BillR wrote:

PoP wrote:

On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 17:34:40 +0000, Andy Hall
wrote:


In that case a new or an additional one is needed and that renders
the balancing exercise pointless until it's fixed.

Exactly what I told the guy.

Thanks for the additional comments BTW. I think I was just looking for
an answer to "is 40000 BTU too small for a large 4 bed house". It
might have been a better question anyway

It definitely is too small maybe by a up to a factor of 2.
Could we stick to kW by the way? Its easier to visualise.
e.g. say you have 24kW boiler and 10 rooms thats average 2.4kW /room which
sounds enough in a very crude sense.
12kW just doesn't sound enough does it when looked at this way?




My kitchen has an aga in it that runs day and night at about 600W. In
winter it has probably 12x50W lights in it burning most of teh time. It
also has U/F heating but I have that bit balanced down to bugger all.
Its 30 square meters of room. Thats 1.2Kw over 30 sq m, or about 40W per
square. The whole house of about 200sq meter was calculated by experts
to need just 10Kw, which is 50W.sq meter.

My U/F heating guide reckoned that a well insulated house needed peak
demands of 50W/sq meter, and a poorly insulated one maybe up to 200W/sq
meter, with 125W/sq meter being a good working average.

Apart from the living rooms, which usually get an open fire in winter,
that level (50w/sq meter) of heating works. Its higher in the bathrooms.
Of course there is a lot of heat from lighting in the winter - probabaly
after dark each room is kicking in another 400W per 30 sq meter room -
so maybe I have up to 65W/sq meter.

Contrast with my old single brick cottage, which used to burn exactly
the same amount of oil as I do now, to heat (badly) four rooms and a porch.

And where a 3Kw fan heater was not adequate to heat a single room.