freedomdwarf1
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
Whatever room the heater is in, the radiator can be turned down, reducing the heat demand from that radiator. The furnace will see less of a temperature drop, which requires less fuel to heat back up to whatever temperature it needs to keep the water. If you put the window unit in the room that is either the coldest, the one used most during the day, or the one that is kept the warmest, you reduce the demand on the furnace.
We've tried that game of turning down (or completely off) one or two radiators - it doesn't make a blind bit of difference.
If there is a single radiator requiring heat (and there is always at least one), the returned water temperature from that one radiator alone will dictate how much heat the boiler generates. When the other radiators are turned off, the water doesn't flow through them so it doesn't affect the returned water temperature from the one that is on. And in our heating systems there is always at least ONE radiator (usually the small one in the bathroom) that is designated as the safety/bypass radiator and cannot be completely turned off via the in-built thermostatic valves. It's a legal requirement as a safety measure so that the water in the boiler is never static and therefore cannot boil dry or freeze up and cause an explosion or super air-lock.
A friend of mine used to do that... only having a couple of radiators on for a few hours a day and she spent every evening cleaning condensation off the windows and mopping the window sills of accumulated water and growing black mold. She thought she was being frugal and saving on heating fuel.
So she tried my method - turned all the radiators up full, opened a few small windows (for ventilation), then run her heating on full-blast maximum for a whole month. That month's bill was about 50% more than her usual. The second month she set the thermostat to the temperature she wanted and left the heating running 24/7 - her bill was back to normal when she was mopping up water every day (hardly any condensation or water now).
For the 3rd month, she turned the thermostat down a couple of degrees because hubby found it more comfortable and the heating was off for only 2 hours during the day when nobody was at home (all at work and kids at school). Her heating bill was 30% LESS than when she was being frugal and the house was now always nice and warm most of the time - and no more misted up windows and puddles in the windowsill.
That was about 8 months ago. Now that the brick walls have dried out properly and are now acting as a huge thermal block (just like the bricks inside storage radiators), her heating bill is half of what it used to be no matter how cold & wet the weather is outside and the whole exercise hasn't cost a single red cent apart from the 50% rise for the very first month during the drying process. She has recouped that extra cost many times over during this first year alone.
Now, this might not work for those wooden-type glorified sheds you call homes over in the US, but it works a treat for our double-brick or stone built houses over here.
quote:
ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
I don't know how often you move, but you build the unit yourself. Thus, you size it to whatever window you are putting it in. The window is only opened <12"(this works with up/down opening style windows, not necessarily side-to-side opening windows). It isn't too difficult to figure out how to secure a partially open window.
Unless you happen to live in a much older Victorian or Georgian style house with sash windows (those up/down ones you refer to), virtually all of our windows over here open on side hinges like a door. If you are very lucky and have newish type expensive windows, you might just happen to have those tilt & swivel style windows that are quite common in Germany and Scandinavia.
Sash windows started rapidly disappearing during the early 70's and onwards when double (and now tripple) glazing started being affordable and all the old metal-framed single-glazed windows were ripped out and replaced with double glazing. Unless you were rich enough to afford the specialist sash-style windows in double glazing or had a preservation order on the old wooden ones, they were all pretty much ripped out and replaced with normal windows.
And as I said, with that sort of solar unit not being a permanent fixture, even if you could fit one, would invalidate your house insurance.
quote:
ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
This may not work so well for radiator heating. Geothermal units will generally give a constant 10-15ºC, so heating return air (presumably colder than what you want it to be) would be easier if your return air is lower than that. You can use this to pre-heat your water for your hot water tank (feed incoming water into a transfer "tank" so that coils of geothermal heated liquid heats it to 10-15ºC before it hits your hot water tank. This would be something you'd do to your own home, though. It's a bit invasive and pretty much requires going through walls.
Static hot water tanks were very popular from the 40's through to the mid-late 70's when they started modernising a lot of the older houses after the war to have a toilet/bathroom inside the house instead of a separate outside building. Since the advent of those much more efficient and cheaper compact combination boilers that are mounted on the wall (rather than floor-standing), they have become the unit of choice over the last few decades.
Many houses had their lagged hot water tanks ripped out and used the hot-water-on-demand combi-boiler method as it was A) instant; B) unlimited; and C) shit-loads cheaper to install and use and took up a lot less space (being wall-mounted). With these tiny wall-mounted combi-boilers, radiator heating is the norm over here.
We are on the edge of the north-western European tectonic plate and we don't have hardly any geothermic areas to take advantage of that feature.
Some have managed to incorporate a deep bore hole and used piping buried below the surface to help heat underfloor heating systems - but they are very few and far between; most people couldn't afford such luxuries.
Further north and much further inland and south on this plate, there are geothermic pockets that you could make use of.
But sadly, virtually all of these are not on mainland UK and are of no real practical use for most of us Brits.
quote:
ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
I know the return credit used to be (I looked at solar generation years ago but found out my ROI would be horribly long) paltry, and only for the "generation" portion (for me, that's <40% of the /KWH rate).
Given the way our energy is distributed and the fact that most utilities aren't geared towards actually paying customers for excess power going back into the grid, even if we could put something back, the ROI (like you) would be impractical for most here.
Also, unlike a lot of US utilities, most of us here aren't on tiered charging. There are some tiered schemes run by some utilites but on the whole, they tend to work out much more expensive than the standard tariff of most companies - so they aren't that popular. So the advantage of using the most power at the cheapest time and returning some back to the grid at the most expensive probably wouldn't work out too well.
quote:
ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
There is a solution, if you look hard enough and are skilled enough (that's still a question I haven't answered for myself). Go DIY-ing and you might be surprised.
I think for most Brits, even if they had the DIY skills and the money to attempt such a venture, it would either be impractical or the ROI would have to be calculated over several generations to show any profit because the returns are soooo small as to be almost negligable.
There's just no point in saving £40-£50 a year on the solar option if it is going to cost you £2,000+ extra a year on the additional premiums for your house insurance - if you could find a company still willing to insure you. And the moment some spotty-faced asshat yobbo decides to throw a brick through your nice shiny solar panel, just because they can (and probably because they can't afford one), that insurance, if you had some, is likely to get voided or double in price - and that's not counting the cost of replacing said solar panel.
Also, what you have to bear in mind is, even if we bought a like-for-like identical unit here, the cost of it wouldn't be the same.
This is a constant gripe for us over here.
Eg: US$500 should be about £315 in equivalent currency, but we end up paying £500 or more for the same thing.
And that's assuming customs don't slap import duty and 20% VAT on top of any import!
It's ludicrous and profiteering but we wouldn't have a choice - take it or leave it.
Edit for typos.
< Message edited by freedomdwarf1 -- 11/16/2012 7:22:30 AM >
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