Home energy saving tips /ideas...

[Cudzoziemiec]

Damp, condensation and mould would be one of the problems with heating the person not the building. Though they can't stop the rain or fix the roof.

[quixoticgeek]

As far as I was able to find out, nobody has published a research report on the evolution of the average room temperature in winter throughout recent history. Today, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommends an indoor winter temperature between 21 and 23 degrees Celsius (70 to 73.5°F). A Dutch report (.pdf, in dutch) mentions a rise in average winter indoor temperature from 20° C in 1984 to 21° C in 1992. David MacKay mentions an average room temperature of 13° Celsius (55°F) in the UK in 1970.

Fragmentary data but perhaps broadly indicative.

tho I have no data to back this up. I would wager that while rooms are warmer now than they were 20/40/60 years ago. Heating them to that level uses less energy, and emits less. Due to efficiencies in sealing, insulation, building design, and heating technology.

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

Unfortunately those efficiencies don't really apply to the vast majority of British buildings. I think we might have discussed this already.

[Mrs Pingu]

The average British home must have got more efficient over the last few decades purely due to new homes being built to a more efficient standard dragging the average up.
A bit.

[Kim]

Damp, condensation and mould would be one of the problems with heating the person not the building. Though they can't stop the rain or fix the roof.

Also, heating the person doesn't heat the air they're breathing.  You can't warm clothes your way out of temperature-induced asthma.

[FifeingEejit]

If you live in an older property which might be subject to cold spots and even possible dampness, get a decent dehumidifier.  Not only does it deal with the dampness, not only can you dry your laundry using one cheaper than a tumble dryer, but also because it reduces humidity so your conventional heating system will be marginally more effective warming drier air.

We are happy to wear extra clothing and run the heating for less time than most as well as keep the thermostat set lower.   

Also, why do so many people wear outer garments just the once or use a bath towel just the once before washing them?   Or am I just a dirty minger?

I possess 4 bath towels.
A wool jumper will do a week.

The heating is barely on, the house sits at a nice comfortable 18C with only the occasional blast of the boiler.  This is actually a problem in the bathroom as the towel rail is next to never on so the towels on it don't quite dry out enough for day 2 and don't have the back up warmth to hide it.

My experience of dehumidifiers is in drying rooms at hostels and mountaineering huts, they create smelly sandpaper.

I have now been able to fold 2 sheets of bath towel sized sandpaper into a stack and dump it in the press with the boiler to do the last little bit of finishing off.

My woolie booly 2 socks are still drying...

[robgul]

If you live in an older property which might be subject to cold spots and even possible dampness, get a decent dehumidifier.  Not only does it deal with the dampness, not only can you dry your laundry using one cheaper than a tumble dryer, but also because it reduces humidity so your conventional heating system will be marginally more effective warming drier air.

We are happy to wear extra clothing and run the heating for less time than most as well as keep the thermostat set lower.   

Also, why do so many people wear outer garments just the once or use a bath towel just the once before washing them?   Or am I just a dirty minger?

I possess 4 bath towels.
A wool jumper will do a week.

The heating is barely on, the house sits at a nice comfortable 18C with only the occasional blast of the boiler.  This is actually a problem in the bathroom as the towel rail is next to never on so the towels on it don't quite dry out enough for day 2 and don't have the back up warmth to hide it.

My experience of dehumidifiers is in drying rooms at hostels and mountaineering huts, they create smelly sandpaper.

I have now been able to fold 2 sheets of bath towel sized sandpaper into a stack and dump it in the press with the boiler to do the last little bit of finishing off.

My woolie booly 2 socks are still drying...

I'm in the process of remedying that issue by retro-fitting electric elements in the CH system towel rails - with the use of time clocks (or something like Hive) we can have the towel rails on independently of the CH - admittedly it's more for summer use when the CH is off rather than winter.   

[neilrj]

If you live in an older property which might be subject to cold spots and even possible dampness, get a decent dehumidifier.  Not only does it deal with the dampness, not only can you dry your laundry using one cheaper than a tumble dryer, but also because it reduces humidity so your conventional heating system will be marginally more effective warming drier air.

