Sunday 27 November 2022
Frugal with the therms
For late November it’s a fairly mild day here in our bit of Derbyshire. Dull and cloudy, but mild. Our central heating is set to what we consider to be background heating during the day and today, this temperature is being maintained with hardly any warmth from the radiators.
For the time of year, the house does not feel cold, yet the temperature is what it would be if I could see horizontal sleet outside. The central heating thermostat would see to that.
As we already know, feeling adequately warm is partly psychological, but it isn’t easy to tell how significant that is. If I light the wood burner this evening, the room will begin to feel warmer as soon as the kindling begins to burn - well before the room temperature has changed significantly. The psychological effect of a real fire is something central heating systems cannot reproduce.
Clearly, we can become used to higher indoor temperatures. Those of us who grew up in houses with no central heating are well aware of it. There is even a certain satisfaction to be gained from being frugal with the therms.
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One interesting aspect of this is that I would have no psychological lifting effect as I hear the heat-pump whirr into action, as I know that it is never going to allow me to stand there warming my backside until I get so unpleasantly hot that I have to go away and find the toasting-fork and crumpets.
Lighting the woodburner or open fire is like getting a cup of tea going when you are camping in the cold, or like being cold and wet on holiday and finding that a chippie is open.
It's only changes that provide anticipation and satisfaction. Our dogs prove it. In the summer, they seek out pools of sunlight in the living room, and drift off into sleep with little groans of happiness. Then they wake up too hot, and slouch into the stone-floored bits of the house to cool off. Again, they stretch out and sight with happiness, until...
Our future looks as if it has been designed by benign morons. We will have an approved optimal temperature, and be kept at it.
Sam - "It's only changes that provide anticipation and satisfaction."
That's it - we experience it after going for a walk in poor or even less than ideal weather. It's one reason for doing it and the effect lasts for a surprisingly long time.
I have often wondered about the relative efficacy of radiant heat and ambient heat.
Many years ago I experienced overhead true radiator heat, in church halls, village halls and factories. These consisted of plain flat sided thin steel tanks (don't know how else to describe them) length anything between 6 and 20 feet long, 3 or 4 feet wide and maybe couple of inches thick and painted black or some drab colour, mounted overhead often at an angle. All connected by sizeable pipes to some heat source, boiler, whatever. I assume they were full of water, and the water must have been really hot, given the heat felt under them. Presumably they were overhead so that errant hands could not be seared.
They were quick to start giving sensible heat from cold. For some reason heat radiated on the head can make you think that your whole body is warm. Also since only the radiators are being heated the amount of ambient heat - stored in air, walls, furniture is less.
Normal present day central heating systems use "tanks" called "radiators" although they are actually "convectors" with a large surface area transferring heat to the air which rises up over their surface. For safety reasons they cannot get very hot. From start up to any benefit being felt takes a while by which time all the air in the room, walls, ceiling, furniture (stuff) has been warmed, but of no benefit to an occupant. Especially in high ceilinged rooms. Also when the heat is no longer required because occupants have all gone there is a big unwanted store of heat in all that stuff.
Compare with being in windless, sub-zero temperatures but with sun shining.
We used to live in a small cottage with gas central heating but also a Baxi fire in the sitting room. We gathered a lot of our wood off the beach.
It was wonderfully cosy on a winter's evening.
Doonhamer - that's interesting - a cafe we visit has a large outdoor section with a roof and overheat heaters which seem to be of the type you describe. We can sit under them on a cold day and even though they are quite high, we feel warm from the radiated heat they generate. We've also come across something similar in a soft play area for toddlers, but that was inside.
dearieme - we have a wood burner in a small room which used to be the dining room and that is very cosy in the colder months. We have to buy most of the wood though.
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