In article ,
Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
root writes:
Since you'll be working at/from home it's not unreasonable to ask
you employer to chip in for the extra heating costs. Open the bidding

You can do that, but it comes with a giant warning...
The portion of the house you use for work becomes liable for
capital gains tax when you sell. It's never worth doing
if it's your house. In any case, you're saving money and
stress by not traveling to work.

I've never been asked what part of my house was used for the allowance I
got from the tax man. Given it was mainly for 'paperwork' so done on the
computer, in these days of laptops might be tricky?

--
*A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article
,
NT wrote:
On Oct 22, 6:24 pm, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:
In article
,
NT wrote:

Very expensive mod to zone off this one room from the rest of the
house.
It would cost, but can be done quite cheaply.

Maybe at installation time, but pretty expensive afterwards. If you're
paying for labour.

Valve, timer, stat, plus 2nd valve, timer, stat.

Be interested to know just how you could zone off one room in a house that
simply. Without loads of extra pipework. Do you understand how zoning is
achieved?

Portable heating would add cost too, mainly in greater fuel cost.

Capital cost are low.

sure, but total costs higher.


And a normal boiler might run at reduced efficiency when just
heating one small room.
not by much

We don't know what boiler the OP has. Older ones can be horribly
inefficient when working at a small part of capacity.

If its cast iron, I'd agree. But most of those are gone now. Maybe the
OP can look and see if the boiler heat exchanger is a cast iron lump
or pressed/bent metal.

Nothing to do with the heat exchanger material. More to do with if the
boiler will modulate down far enough.

--
*Why does the sun lighten our hair, but darken our skin?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave :
In article ,
says...

In article ,
root writes:
Since you'll be working at/from home it's not unreasonable to ask
you employer to chip in for the extra heating costs. Open the bidding

You can do that, but it comes with a giant warning...
The portion of the house you use for work becomes liable for
capital gains tax when you sell. It's never worth doing
if it's your house. In any case, you're saving money and
stress by not traveling to work.

Ah, thanks for pointing that out Andrew - crafty scrotes! :-)

I worked from home for many years, claiming a monthly allowance for one
room plus heat and light, and the question of CGT never arose when I
sold the house despite the fact that I was using my CGT allowance in
full.

I think for most people claiming for a room CGT is a theoretical rather
than actual consideration. An accountant would be the person to ask,
especially (as I had) an accountant who runs several small businesses as
well as an accountancy firm.

--
Mike Barnes

In article
, NT
writes
On Oct 23, 1:07*pm, fred wrote:

The whole object is to avoid heating the rest of the house.

I think the object is to pick the cheapest to run system

I'm sure the o/p now has enough information to make his choice.

Why would
this waste heat hang around until the evening? I expect the energy will
have dispersed to the ether long before then.

If you heat a house to 20 in the morning, and leave the system off
till 6pm, a good 80% of that heat is still retained indoors by then.

If you've ever had a home heated by storage heaters you'd know that
isn't the case.

Either way I don't see that as the main issue, I view it as bad practice
to design a system that will repeatedly short cycle a boiler. I designed
my system for a long slow burn to avoid the thermal stresses that
repeated cycling inevitably brings and I hope to reap the benefits of
this in a longer system life.

Is thermal cycling a major failure mode in boilers? I didnt think it
was.

The more you cycle something the shorter it lasts, cars, electronics,
whatever. If the ignition circuit of the boiler lasts for say a million
hits then the service life will be reduced by repeated over-cycling.

Besides that, the o/p's existing system does not currently support this
mode of operation requiring capital investment in redesign, controls and
rework of plumbing. It appears to me that he is looking for a simpler
fix than this.

wireless thermostat.