We are happy to wear extra clothing and run the heating for less time than most as well as keep the thermostat set lower.   

Also, why do so many people wear outer garments just the once or use a bath towel just the once before washing them?   Or am I just a dirty minger?

I possess 4 bath towels.
A wool jumper will do a week.

The heating is barely on, the house sits at a nice comfortable 18C with only the occasional blast of the boiler.  This is actually a problem in the bathroom as the towel rail is next to never on so the towels on it don't quite dry out enough for day 2 and don't have the back up warmth to hide it.

My experience of dehumidifiers is in drying rooms at hostels and mountaineering huts, they create smelly sandpaper.

I have now been able to fold 2 sheets of bath towel sized sandpaper into a stack and dump it in the press with the boiler to do the last little bit of finishing off.

My woolie booly 2 socks are still drying...

I'm in the process of remedying that issue by retro-fitting electric elements in the CH system towel rails - with the use of time clocks (or something like Hive) we can have the towel rails on independently of the CH - admittedly it's more for summer use when the CH is off rather than winter.

Aren't bathroom rads on the hot water circuit any more?

[FifeingEejit]

Hot Water Circuit?

Combi-Boilers mean the hot water circuit triggers the heating of the water by flow detection (often set far too high... well mine is can be filling a 1l pan in 2seconds before its on), so the towel rad needs to be on the heating circuit.
But if you have a room thermostat controlling when it's on and off, you're only getting warm towels when your chosen room is cold.
Room temp sensing, Boiler controlling TRVs would help I suppose.

[quixoticgeek]

Hot Water Circuit?

Combi-Boilers mean the hot water circuit triggers the heating of the water by flow detection (often set far too high... well mine is can be filling a 1l pan in 2seconds before its on), so the towel rad needs to be on the heating circuit.
But if you have a room thermostat controlling when it's on and off, you're only getting warm towels when your chosen room is cold.
Room temp sensing, Boiler controlling TRVs would help I suppose.

I thought if you had a thermostatic radiator valves, you had to have at least one radiator in the house without one, just in case the boiler is fired up, but the radiators are doing nothing. In the central heating systems I've setup we always did this with the bathroom radiator.

J

[Diver300]

Hot Water Circuit?

Combi-Boilers mean the hot water circuit triggers the heating of the water by flow detection (often set far too high... well mine is can be filling a 1l pan in 2seconds before its on), so the towel rad needs to be on the heating circuit.
But if you have a room thermostat controlling when it's on and off, you're only getting warm towels when your chosen room is cold.
Room temp sensing, Boiler controlling TRVs would help I suppose.

I thought if you had a thermostatic radiator valves, you had to have at least one radiator in the house without one, just in case the boiler is fired up, but the radiators are doing nothing. In the central heating systems I've setup we always did this with the bathroom radiator.

J

Modern systems have a bypass valve that opens a bit to let some water through if all the radiators are shut off. https://www.bes.co.uk/heating-ventilation/central-heating/valves/bypass/

As long as some water flows through the boiler, all of it will be at close to the same temperature and it will shut off when hot without damage. If no water flows, part of it can boil before the sensor notices that it's got too hot.

[robgul]

If you live in an older property which might be subject to cold spots and even possible dampness, get a decent dehumidifier.  Not only does it deal with the dampness, not only can you dry your laundry using one cheaper than a tumble dryer, but also because it reduces humidity so your conventional heating system will be marginally more effective warming drier air.

We are happy to wear extra clothing and run the heating for less time than most as well as keep the thermostat set lower.   

Also, why do so many people wear outer garments just the once or use a bath towel just the once before washing them?   Or am I just a dirty minger?

I possess 4 bath towels.
A wool jumper will do a week.

The heating is barely on, the house sits at a nice comfortable 18C with only the occasional blast of the boiler.  This is actually a problem in the bathroom as the towel rail is next to never on so the towels on it don't quite dry out enough for day 2 and don't have the back up warmth to hide it.

My experience of dehumidifiers is in drying rooms at hostels and mountaineering huts, they create smelly sandpaper.

I have now been able to fold 2 sheets of bath towel sized sandpaper into a stack and dump it in the press with the boiler to do the last little bit of finishing off.

