Wibo night storage heaters

anthonykeates

richardc1983 wrote: »

Anthonykeates. I live in a victorian house thats converted into flats. Im on the ground floor and it gets very cold. i have tried all sorts of heaters from the halogen heaters which yes do get you warm as you feel the heat as if u was sat in front of a fire, they dont heat the room though and burn nearlly 1500w of electric.

In June I had installed an LG system. Involves 2 indoor units mounted at radiator level (about 4ft long by 2ft high) and the outdoor unit mounted outside. To keep costs down i opted for the units to be connected to one outdoor unit. This outdoor unit has the capacity of providing 8kw of heating spread across the 2 units. There is potential to connect more units if u wanted to however the 8kw would be spread across all the units. I opted to have 2 3.5kw indoor units. One in the lounge one in the bedroom.

I rarely have to put the bedroom unit on unless I have been out all day and the system has been turned off. One unit alone is enough to heat my whole flat, high ceilings, large rooms, very poor insulation.

Currently sat here and outside temp is 0.5C and the unit is only using 1.15kw an hour to heat the whole flat! It is outputing much more heat than the electric it is using.

bear in mind u plug a 2kw electric heater in, it will prob heat the room that ur in if you keep the door and curtains shut. Now i leave all my doors open in the hallway etc to let the air circulate and the rooms are all even temperature.

Current living room temp 22.4, hallway 21.2, bedroom 20C.

They are really the way forward, and in summer I have air conditioning too and the units use even less in summer. Perhaps 700watts to cool the whole flat!

Amazing technology! OUtdoor unit which is the noisiest part is very very quiet. I would say its the same level of noise of a boiler flue!

What's it like having your house heated by warm air rather than heat from radiators though? Can you feel the drafts (albeit nice warm ones I guess!) and does it dry out the air like when you have the heater on in the car perhaps?

In other words I really like the idea of it, but is the way it produces heat unpleasant in any way?!

Cardew

anthonykeates wrote: »

What's it like having your house heated by warm air rather than heat from radiators though? Can you feel the drafts (albeit nice warm ones I guess!) and does it dry out the air like when you have the heater on in the car perhaps?

In other words I really like the idea of it, but is the way it produces heat unpleasant in any way?!

It is no different to having say an electrical fan heater, and of course many properties in the USA use this type of heating.

If you feel it is too dry you can buy humidifiers for very little and they use low power - 300w when needed.

http://www.airandwatercentre.com/store/SEURLF/ASP/SFS/CID.6/PID.308/SFE/productdetails.htm

richardc1983

anthonykeates wrote: »

What's it like having your house heated by warm air rather than heat from radiators though? Can you feel the drafts (albeit nice warm ones I guess!) and does it dry out the air like when you have the heater on in the car perhaps?

In other words I really like the idea of it, but is the way it produces heat unpleasant in any way?!

Its pleasant actually, i prefer warm air heating to central heating. U dont feel any drafts really unless u direct the air at you. Put you wont be sat under it anyway if positiioned properly. In heating the units direct air down at the floor as heat rises but if u look at radiators they are silly because the heat comes out the top of the radiator and fills the ceiling area of the room before it gets down to where your sitting. Your rooms heat much quicker because of the air flow. The air doesnt come out as hot as a fan heater so its very safe, the air comes off at about 35/40C so its a very safe heat, its lieterally warm air not hot electrical heat that comes off a fan heater.

it doesnt dry the air that much but all forms of heating tend to dry the air a little. I would compare the humidity thiing with central heating.

stevehead

anthonykeates wrote: »

What's it like having your house heated by warm air rather than heat from radiators though? Can you feel the drafts (albeit nice warm ones I guess!) and does it dry out the air like when you have the heater on in the car perhaps?

In other words I really like the idea of it, but is the way it produces heat unpleasant in any way?!

Well Anthony that's a good question.
My upstairs unit is in the Hall; you never get any drafts in the bedrooms.
The lower unit, being in my Lounge, does cause 'air movement' rather than a draft. At first this was disconcerting as we Brits are used to sitting in a warm still environment with GCH. Feeling air movement makes you think that there's a door or window ajar somewhere! Hey it's nothing really, not like car heater blowers and I no longer notice it.

Dryness - it is a dry heat but so's every form of heat that doesn't involve burning something in your house.
My biggest problem now is condensation on the windows and the horrid mush that starts to form on the bottom of the frames.

richardc1983

Steve

Get rid of the condensation by perhaps having a window "on the latch" so to speak, sometimes windows have trickle vents at the top that you can open. Theres no more condensation now than when we had the central heating.

In fact theres prob less as theres more air movement now.

stevehead

richardc1983 wrote: »

Steve

Get rid of the condensation by perhaps having a window "on the latch" so to speak, sometimes windows have trickle vents at the top that you can open. Theres no more condensation now than when we had the central heating.

In fact theres prob less as theres more air movement now.

Leaving the windows open goes against all the efforts I've made to seal the place up Rich!

I'm subscribing to the venting theory wherby you open all the windows fully say 3 times a day for 10 mins to completely change the air in the house.
This means that the aircon only has to reheat the air, and not all the solid objects as well.

There's nowt I can do about it 'till funds allow new glazing which will sort it out.

richardc1983

Ah so is it the glazing at fault or the house??? Is it single or doulble glazed?

U will find having the windows on trickle vents is going to cuase less air leakage than opening them and removnig all the air 3 times a day. Ur already getting very cheap heating I dont think it would put the costs up really. Homes needs ventilation stopping all ventilation is going to cause problems I think.

harryhound

Get rid of the obvious sources of vapour with extractors & hoods in kitchen and bathroom.
What sort of windows are we talking about?

stevehead

harryhound wrote: »

Get rid of the obvious sources of vapour with extractors & hoods in kitchen and bathroom.
What sort of windows are we talking about?

They're hybrid aluminum framed on the outside and PVC inside with not much of a gap between the glazing. There's condensation between the panes. I reckon early-mid eighties.

There's a good thermal image out on the web (can't find it) showing a faulty DG unit in which the glass panels are closer together in the centre. It clearly illustrated the insulating properties of a decent air gap as the window radiates more and more heat towards the centre.

harryhound

This was my reply last year to someone needing to renew 4-6-4 sealed units in 1980's windows (unfortunately my supplier has been taken over since):

If you can do it yourself, it is not expensive.

In the last year I have done my windows for 27.55 per sq meter PLUS VAT.
That was using ordinary glass on the outside and GUARDIAN (see web site) heat saving glass on the inside.

If you have patio doors or low window cills you are required to use toughened glass these days.

(My windows are wooden, so the job takes me a long time. The units should be mounted on blocks, especially the opening casement windows.
You might be able to get more free advice on say the Screwfix site)

Beware of all this talk of Vacuum between the glass. Houses with this system tend to look very strange in the sunshine, as the glass is slightly bowed inwards by the vacuum. My units have air in the gap and water absorbing stuff in the metal beading that holds the glass together. Specialist inert gases can be used if you want to screw the last little bit of energy saving out of the units but I would not bother. Double glazing has never been an economic proposition on energy saving alone, good thick curtains are the first step BUT it does stop the condensation running down the glass, because of the high temperature inside the house and all the draught stripping you have installed.

"glass panels are closer together in the centre". It is pretty obvious if you have this problem at this time of year. On cold nights, the misting of the internal surface starts in the middle, rather than round the edges, next to the aluminium spacers between the glass. There is a firm in Edinburgh that uses insulated spacers to avoid the cold bridge caused by the aluminium, but it was not realistic for me to explore that option.