Dear All

I'm currently looking at offering on a house which has a warm air
heating system, and I'm fishing for information on the pro's and con's
of this form of central heating as I have no experience of it.

The house is circa 1994, and the heating system is described as "oil
fired warm air heating, with ventilation and heat recovery system". I
have inspected the house and spoken to the vendor about it, and I was
told that it essentially extracts the stale air through several vents
at skirting level and ducts it outside via a heat exchanger to warm
incoming fresh air that is ducted into adjustable ceiling mounted
vents in each room. The system was controlled off a central
thermostat. The unit is fitted with a number (5 or 6) filters for the
incoming air, which I was told reduces airborne dust (consequently
having beneficial impact for asthma suffers). The unit itself was
about 3ft x 2ft x 1ft and didn't have any visible defects. The house
itself was very well insulated and air tight.

I'd really like to find out (a) general opinions on this sort of
system relative to conventional radiators (b) experiences from any
owners, past or present (c) how easy they are to control, ie. can you
easily turn up the temp in individual rooms by adjusting the flow to
that room, and do they respond generally quicker or slower than
radiators? (d) how do they compare to conventional systems in terms
of cost of ownership.

Thanks
Neil