My woolie booly 2 socks are still drying...

I'm in the process of remedying that issue by retro-fitting electric elements in the CH system towel rails - with the use of time clocks (or something like Hive) we can have the towel rails on independently of the CH - admittedly it's more for summer use when the CH is off rather than winter.

Aren't bathroom rads on the hot water circuit any more?

Not in this house they're not - nor in our previous house.   

The way the circuits run it was clearly installed by a lazy plumber - or poorly desgned.    We have 8 ground floor radiators that are fed from the circuit upstairs and have no means of draining other than manually the cracking the valve and using a bucket.

To be be more efficient a house should have (at least) 3 separately controlled circuits:  downstairs CH, upstairs CH (more than 1 if more storeys) and HW.    Installing pipework/controls to do that is pretty simple and shouldn't cost much more.

[ian]

Don't knock it, whoever did ours actually put some of the exposed heating pipework outside of the house (there's a mezzanine extension, so instead of tunnelling the pipes, they went straight out through the exterior wall, added a 90 bend, then and up the outside and into the extension).

The bathroom radiator works fine on the HW circuit though so we have toasty dry towels.

[DuncanM]

I've been doing loads of reading/youtubing about reducing energy use at home, but what I'd really like is someone with more knowledge than me to produce a report with itemized improvements and guestimate costs. Also who I could ask specific questions of (eg 3 floor house - ground floor always cold, top floor always too hot). How does one go about finding such a person (preferably one who isn't trying to sell stuff)?

We've kinda haphazardly ended up with solar PV and an EV, but still have a gas boiler (old school non-condenser type and no space for condenser pipework), and the house always seems to run humid, so there have to be a bunch of different technologies that we could use to be more efficient, save carbon/money and reduce the chances of damp.
Personally, I'd keep the house about 21 degrees given the choice, but my wife complains of cold when Tado says it's 23 degrees (she has an oil filled electric radiator in her office and so it's 26 degrees in there right now!!!), and my daughter would prefer it to be about 17 degrees. 

[Mrs Pingu]

I've been doing loads of reading/youtubing about reducing energy use at home, but what I'd really like is someone with more knowledge than me to produce a report with itemized improvements and guestimate costs. Also who I could ask specific questions of (eg 3 floor house - ground floor always cold, top floor always too hot). How does one go about finding such a person (preferably one who isn't trying to sell stuff)?

https://www.gov.uk/buy-sell-your-home/energy-performance-certificates

Alternatively the Energy Saving Trust directs residents of England (?) here: https://www.simpleenergyadvice.org.uk/

[Mrs Pingu]

What I do love is that they tell you that should should carry out improvements listed on your EPC in the order they are recommended. So for us that would be:
Room-in-roof insulation Cost £1,500 - £2,700 Typical saving/yr £251
Cavity wall insulation Cost £500 - £1500 Typical saving/yr £37
Floor insulation (suspended floor) £800-1200 Typical saving/yr £71
Low energy lighting for all fixed outlets £40 Typical saving/yr £52
Solar water heating £4-8k Typical saving/yr £31
Solar photovoltaic panels, 2.5 kWp £3500-5500 Typical saving/yr £310

Which to me should be done based on bang for buck and least disruption:
1. LED lighting
2. Cavity wall
Room in roof/flat roof makes sense but I'm not planning to get it done until the flat roof actually needs replacing (although I might change my mind once we've actually experienced a winter in this house)
Floor insulation - for the amount of upheaval that will generate you can get stuffed for the sake of £71/yr. Maybe if we ever get new carpets.
Solar water heating - the gas CH boiler was brand new in December so doesn't make sense to me to ditch that already, from an emissions caused by manufacturing POV.
Solar PV - yes it's expensive but it would make up for having a crappy electric hob and shower (despite having a combi boiler)

[Mrs Pingu]

and the house always seems to run humid, so there have to be a bunch of different technologies that we could use to be more efficient, save carbon/money and reduce the chances of damp.
Personally, I'd keep the house about 21 degrees given the choice, but my wife complains of cold when Tado says it's 23 degrees (she has an oil filled electric radiator in her office and so it's 26 degrees in there right now!!!), and my daughter would prefer it to be about 17 degrees. 