And the rest.
--
fred
FIVE TV's superbright logo - not the DOG's, it's ********

NT wrote:
On Oct 23, 1:07 pm, fred wrote:
In article
, NT
writes

On Oct 22, 6:50 pm, fred wrote:
In article , chris French
writes
In message
,
NT
100% at 12p/unit versus gas with maybe 85% efficient at 3-4p/unit.
I doubt a gas boiler keeping one rad warm gets anywhere near that.
Agreed, assuming a 1kW rad in a small room even a modulating boiler will
be short cycling its arse off every few minutes, warming up the boiler
and pipes with all that doing to waste.
It could work nicely with a thermal store system but not everyone has
one of those and fewer still have the circuits separated enough to
permit this kind of operation.
Even if 50% of the heat is lost in the pipework to the rest of the
house, most of that heat is saved come evening time. So efficiency is
still fairly high.
The whole object is to avoid heating the rest of the house.

I think the object is to pick the cheapest to run system

Why would
this waste heat hang around until the evening? I expect the energy will
have dispersed to the ether long before then.

If you heat a house to 20 in the morning, and leave the system off
till 6pm, a good 80% of that heat is still retained indoors by then.


Utterly depends on the house insulation and thermal mass . Absolutely no
way to make such a categorical statement.
..

Either way I don't see that as the main issue, I view it as bad practice
to design a system that will repeatedly short cycle a boiler. I designed
my system for a long slow burn to avoid the thermal stresses that
repeated cycling inevitably brings and I hope to reap the benefits of
this in a longer system life.

Is thermal cycling a major failure mode in boilers? I didnt think it
was.


It doesn't help.


Besides that, the o/p's existing system does not currently support this
mode of operation requiring capital investment in redesign, controls and
rework of plumbing. It appears to me that he is looking for a simpler
fix than this.

wireless thermostat.

Still has to arrange a LOT of extra wiring somewhere and maybe Motorised
valves.


NT

Mike Barnes wrote:
Dave :
In article ,
says...
In article ,
root writes:
Since you'll be working at/from home it's not unreasonable to ask
you employer to chip in for the extra heating costs. Open the bidding
You can do that, but it comes with a giant warning...
The portion of the house you use for work becomes liable for
capital gains tax when you sell. It's never worth doing
if it's your house. In any case, you're saving money and
stress by not traveling to work.
Ah, thanks for pointing that out Andrew - crafty scrotes! :-)

I worked from home for many years, claiming a monthly allowance for one
room plus heat and light, and the question of CGT never arose when I
sold the house despite the fact that I was using my CGT allowance in
full.

I think for most people claiming for a room CGT is a theoretical rather
than actual consideration. An accountant would be the person to ask,
especially (as I had) an accountant who runs several small businesses as
well as an accountancy firm.

CGT is not payable on a house that is your 'principle domicile' or some
such legal ********.

Neither is it clear that an office at home whether your principle place
of work or not constitutes a commercial premises, for council tax and
planning purposes.
..
Its a pandoras box few people would care to open..

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Still has to arrange a LOT of extra wiring somewhere and maybe Motorised
valves.

Indeed. If you split the rest of the house up into one zone at the boiler,
you'd need to run new pipework to the room in question. Only alternative
to that I can think of would be some form of radio linked TRVs on every
rad, centrally controlled. But even something like this exists, it
wouldn't be cheap to either buy or install.

--
*If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 24/10/2011 14:09, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
The Natural wrote:
Still has to arrange a LOT of extra wiring somewhere and maybe Motorised
valves.

Only alternative to that I can think of would be some form of radio linked TRVs on every
rad, centrally controlled. But even something like this exists, it
wouldn't be cheap to either buy or install.

That would be the Honeywell Hometronic system

http://www.sensibleheat.co.uk/honeyw...ic-manager.htm

http://www.hwch.co.uk/plumbing.html



--
David

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Still has to arrange a LOT of extra wiring somewhere and maybe Motorised
valves.

Indeed. If you split the rest of the house up into one zone at the boiler,
you'd need to run new pipework to the room in question. Only alternative
to that I can think of would be some form of radio linked TRVs on every
rad, centrally controlled. But even something like this exists, it
wouldn't be cheap to either buy or install.


