constant home temperature

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constant home temperature
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Nicky cigreen

Joined: 25 Jun 2007
Posts: 9887
Location: Devon, uk

Posted: Tue Oct 26, 21 10:16 am Post subject:

tahir wrote:

Yep

good to know. Although I don't think will help me in my old house.

I suppose really, I was asking this:

- in my mind it makes sense to live at different temperatures throughout the day and night, depending on what you are doing. Am I right and it is what people naturally want to do or is it just conditioning due to what is normal for my generation.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45676
Location: Essex

Posted: Tue Oct 26, 21 10:19 am Post subject:
Dunno, we've been living in a passive house for 8 or 9 years now, generally a very comfortable place to be. There are times when you come in from working outside in colder temperatures that you sweat your nuts off if you don't take off layers, similarly if you do anything really physical indoors then remove jumper first!

Slim

Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Posts: 6613
Location: New England (In the US of A)

Posted: Tue Oct 26, 21 11:22 am Post subject:
I prefer sleeping when it's cooler, and it's the largest downside to hearing with wood. Go to bed hot and wake up cold....

Nicky cigreen

Joined: 25 Jun 2007
Posts: 9887
Location: Devon, uk

Posted: Tue Oct 26, 21 11:38 am Post subject:

Slim wrote:

I prefer sleeping when it's cooler, and it's the largest downside to hearing with wood. Go to bed hot and wake up cold....

I guess the answer to this is to insulate/separate bedroom from living area. Then what I have is a woodburning range that makes hot water, which is stored in my thermal store, which is then pumped around the radiators in the morning.

Slim

Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Posts: 6613
Location: New England (In the US of A)

Posted: Tue Oct 26, 21 12:31 pm Post subject:
No radiators here. The plan this winter (now that we're done building out bedrooms upstairs) is to keep bedroom doors closed whenever trying to keep them cooler for sleeping. The heat pump actually does a good job cutting the morning cold.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15998

Posted: Wed Oct 27, 21 7:48 am Post subject:

You use air circulation from your heat pump don't you Slim, or am I misremebering what you wrote?

Nicky, I agree about temperature. I have great difficulty sleeping if it is too hot, and am used to working in cooler temperatures. When I worked in clean rooms, we had to keep the temperature and humidity fairly high as most of the work was carried out sitting very still, and higher humidity was better to reduce electrostatic problems. If I had to do anything physical, such as cleaning, I got overheated, and couldn't take off a layer, as we had to wear special clothing.

We keep our wood burner running all the time in winter, and although it runs down overnight and the temperature falls, it is still going in the morning and needs to be just 'woken up'. If necessary we add a little smokeless fuel to keep it in. We shut the bedroom door if it is too hot when we go to bed, but try to shut it down a little while before going to bed so that it cools down a bit.

Slim

Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Posts: 6613
Location: New England (In the US of A)

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 21 11:15 am Post subject:

I've written about it before, but I can't remember what thread.

We bought the place with a defunct outdoor wood boiler, hooked up to leaking plumbing for baseboard hot water radiators in the first floor (must have frozen? I cut out lots of burst copper pipe and rusty radiators). Living room also has a small functioning propane wall furnace (Rinnai). Upstairs was completely unfinished (loose subfloor and bare external stud walls). House was about 20 years old when we bought it.

We put in a wood cookstove and a mini split heat pump in the dining room.

We heat primarily with the stove (no water tank or hookup, JA Roby 'marmiton'). The heat pump is constantly circulating a very small amount of air to judge the temperature, this helps to circulate heat around the house, but only to a very minor extent (you can't even hear a the fan moving). When the air temperature finally drops below the heat pumps set point (usually early morning, depending upon outdoor temporaries and how late I put last load into the stove) it turns on, and starts blowing warm air, and that circulates around the house pretty well, blowing into the living room (past the stairwell where heated air rises on its own), and around through the back hallway, ending up in the kitchen and finally back to the dining room. Because they're in the same room, the heat pump is actually set pretty warm - to kick on at about 70 F. The air is pulling in is from near the ceiling, so it's usually quite warm there if the stoves been used. By the time it kicks on in the mornings, the colder rooms in the house are probably in the low 60s F. The thermostat can be adjusted very easily, so I drop it down when we're leaving those for a couple days and let the heat pump handle the whole load.