If your house is humid your wife might feel warmer if it's less humid, so a dehumidifier may be a good thing there, made a massive difference to me.

[Wowbagger]

We always think the house feels much colder on a wet day than a dry one, for a given temperature in the front room.

[robgul]

What I do love is that they tell you that should should carry out improvements listed on your EPC in the order they are recommended. So for us that would be:
Room-in-roof insulation Cost £1,500 - £2,700 Typical saving/yr £251
Cavity wall insulation Cost £500 - £1500 Typical saving/yr £37
Floor insulation (suspended floor) £800-1200 Typical saving/yr £71
Low energy lighting for all fixed outlets £40 Typical saving/yr £52
Solar water heating £4-8k Typical saving/yr £31
Solar photovoltaic panels, 2.5 kWp £3500-5500 Typical saving/yr £310

Which to me should be done based on bang for buck and least disruption:
1. LED lighting
2. Cavity wall
Room in roof/flat roof makes sense but I'm not planning to get it done until the flat roof actually needs replacing (although I might change my mind once we've actually experienced a winter in this house)
Floor insulation - for the amount of upheaval that will generate you can get stuffed for the sake of £71/yr. Maybe if we ever get new carpets.
Solar water heating - the gas CH boiler was brand new in December so doesn't make sense to me to ditch that already, from an emissions caused by manufacturing POV.
Solar PV - yes it's expensive but it would make up for having a crappy electric hob and shower (despite having a combi boiler)

Swapping old style bulbs (filament and halogen) for all LED bulbs in the house wasn't much money* for us and shows a significant reduction in electricity consumption. The LED lights give off almost no heat, unlike the old halogens.

* Shop around as pricing for bulbs is a bit of a jungle . .  we had to replace 20 halogen ceiling lights that had transformers but the new units were only about £4.50 each ( ledbulbs.co.uk is pretty keen on price and service)     

[Kim]

Solar water heating - the gas CH boiler was brand new in December so doesn't make sense to me to ditch that already, from an emissions caused by manufacturing POV.

The usual BRITISH approach to solar water heating would be to pre-heat the water so the gas boiler has less work to do.  With combi boilers, this can be limited by the boiler's ability to modulate down.  The workaround for that is a thermostatic mixer valve diluting the solar heated water with cold before feeding it to the boiler.

Economically, it's marginal at best, unless you can side-step most of the installation costs by DIYing, or can use large quantities of lukewarm water (ie. a swimming pool).

[Jurek]

I switched on the CH briefly, before leaving the house at 05:50 this morning.
Only I neglected to turn it off.
House was toasty when I returned about half an hour ago.

Contender for the 'I'm such a fecking div' thread. No?

[FifeingEejit]

Hot Water Circuit?

Combi-Boilers mean the hot water circuit triggers the heating of the water by flow detection (often set far too high... well mine is can be filling a 1l pan in 2seconds before its on), so the towel rad needs to be on the heating circuit.
But if you have a room thermostat controlling when it's on and off, you're only getting warm towels when your chosen room is cold.
Room temp sensing, Boiler controlling TRVs would help I suppose.

I thought if you had a thermostatic radiator valves, you had to have at least one radiator in the house without one, just in case the boiler is fired up, but the radiators are doing nothing. In the central heating systems I've setup we always did this with the bathroom radiator.

J

That is what I thought too... my one has a TRV, so far no boiler explosion... thankfully.
I've got that TRV cranked right up and the bathrooms lucky to get over 20c, not that I have any idea what max on the TRV equates to in reality.

I've currently got a multimeter, thermocouple, notepad and some dials attached to boiler pipes
Return was 5c below output, but the boiler does have a deliberately inefficient start up mode that gets the internal temperature up to 80

Modern systems have a bypass valve that opens a bit to let some water through if all the radiators are shut off. https://www.bes.co.uk/heating-ventilation/central-heating/valves/bypass/

As long as some water flows through the boiler, all of it will be at close to the same temperature and it will shut off when hot without damage. If no water flows, part of it can boil before the sensor notices that it's got too hot.

That would explain it.