Depends on layout. Sometimes you can find strategic places to put valves
that isolate large sections, but here, its simply not worth it. Need
extra heating over and above the PC kit one or to days a winter only.

In article , gremlin_95
writes
On 24/10/2011 14:09, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
The Natural wrote:
Still has to arrange a LOT of extra wiring somewhere and maybe Motorised
valves.

Only alternative to that I can think of would be some form of radio linked TRVs on
every
rad, centrally controlled. But even something like this exists, it
wouldn't be cheap to either buy or install.

That would be the Honeywell Hometronic system

http://www.sensibleheat.co.uk/honeyw...ic-manager.htm

http://www.hwch.co.uk/plumbing.html

"Typical Costs?
Hometronic typically costs a similar amount to a solar hot water
installation, in other words, £3500 or more, depending on the size of
the property."

Bargain!
--
fred
FIVE TV's superbright logo - not the DOG's, it's ********

On Oct 24, 11:39*am, fred wrote:
In article
, NT
writesOn Oct 23, 1:07*pm, fred wrote:

The whole object is to avoid heating the rest of the house.

I think the object is to pick the cheapest to run system

I'm sure the o/p now has enough information to make his choice.

Why would
this waste heat hang around until the evening? I expect the energy will
have dispersed to the ether long before then.

If you heat a house to 20 in the morning, and leave the system off
till 6pm, a good 80% of that heat is still retained indoors by then.

If you've ever had a home heated by storage heaters you'd know that
isn't the case.

I know its usually the case from many examples of heating being left
off for hours.


Either way I don't see that as the main issue, I view it as bad practice
to design a system that will repeatedly short cycle a boiler. I designed
my system for a long slow burn to avoid the thermal stresses that
repeated cycling inevitably brings and I hope to reap the benefits of
this in a longer system life.

Is thermal cycling a major failure mode in boilers? I didnt think it
was.

The more you cycle something the shorter it lasts, cars, electronics,
whatever. If the ignition circuit of the boiler lasts for say a million
hits then the service life will be reduced by repeated over-cycling.

there is no such blanket rule, only some things die from cycling,
primarily lightbulbs.


Besides that, the o/p's existing system does not currently support this
mode of operation requiring capital investment in redesign, controls and
rework of plumbing. It appears to me that he is looking for a simpler
fix than this.

wireless thermostat.

And the rest.


NT

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Still has to arrange a LOT of extra wiring somewhere and maybe
Motorised valves.

Indeed. If you split the rest of the house up into one zone at the
boiler,
you'd need to run new pipework to the room in question. Only alternative
to that I can think of would be some form of radio linked TRVs on every
rad, centrally controlled. But even something like this exists, it
wouldn't be cheap to either buy or install.


Depends on layout. Sometimes you can find strategic places to put valves
that isolate large sections, but here, its simply not worth it. Need
extra heating over and above the PC kit one or to days a winter only.

Exactly. Take this room. Its got about 256 square feet - say 8 square
meters, and a window 1.5 sq meters which is the dominant heat loss.

Window is U value about 4 - not double glazed, rest is about 0.2

So total heat loss to outside is something like 6w per degree C for the
window plus about 1.35 W per degree C for whats' left of walls and
ceiling. So around 7.35 watts per degree C

I like to work about 20 C and in daytime its unusual to go below -5, so
that's a heat input of 183 watts once up to temp.

50 watts is me and another 50 for the lights Add in a PC at 75W and its
almost there.

