How to heat a very old house?

[Zak33]

Please don't burn wood The particulate emissions are horrific. I've woken up to terrible chimney smoke several times, and now keep my windows closed at night because of it. I could post charts from the SDS011 particulate sensor I've had running for the past several months, but there's not much point - nobody cares.

here's a thought... track down the neighbour making the smoke, and go see their fire.

I bet it's an OPEN fire, not a stove and it might even be cheap firewood, like fence panels, or badly /non seasoned wood.

[scaryjim]

Is air source an option? Basically the same process as ground source, but without needing to dig trenches or bore holes.

As someone's mentioned, you end up with a lower heating circuit temperature using ground (or air) source. It's better for underfloor heating, although in a house that old you'll probably be better running the heating 24/7 at a constant low temperature anyway.

If you do go ground/air source, definitely invest in solar and small scale wind will help power the heat & water pumps. In fact, invest in them anyway - I suspect you'll be using enough electric to make the money back.

Don't rule out installing some solar hot water as a backup system. The evacuated tube systems work with surprisingly little sunlight.

If you really want to go low carbon, see if you can dig out the details of some specialists. Sadly the company I used to work for in Brum seems to have die the death, but I'll have a dig and see if I can find out if any of them are still working in the field. There's all sorts of directions you can go (including things like biomass CHP which I suspect might be an interesting option for you) and there are ways to get multiple types of renewable feeding in to the one system.

I certainly wouldn't go for a system based on quotes from one person, particularly for a job that size. With two wings of the house it might even be the case that running a split system will actually produce better results overall. It costs nothing and does no harm to get a second opinion

[fuddam]

Have someone else ready to call tomorrow for a second opinion. Yep, wasn't going to go for just one quote.

Thanks for the air source heating idea. Not heard of that before.

Splitting the system is def a possibility, esp as I want to develop the north wing into an AirBnB option. The electricity is currently on 2 diff setups (north vs south), and same with gas currently.

Running at low temp 24/7 is the preferred option.

There are awesome old cast iron radiators around the house. Prob 15 at least. At a low heat, with iron pipework, they could work real well.



Thanks everyone for the feedback. This is one loooong project, so I want to do it right.

[smargh]

Can you post the graphs with some explanations? You've got me interested now

It's difficult to get accross what the numbers in the charts actually *mean*. But you asked, so here's my attempt: https://imgur.com/a/EvBdk

30-50ug is someone, say, five meters away blowing cigarette smoke towards your face.

At 30ug there is a noticeable mist in the distance. Most people don't notice this slight mist.

At 80ug+ it looks like a very misty day. When there's this background level, usually one of my work colleagues gets a headache/migrane, even if it passed through over a few hours while he was asleep, since he keeps his bedroom window open.

At over 100ug the visibility distance can be just a few hundred meters.

Over 300ug is basically the smoke from a BBQ or bonfire that you can see drifting past your window.

Obviously the closer you get to the source, the higher the numbers. I've only seen it a few times in a couple of years, but on wind-free winter evenings in my village, with "perfect" atmosphere conditions, it only takes a few chimneys to create a very dense stinky local smog that genuinely looks like this photo of the Great Smog of London, but obviously with significantly less sulphur: http://www.historytoday.com/sites/de.../greatsmog.jpg

[smargh]

here's a thought... track down the neighbour making the smoke, and go see their fire.

I bet it's an OPEN fire, not a stove and it might even be cheap firewood, like fence panels, or badly /non seasoned wood.

I think the main offender uses pallets. The problem is that the entire village burns nasty stuff. Once, on a summer day, I came home to raining carbon - someone was burning paper and it was literally raining down. Every day I commute past one house in particular while it's lighting up, presumably using the damp wood they have piled up outside. Stinks up a busy junction.

In terms of *good* seasoned wood and smokeless coal.... my mother & sister both burn those, in modern eco-approved burners. The partculate readings are still high and I can smell it when I'm walking to their house while downwind. Most people on my street also incinerate outdoors, and have outdoor burners. A few weeks ago my immediate neighbour actually MIG welded a new DIY outdoor stove from scrap metal.

Almost every time I go into any nearby village I can smell burners. It's not nice. Scientific evidence is slowly building up on the types of problems that particulates can cause.

To OP on the subject of air source heat pumps: my sister had one prior to having gas mains. She found it to be extremely loud and hated it.

[peterb]

A couple of friends of mine have air source heat pumps. They are quite noisy as there is a fan to blow warm or through the cooling line coils (it’s essentially a fanned fridge in reverse). I don’t think they are as efficient as ground source, particularly in winter when the ambient air temperature is low anyway.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hug a sheep??

[scaryjim]

... Thanks for the air source heating idea. Not heard of that before. ...

It's not as popular as as well-known as ground source. I didn't really know about it until I ended up with a colleague who had it, and I used to work for a company that specialised in energy efficiency and low-carbon in housing stock.

... (it’s essentially a fanned fridge in reverse) ...

My colleague always described it as air conditioning in reverse, which I think makes a lot of sense. But yes, it does mean a couple of big chunky fans outside somewhere.

... I don’t think they are as efficient as ground source, particularly in winter when the ambient air temperature is low anyway.

I raised that with my colleague and he seemed to think that, as it uses a heat pump to extract the heat anyway, as long as the air is above absolute zero the efficiency doesn't vary that much. I'm not sure how convinced I am of that argument, although I can kind of see what he means. I'm not interested enough to dust down my A-level physics and do the calculations for it, though

... Running at low temp 24/7 is the preferred option.

There are awesome old cast iron radiators around the house. Prob 15 at least. At a low heat, with iron pipework, they could work real well. ...

