through to the back of the room so will always be a little bit colder than other rooms I guess. I was hoping the morning sun would help with some of the heating but the neighbour's extension has ruled that out!

The house was built by Barratts in 1997 in case anyone knows whether they would have added insulation at the time?

At that time they built cavity party walls between terrace houses, but didn't insulate them - so outside air circulates between the houses, virtually making the uninsulated party walls act like external walls in terms of heat loss. That was never factored into heating calculations for sizing radiators, so a lot of larger ground floor rooms like yours have undersized radiators - there's probably a lot of party walls in your layout, compared to first floor bedrooms above, so has much more of an impact.

If you post some information on the size of room and size/type of current installed radiators, that can be checked.

Ah I thought being a mid-terrace I might be warmer being surrounded on both sides! The room is 5.56 x 3.84 , there are two radiators about 90 cm long with front panel and grill - one near the french doors to the garden near the stairs, and one at the back of the room. Not sure how to upload a floorplan :S

How tall are the radiators?

What type of radiator is it - typically 3 types as below:

53cm in height , and Type 21 in this room

530mm tall would be an imperial 21 inch radiator, so a type 21 would be 844mm or 946mm wide normally. So somewhere between 1060W-1187W output with a typical boiler flow temperature of 75 degrees at that time.

With a room 5.56x3.84 (total room area of circa 21.4 m2), this would be between 99 W/m2 - 110 W/m2 output. Should be more than capable of achieving a good temperature in that room without any unexpected issues.

If your party walls are ventilated and uninsulated however, then the heat loss will be much higher than expected. Assuming that the 3.84m dimension is the party wall length in the room, then the extra heat loss from this could add an additional 950W to the heat requirement for room.

First I would check that the boiler flow temperature is set high enough - that would normally need to be around 75 degrees on the coldest days for older systems. It's great money saving advice to turn it down on milder days, but you're not going to warm up the house on the colder days unless it's set higher on older systems.

If that doesn't work then you could swap the existing type 21 rads for type 22 rads of the same width/height (Myson still make imperial size radiators which might be a direct replacement without having to modify pipework centres) - that would give an extra 600-700W of heat output. If you have space, you could also make them 690mm high which would give an extra 1200-1400W of heat output. You could experiment by using a 1 kW electric heater in the room for a couple of days to see whether this extra heat output solves the issue.

FreeBear

moneysaver1978 said:

Might be worth seeing if you can get a thermal imaging camera from your energy provider or hire one from Library of Things to help identify where the coldest spots are coming from.

Local council may have a thermal camera available for loan/hire - Cambridgeshire and Brighton & Hove do (did).

F1001

ComicGeek said:

F1001 said:

ComicGeek said:

F1001 said:

ComicGeek said:

F1001 said:

twopenny said:

Is there a void under the floor as per older houses?
Is there any insulation under the laminate?
What direction n,s,e,w does the room face?

I'm not sure what's underneath I still need to find a board or something to pull up (that I can put back). The room faces East and doesn't get a lot of light fully through to the back of the room so will always be a little bit colder than other rooms I guess. I was hoping the morning sun would help with some of the heating but the neighbour's extension has ruled that out!

The house was built by Barratts in 1997 in case anyone knows whether they would have added insulation at the time?

At that time they built cavity party walls between terrace houses, but didn't insulate them - so outside air circulates between the houses, virtually making the uninsulated party walls act like external walls in terms of heat loss. That was never factored into heating calculations for sizing radiators, so a lot of larger ground floor rooms like yours have undersized radiators - there's probably a lot of party walls in your layout, compared to first floor bedrooms above, so has much more of an impact.

If you post some information on the size of room and size/type of current installed radiators, that can be checked.

Ah I thought being a mid-terrace I might be warmer being surrounded on both sides! The room is 5.56 x 3.84 , there are two radiators about 90 cm long with front panel and grill - one near the french doors to the garden near the stairs, and one at the back of the room. Not sure how to upload a floorplan :S

How tall are the radiators?

What type of radiator is it - typically 3 types as below:

53cm in height , and Type 21 in this room

530mm tall would be an imperial 21 inch radiator, so a type 21 would be 844mm or 946mm wide normally. So somewhere between 1060W-1187W output with a typical boiler flow temperature of 75 degrees at that time.

With a room 5.56x3.84 (total room area of circa 21.4 m2), this would be between 99 W/m2 - 110 W/m2 output. Should be more than capable of achieving a good temperature in that room without any unexpected issues.

If your party walls are ventilated and uninsulated however, then the heat loss will be much higher than expected. Assuming that the 3.84m dimension is the party wall length in the room, then the extra heat loss from this could add an additional 950W to the heat requirement for room.

First I would check that the boiler flow temperature is set high enough - that would normally need to be around 75 degrees on the coldest days for older systems. It's great money saving advice to turn it down on milder days, but you're not going to warm up the house on the colder days unless it's set higher on older systems.

If that doesn't work then you could swap the existing type 21 rads for type 22 rads of the same width/height (Myson still make imperial size radiators which might be a direct replacement without having to modify pipework centres) - that would give an extra 600-700W of heat output. If you have space, you could also make them 690mm high which would give an extra 1200-1400W of heat output. You could experiment by using a 1 kW electric heater in the room for a couple of days to see whether this extra heat output solves the issue.

Thank you so much! Have spoken to local builder and we plan to check the walls in case we can insulate them rather than do the floor (I guess as they are party walls the neighbours might be open to share the cost to insulate?) , and will look into possible better radiators. Thank you for all your advice!!