So a thermostatically controlled electric heater will get it warmed up
fast, and after that its only going to click in now and again to trickle
round at 50-100w for the three winter months. Say it does 8 hours at 50W
for 5 days a week for 13 weeks.. £2.60 for the winter at 10p a unit. Or
replace the light bulbs with incandescents..:-)


So naturally its gonna be cheaper spending £300-1000 quid on valves,
thermostats and a short cycling gas boiler innit, just like NT says.. ;-)
(I have a larger office that I did work in a couple of years ago It was
STILL way cheaper to heat it with a leccy heater than run the CH; I did
that year one, year two I used a small fan heater. The problem is all
the other stuff you cant be arsed to turn off like the bathroom towel
rails, and all the pipes..no matter HOW well lagged the pipes are there
is always some stiff inside rooms that loses heat).

As an aside, those in houses that they don't fully use should be aware
that not heating parts much if at all is THE best way to reduce the fuel
bills.

NT wrote:
On Oct 24, 11:39 am, fred wrote:
In article
, NT
writesOn Oct 23, 1:07 pm, fred wrote:

The whole object is to avoid heating the rest of the house.
I think the object is to pick the cheapest to run system
I'm sure the o/p now has enough information to make his choice.

Why would
this waste heat hang around until the evening? I expect the energy will
have dispersed to the ether long before then.
If you heat a house to 20 in the morning, and leave the system off
till 6pm, a good 80% of that heat is still retained indoors by then.
If you've ever had a home heated by storage heaters you'd know that
isn't the case.

I know its usually the case from many examples of heating being left
off for hours.


Either way I don't see that as the main issue, I view it as bad practice
to design a system that will repeatedly short cycle a boiler. I designed
my system for a long slow burn to avoid the thermal stresses that
repeated cycling inevitably brings and I hope to reap the benefits of
this in a longer system life.
Is thermal cycling a major failure mode in boilers? I didnt think it
was.
The more you cycle something the shorter it lasts, cars, electronics,
whatever. If the ignition circuit of the boiler lasts for say a million
hits then the service life will be reduced by repeated over-cycling.

there is no such blanket rule, only some things die from cycling,
primarily lightbulbs.


ANYTHING mechanical will supper strain on joints from thermal cycling,
up to and including integrated circuits.

Remember the boiler itself will lose a lot of heat to the room its in.




Besides that, the o/p's existing system does not currently support this
mode of operation requiring capital investment in redesign, controls and
rework of plumbing. It appears to me that he is looking for a simpler
fix than this.
wireless thermostat.
And the rest.


NT

On Oct 24, 2:09*pm, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:
In article ,
* *The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Still has to arrange a LOT of extra wiring somewhere and maybe Motorised
valves.

Indeed. If you split the rest of the house up into one zone at the boiler,
you'd need to run new pipework to the room in question. Only alternative
to that I can think of would be some form of radio linked TRVs on every
rad, centrally controlled. But even something like this exists, it
wouldn't be cheap to either buy or install.

We dont know what the op's pipe layout is, it could be cheap or could
be impractical.


NT

On Oct 24, 10:55*am, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:
In article
,
* *NT wrote:

On Oct 22, 6:24 pm, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:
In article
,
* *NT wrote:

Very expensive mod to zone off this one room from the rest of the
house.
It would cost, but can be done quite cheaply.

Maybe at installation time, but pretty expensive afterwards. If you're
paying for labour. *
Valve, timer, stat, plus 2nd valve, timer, stat.

Be interested to know just how you could zone off one room in a house that
simply. Without loads of extra pipework.

We dont know the op's plumbing layout. It may be as simple as adding
valves, or it may need added pipework.


Do you understand how zoning is
achieved?

One sole existing zone can be subdivided after the event.


Portable heating would add cost too, mainly in greater fuel cost.

Capital cost are low.
sure, but total costs higher.
And a normal boiler might run at reduced efficiency when just
heating one small room.
not by much

We don't know what boiler the OP has. Older ones can be horribly
inefficient when working at a small part of capacity.
If its cast iron, I'd agree. But most of those are gone now. Maybe the
OP can look and see if the boiler heat exchanger is a cast iron lump
or pressed/bent metal.

Nothing to do with the heat exchanger material. More to do with if the
boiler will modulate down far enough.