They probably look a lot nicer than modern radiators would, too It does sound rather like the setup my ex-colleague had (and he lived just one side or other of Snake Pass, so will have had some challenging conditions to deal with!)

[Zak33]

I think the main offender uses pallets. The problem is that the entire village burns nasty stuff. Once, on a summer day, I came home to raining carbon - someone was burning paper and it was literally raining down. Every day I commute past one house in particular while it's lighting up, presumably using the damp wood they have piled up outside. Stinks up a busy junction.

In terms of *good* seasoned wood and smokeless coal.... my mother & sister both burn those, in modern eco-approved burners. The partculate readings are still high and I can smell it when I'm walking to their house while downwind. Most people on my street also incinerate outdoors, and have outdoor burners. A few weeks ago my immediate neighbour actually MIG welded a new DIY outdoor stove from scrap metal.

Almost every time I go into any nearby village I can smell burners. It's not nice. Scientific evidence is slowly building up on the types of problems that particulates can cause.

To OP on the subject of air source heat pumps: my sister had one prior to having gas mains. She found it to be extremely loud and hated it.

at least you know it's lots of people doing the wrong thing.

But I have to defend the modern wood burning stove. For the first 10 minutes you CAN smell wood smoke (something I think smells lovely tbh) outside, but once it's hot that goes. If I run my stove all day on a Sunday, which I often do in winter, there is no smell in the street. Even on a calm windless day. When a stove it HOT, it's v v efficient.

The best advice I was given was "buy the smallest stove you can and run it hot" ...ie dont buy a big one and run it half power .

I have a 4 bedroom house, and with a 4 KW stove in the living room, I use no central heating at all, all day mid winter. Just gas to heat water.

It costs less in firewood than the gas equivalent, and I am utterly incharge of it. The window is always clean, the catyltic bricks in it are all white clean after 6 years use as they are always super hot and v efficiently burning freshly added wood.

The trick for reloading is to open the air wash wide to super heat the stove, then add the wood, then once it'a burning right, slide the airwash back down.

[ik9000]

Ground source can use sunk thermal piles as well as laid out shallow pipes, but they aren't cheap. Whereabouts geographically is the place? Are there any bodies with an interest in it (English Heritage etc) whose hoops you also have to jump through?

Glad to hear you're going for sensible heating rather than trying to super insulate. Those old buildings need to breathe and need internal heat to keep the dew point sufficiently far out so the walls don't get damp and to prevent timber decay etc.

[me-yeah]

buy a few £12 heaters that think about it later, the following on ebay will heat up a 20 foot square room in 5 mins

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2KW-100W-2...4AAOSwYIxX9Nao

even on the coldest -10c winter days with gaps in council flat balcony doors

leave them on for a hour, and all the bricks will heat up, and then you can turn them off for a few hours

[peterb]

buy a few £12 heaters that think about it later, the following on ebay will heat up a 20 foot square room in 5 mins

leave them on for a few weeks, and all the bricks will heat up, and then you can turn them off for a few hours

Fixed that for you. The heaters will heat up the air in the room quickly because air has a low specific heat capacity. The thermal energy needs to transfer to the bricks, which have a high thermal heat capacity ( they store a lot of energy but the temperature doesn’t rise) and they also need to dry out the bricks, so some of that energy is going to evaporate the water - so you will use some of that energy in latent heat of evaporation.

[MLyons]

I use electric oil radiators and after a while they put out a fair amount of heat. Could try looking into those.

[me-yeah]

Fixed that for you. The heaters will heat up the air in the room quickly because air has a low specific heat capacity. The thermal energy needs to transfer to the bricks, which have a high thermal heat capacity ( they store a lot of energy but the temperature doesn’t rise) and they also need to dry out the bricks, so some of that energy is going to evaporate the water - so you will use some of that energy in latent heat of evaporation.

nope, it really is 5 minutes, they have a fan they can blow a good 8 feet, and on need your TV on volume 5 to over hear it

if you have the heater set to maximum, its probably as loud as a 80mm delta fan back in the day

[TeePee]

Fixed that for you. The heaters will heat up the air in the room quickly because air has a low specific heat capacity. The thermal energy needs to transfer to the bricks, which have a high thermal heat capacity ( they store a lot of energy but the temperature doesn’t rise) and they also need to dry out the bricks, so some of that energy is going to evaporate the water - so you will use some of that energy in latent heat of evaporation.

The problem is, those bricks also conduct heat well, especially when damp. Without a cavity, or any kind of insulation, it will be incredibly difficult to heat them up to the point of starting to push out that moisture.

[ik9000]

The problem is, those bricks also conduct heat well, especially when damp. Without a cavity, or any kind of insulation, it will be incredibly difficult to heat them up to the point of starting to push out that moisture.

Solid walls will do ok with a reasonable room temp due to the low (but not crazy low) temps outdoor in the uk winters. A 300mm/12in solid wall with external render to reduce direct water penetration is perfectly sufficient in the uk provided normal internal heating is applied (standard domestic central heating etc). Solid walls are still permitted in the building regulations, but you have to demonstrate compliance with part L thermals (U value targets) etc for the overall room, so most new builds will go for cavity walls, either masonry-masonry or masonry-metsec since the insulation can go in the cavity/internal skin rather than as an external layer or more fiddly as an internal layer, which leaves the internal plaster skin/dry wall kind of floating. Existing buildings do not need to meet these super-low targets but are still capable of performing adequately in terms of user comfort and avoiding undue damp etc.

edit - that said there are some bad buildings with cold bridge issues - tends to be where things like concrete floor slabs run through to the exterior, particularly those which continue into projecting concrete balconies. Those have such an exposed area vs the internal that they form a condensing surface for the internal air moisture and off goes the damp+ all that goes with it.