What I do love is that they tell you that should should carry out improvements listed on your EPC in the order they are recommended. So for us that would be:

Which to me should be done based on bang for buck and least disruption:
1. LED lighting
2. Cavity wall
Room in roof/flat roof makes sense but I'm not planning to get it done until the flat roof actually needs replacing (although I might change my mind once we've actually experienced a winter in this house)
Floor insulation - for the amount of upheaval that will generate you can get stuffed for the sake of £71/yr. Maybe if we ever get new carpets.
Solar water heating - the gas CH boiler was brand new in December so doesn't make sense to me to ditch that already, from an emissions caused by manufacturing POV.
Solar PV - yes it's expensive but it would make up for having a crappy electric hob and shower (despite having a combi boiler)

Yeah, I've had a nosey at the neighbours houses in the EPC database that are basically the same, interesting how different they all are.
Some have the obligatory "Wind Turbine" in the list, others don't despite being more efficient and clearly not included by the assessor

So with mine starting on 72/70 and a potential of 87/87
1) Floor insulation, 73/73 saves 45 quid a year
2) Draughtproofing, 74/74 saves 22 quid a year
3) Solar Water Heating, 76/76 - 28 quid
4) 2.5kWp Solar PV, 87/87 - 318 quid

Now... correct me if I'm being deluded here, but the 10 point increase from Solar PV and saving of £318 a year is by far the most obvious one to do first.
I mean if I start at 72/70 that's up to 82/80ish. I'd probably go for something a bit bigger with the aim of adding batteries when affordability is reached, after all half the year I cook when it's dark.

My assumption is due to the only draughts I can find being from the window vents that I did the draught proofing when I swapped the crap folding doors for a uPVC door between kitchen and sunporch.
Then again the sunporch is in the floor space and is unheated for now I'll take the hit of running a 1.5kw electric heater just before tea this winter and work out how to minimize loss from windows later, the wee brother just has to turn up with the stuff he's got sitting in his garage.

I need to lift a carpet to see if I can find a way of seeing under the floor too.


What's also interesting is there's no mention of low power lighting... the house was entirely lit with hallogen and CFLs for an EPC written September last year that's a bit shit so I guess the guides haven't been updated for the assessors to cover that.


The solar water interests me, the black painted garage door was too hot to touch before I shoved a layer of silver bubble wrap on the back, downside is the garage doesn't get so warm in winter, though it loses it anyway.  The front rooms are toasty on sunny days and balanced with the back rooms on the north on not so sunny days.

Seems to me the most appropriate approach would be to get PV in first with space left to get Solar Heating added later, that way I could use a tank and immersion heater and use that to heat the water during the day, downside being on days when the sun doesn't bother.

Attic space seems handy, and this house wasn't built with putting a room in the roof in mind. (Hall too narrow for stairs, space between roof trusses to wander around about 2 hall widths)

That or the upheaval of adapting the house such that an ASHP has a chance of doing its job



Oh I found this for TRVs
0 = Off
* = 7°C
1 = 10°C
2 = 15°C
3 = 20°C
4 = 25°C
5 = 30°C

that'll help me

although the rads are still toasty... this is going to be a late night

[Mrs Pingu]

Ha our house is 58/52 currently

[quixoticgeek]

The solar water interests me, the black painted garage door was too hot to touch before I shoved a layer of silver bubble wrap on the back, downside is the garage doesn't get so warm in winter, though it loses it anyway.  The front rooms are toasty on sunny days and balanced with the back rooms on the north on not so sunny days.

I am genuinely surprised to see solar hot water on there. it's generally a lot easier these days to install an immersion heater in the water tank, and dump spare solar energy into that.

J

[FifeingEejit]

I'm struggling to find out what's more efficient, a single pv panel running a 3kwh immersion heater or the similar sized heat collector and exchanger.

However It appears that a single solar heating panel should be enough for 2 peoples hot water demand and 1 PV panel won't power the immersion heater on its own.

Roof space efficiency come into play, I'd use it all given the chance... But I need to remember that currently I'm skint and it's 4 years till my mortgage is due to be rejigged... And I won't be getting anything close toy current rate by then (maybe should have gone 10yr...)

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