Exchanger bulk and modulation both affect efficiency.


NT

NT wrote:
On Oct 24, 10:55 am, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:
In article
,
NT wrote:

On Oct 22, 6:24 pm, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:
In article
,
NT wrote:
Very expensive mod to zone off this one room from the rest of the
house.
It would cost, but can be done quite cheaply.
Maybe at installation time, but pretty expensive afterwards. If you're
paying for labour.
Valve, timer, stat, plus 2nd valve, timer, stat.
Be interested to know just how you could zone off one room in a house that
simply. Without loads of extra pipework.

We dont know the op's plumbing layout. It may be as simple as adding
valves, or it may need added pipework.


Do you understand how zoning is
achieved?

One sole existing zone can be subdivided after the event.


Portable heating would add cost too, mainly in greater fuel cost.
Capital cost are low.
sure, but total costs higher.
And a normal boiler might run at reduced efficiency when just
heating one small room.
not by much
We don't know what boiler the OP has. Older ones can be horribly
inefficient when working at a small part of capacity.
If its cast iron, I'd agree. But most of those are gone now. Maybe the
OP can look and see if the boiler heat exchanger is a cast iron lump
or pressed/bent metal.
Nothing to do with the heat exchanger material. More to do with if the
boiler will modulate down far enough.

Exchanger bulk and modulation both affect efficiency.


Just a random thought....
If there's gas available on site, and an external wall, why not install
a small balanced flue gas heater in the room you want to heat?

I've seen caravan sized ones of about three kilowatts that can be
thermostatically controlled and re-jetted for natural gas.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

In article , The Natural Philosopher
writes
NT wrote:
On Oct 24, 11:39 am, fred wrote:
In article
, NT
writesOn Oct 23, 1:07 pm, fred
wrote:

The whole object is to avoid heating the rest of the house.
I think the object is to pick the cheapest to run system
I'm sure the o/p now has enough information to make his choice.

Why would
this waste heat hang around until the evening? I expect the energy will
have dispersed to the ether long before then.
If you heat a house to 20 in the morning, and leave the system off
till 6pm, a good 80% of that heat is still retained indoors by then.
If you've ever had a home heated by storage heaters you'd know that
isn't the case.

I know its usually the case from many examples of heating being left
off for hours.


Either way I don't see that as the main issue, I view it as bad practice
to design a system that will repeatedly short cycle a boiler. I designed
my system for a long slow burn to avoid the thermal stresses that
repeated cycling inevitably brings and I hope to reap the benefits of
this in a longer system life.
Is thermal cycling a major failure mode in boilers? I didnt think it
was.
The more you cycle something the shorter it lasts, cars, electronics,
whatever. If the ignition circuit of the boiler lasts for say a million
hits then the service life will be reduced by repeated over-cycling.

there is no such blanket rule, only some things die from cycling,
primarily lightbulbs.

ANYTHING mechanical will supper strain on joints from thermal cycling,
up to and including integrated circuits.

Remember the boiler itself will lose a lot of heat to the room its in.

Just leave it, I'm sure he's perfectly happy with life on fantasy
island. I hear the west coast is particularly nice.
--
fred
FIVE TV's superbright logo - not the DOG's, it's ********

In article ,
gremlin_95 wrote:
On 24/10/2011 14:09, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
The Natural wrote:
Still has to arrange a LOT of extra wiring somewhere and maybe
Motorised valves.

Only alternative to that I can think of would be some form of radio
linked TRVs on every rad, centrally controlled. But even something
like this exists, it wouldn't be cheap to either buy or install.

That would be the Honeywell Hometronic system

http://www.sensibleheat.co.uk/honeyw...ic-manager.htm

http://www.hwch.co.uk/plumbing.html

Ah. Probably what was at the back of my mind. ;-)

No prices, though. You could probably buy several years electricity to
heat the OP's room for what it costs.