We kept the propane heater in place, and turn it on for the coldest nights (starting when the outdoor temp is forecasted to be below about 15 F maybe) when the heat pump doesn't put out much heat. Also leave it on as a backup when we're away for a couple days during the coldest part of winter. It functions similarly to the heat pump, circulating a small amount of air to gauge temperature and cranking up when temp falls below it's set point, but it's "downwind" in the circulation of air.

So the great pump and the propane always circulate a tiny bit of air (probably not that noticeable) and really push some hot air out when they're running, but each is like a large space heater in a sense. No ducting, apart from the flexible refrigerant lines connecting the two end of the mini split heat pump, and the gas and exhaust on the propane heater. The majority of our home heating is moved via natural convection

Slim

Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Posts: 6613
Location: New England (In the US of A)

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 21 11:39 am Post subject:
Also, now that upstairs bedrooms are finished, we'll all be sleeping in the bubble of heat that gets trapped up there, so I may not bother with the propane heater unless it's really cold (sub zero, F)

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46249
Location: yes

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 21 1:31 pm Post subject:

that is a bit chilly even for a younger me

comfort at an acceptable financial and ethical cost is very site specific and dependent on conditions

to "green heat" this house could be done at a local scale, none of the options i can think of would be financially viable, although a borehole ground source heat pump might work as an area system

green leccy by grid and some more insulation where practical might be best for a place like this

i do have a winter of frugal wood for cooking and solar coms etc if needs be, i also have 1500lt worth of water purification kit and a longbow

the best obtainable for a site is as close to a sensible suggestion for this stuff
affordable, "green" and practical are heavy terms in the can do equation

Slim

Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Posts: 6613
Location: New England (In the US of A)

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 21 1:36 pm Post subject:
That's outdoor temp! Inside with a loaded up woodstove burning red oak at bedtime would probably be low 50s in the morning in the downstairs (high 40s at the worst, and if that's the case I'll run the propane heater), and embers to get a new fire going again soon as I wake up.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46249
Location: yes

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 21 1:57 pm Post subject:
and i thought the slims were hardy. i prefer warm indoors, but i have slept in places colder than a domestic freezer one night the very hairy, sleep in snow with just a nose out of the drift sort of wolf decided to climb into bed that was below minus 20 in centigrades, the thermometer died of hypothermia as did some other kit, we were fine

Slim

Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Posts: 6613
Location: New England (In the US of A)

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 21 7:24 pm Post subject:
I did a little snow camping growing up (I think coldest was maybe 14 F in a snow shelter) but with matters concerning the house I prefer to maintain at least a ten degree F buffer above freezing! I have enough plumbing and cleanup to do as is.....

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46249
Location: yes

Posted: Fri Oct 29, 21 7:19 am Post subject:
pipes are a major concern in cold places, heating that can reliably keep an above freezing ambient indoors temp even if it is on auto for a few months saves having to drain all the pipes to go away for a winter holiday. hot water in a heatwave without baking everyone in the house is the other extreme what works needs to be able to cope with both in many places

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15998

Posted: Fri Oct 29, 21 10:16 am Post subject:

Thanks Slim. I thought I remembered you saying that, and it seems a far better way of using a heat pump than radiators. We use the fire in a similar way and it works quite well. As it goes all winter it has the added advantage that it does heat up the chimney, although that is well insulated, so that acts as a low temperature but long period radiator in the lounge and the bedroom above it.

Your temperatures sound reasonable for the house. Am I right in thinking that most people in the US prefer it rather warmer? I know my father was in Washington and feeling too warm and they turned on the heating in the hotel because other guests were feeling too cold.

Slim

Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Posts: 6613
Location: New England (In the US of A)

Posted: Fri Oct 29, 21 10:40 am Post subject:

It's very personal and regional. Typically, older folks have a harder time feeling warm and keep thermostats set higher. Here in the north, most folks use 68 F as a daytime set point. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't love having a very warm dining room all winter.... In my younger days I struggled because I was trying to wear long underwear much of the cold months to make lower indoor temperatures make sense, but any trip to a public building would sweat me out.

I think down south thermostats are more likely to be kept to extremes. Winter temps don't usually get too low there, and they don't really seem to acclimate to seasonal temperature shifts the way we do up here (fight them instead). It seems the norm is often to ignore layering and instead to only move from climate controlled spaces to climate controlled cars to other climate controlled spaces.... But that's an overly broad brush, and I imagine there's still plenty who live closer to the way I'm used to.

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