On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 13:17:03 +0100, "in2minds"
wrote:

probably done to death but the last post a few days ago wasn't
answered...

will be converting the cellar over the xmas, the floor will be concrete
but I'm not sure how I'm going to heat the area (6m x 3m x 2.2m
headroom).
the cellar will be used primarily as a play room and only during the
day, for about 8 hours, as it's only accessible from the rear garden.
I could extend a radiator into the room but that would mean heating the
whole house unnecessarily, we won't be using the rest of the house,
except the kitchen.
the other alternatives are an electric heater or electric underfloor
heating, but I'm worried about the cost.
do the panel think running the gas central heating for the whole (3
bedroom) house and cellar would be more cost effective than an electric
solution ?

I know it will be considerably more expensive to install underfloor
heating but could anyone give me a rough idea of the running costs ?

thanks
LJ


I think that the first thing to do is to make sure that it's free of
damp and then to insulate the walls and floor, making sure that there
is ventilation behind the insulation. Putting in some kind of
wooden/chipboard floor on pressure treated joists makes it easy to
insulate the floor and also will be a lot more comfortable to walk on.

Once you have done this, you will have significantly reduced the need
for heating anyway - at a guess to around 2kW on cold days depending
on insulation chosen. There was a recent thread on insulating a
garden outbuilding and the heating implications, and you can read
about the principles involved there.

By taking the average monthly temperatures outside and the heat loss
(which you can calculate) you can work out the typical heating
requirement month by month. A cellar is going to be different
because the ground temperature varies rather less. What you could do
is to stick a max/min thermometer down there now and see how the
temperature varies over the next few weeks. Treat that as the
"outside" temperature when you do the sums. It's not going to be
super-accurate, but you should be able to get close enough.
Then you can work out the running cost for electricity.

As far as running from the heating system is concerned, you could do
this by making zones out of the heating. You don't say how your
heating is organised, but it is possible to convert the motorised
valve arrangements to create separate heating zones.
For this application, an ideal might be to have separate zones for the
upstairs, downstairs apart from kitchen, kitchen and cellar (4 in
all). It may not be easy to re-organise the pipework though, so a
compromise may be needed - e.g. upstairs/downstairs/cellar.
If you could post something about your system, it would be possible to
give a more detailed explanation.

Since you have a cellar, I assume that the house is an older type....
If so, and it doesn't have cavities, or they are not insulated, then
doing some zoning rather than heating the whole house makes a lot of
sense.



--

..andy

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