--
*Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article
,
NT wrote:
Be interested to know just how you could zone off one room in a house
that simply. Without loads of extra pipework.

We dont know the op's plumbing layout. It may be as simple as adding
valves, or it may need added pipework.

Give me an example of how.


Do you understand how zoning is
achieved?

One sole existing zone can be subdivided after the event.

You could cut off one room quite easily. But cutting off the rest of the
house while leaving on that room is the tricky thing. Think about it.

--
*The statement above is false

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 24/10/2011 17:52, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
wrote:
On 24/10/2011 14:09, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
The Natural wrote:
Still has to arrange a LOT of extra wiring somewhere and maybe
Motorised valves.
Only alternative to that I can think of would be some form of radio
linked TRVs on every rad, centrally controlled. But even something
like this exists, it wouldn't be cheap to either buy or install.

That would be the Honeywell Hometronic system
http://www.sensibleheat.co.uk/honeyw...ic-manager.htm
http://www.hwch.co.uk/plumbing.html
Ah. Probably what was at the back of my mind. ;-)

No prices, though. You could probably buy several years electricity to
heat the OP's room for what it costs.

Indeed, the cost is about £3500!

--
David

On 21/10/11 16:23, Dave wrote:


What's the best way (and by that I think I mean the cheapest way) of
heating just one room? We have a box room that I'm going to set up as an
office as I'm now going to be working from home. I assume that the way
NOT to do it is have the full house central heating on and turn down (or
off?) the TRVs in all the other rooms?

It's a 1960s semi-detached dormer (chalet) bungalow with one external
wall being "normal" brick/cavity/brick, the other external wall has the
window and has (I think) inner plasterboard/wood frame/outer tile
construction and the other two walls are standard stud walls.

In case anyone was going to suggest one of those stand-alone gas
heaters, I assume it would have to go on the brick wall but due to the
room layout, that wall is the best choice for the desk and shelving so
I'm afraid that's a non-starter.

TIA

Long Johns under trousers save a lot of heating costs!

and somehow warm your feet
[g]

En el artículo id,
Jeremy Nicoll - news posts
escribió:

I've noticed this quite
often with eg the lounge after several hours in front of the TV with a gas
fire blazing away...

I've got a wall-mounted electric heater (modern, glass fronted, pebbles)
in the lounge with a living-flame effect. It's odd how the flames make
me feel warmer even though the heater itself isn't switched on.

A lot of it is psychological, I think.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

En el artículo , Huge
escribió:

I use a thick pullover and a cheapo 2kW fan heater from Sainsers, if
required.

Me too. Fan heaters are very quick to take the chill off a room.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

En el artículo , Andrew Gabriel
escribió:

learned a few days ago that our overhead HV conductors run
at around 90-100C.

Deliberately, or because the system is overloaded?

--
(\_/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

En el artículo , Huge
escribió:

Shh, don't tell mine, it runs six five zones as small as one room.
^^^^^^^^
Yes, but you're an idiot.

An idiot who can't get his story straight, it seems.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:31:46 +0100, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

En el artÃ*culo , Huge
escribió:

Shh, don't tell mine, it runs six five zones as small as one room.
^^^^^^^^
Yes, but you're an idiot.

An idiot who can't get his story straight, it seems.

Maybe that was sixty five? Asylums for the perpetually bewildered can be
quite large.

On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:46:14 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

no matter HOW well lagged the pipes are there
is always some stiff inside rooms that loses heat

Those damned corpses.

On Oct 24, 3:48*pm, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
NT wrote:
On Oct 24, 11:39 am, fred wrote:
In article
, NT
writesOn Oct 23, 1:07 pm, fred wrote:

The whole object is to avoid heating the rest of the house.
I think the object is to pick the cheapest to run system
I'm sure the o/p now has enough information to make his choice.

Why would
this waste heat hang around until the evening? I expect the energy will
have dispersed to the ether long before then.
If you heat a house to 20 in the morning, and leave the system off
till 6pm, a good 80% of that heat is still retained indoors by then.
If you've ever had a home heated by storage heaters you'd know that
isn't the case.

I know its usually the case from many examples of heating being left
off for hours.

Either way I don't see that as the main issue, I view it as bad practice
to design a system that will repeatedly short cycle a boiler. I designed
my system for a long slow burn to avoid the thermal stresses that
repeated cycling inevitably brings and I hope to reap the benefits of
this in a longer system life.
Is thermal cycling a major failure mode in boilers? I didnt think it
was.
The more you cycle something the shorter it lasts, cars, electronics,
whatever. If the ignition circuit of the boiler lasts for say a million
hits then the service life will be reduced by repeated over-cycling.

there is no such blanket rule, only some things die from cycling,
primarily lightbulbs.

ANYTHING mechanical will supper strain on joints from thermal cycling,

nonsense. Stuch strain only occurs where the design doesnt avoid it.

up to and including integrated circuits.

Remember the boiler itself will lose a lot of heat to the room its in.

you dont say

On Oct 24, 5:55*pm, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:
In article
,
* *NT wrote:

Be interested to know just how you could zone off one room in a house
that simply. Without loads of extra pipework.
We dont know the op's plumbing layout. It may be as simple as adding
valves, or it may need added pipework.

Give me an example of how.

how to add valves without adding pipework? That cant be what you mean.


Do you understand how zoning is
achieved?
One sole existing zone can be subdivided after the event.

You could cut off one room quite easily. But cutting off the rest of the
house while leaving on that room is the tricky thing. Think about it.

Where do you see difficulty? Pipework layout or control system?
Neither are mentally challenging to make work. Whether more pipe is
needed depends on existing pipework layout.


NT

On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:28:47 +0100, Mike Tomlinson
wrote:

En el artículo , Andrew Gabriel
escribió:

learned a few days ago that our overhead HV conductors run
at around 90-100C.

Deliberately, or because the system is overloaded?

That will be normal temperatures, short term, in the order of 30
minute, overload temperatures are about 150 deg C


--

Andrew Gabriel wrote:

I learned a few days ago that our overhead HV conductors run
at around 90-100C.

That'll be why you don't see many crows perching on them!

In message
, NT
writes
On Oct 23, 1:07*pm, fred wrote:
In article
, NT
writes

On Oct 22, 6:50*pm, fred wrote:
In article , chris French
writes

In message
,
NT

100% at 12p/unit versus gas with maybe 85% efficient at 3-4p/unit.

I doubt a gas boiler keeping one rad warm gets anywhere near that.

Agreed, assuming a 1kW rad in a small room even a modulating boiler will
be short cycling its arse off every few minutes, warming up the boiler
and pipes with all that doing to waste.

It could work nicely with a thermal store system but not everyone has
one of those and fewer still have the circuits separated enough to
permit this kind of operation.

Even if 50% of the heat is lost in the pipework to the rest of the
house, most of that heat is saved come evening time. So efficiency is
still fairly high.

The whole object is to avoid heating the rest of the house.

I think the object is to pick the cheapest to run system

Why would
this waste heat hang around until the evening? I expect the energy will
have dispersed to the ether long before then.

If you heat a house to 20 in the morning, and leave the system off
till 6pm, a good 80% of that heat is still retained indoors by then.

Either way I don't see that as the main issue, I view it as bad practice
to design a system that will repeatedly short cycle a boiler. I designed
my system for a long slow burn to avoid the thermal stresses that
repeated cycling inevitably brings and I hope to reap the benefits of
this in a longer system life.

Is thermal cycling a major failure mode in boilers? I didnt think it
was.

Only really as far as relay contacts switching inductive loads and that
sort of thing is concerned.

Otherwise natural built in obsolescence will take its toll before other
factors



--
geoff

On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:27:15 +0100, The Other Mike
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:28:47 +0100, Mike Tomlinson
wrote:

En el artículo , Andrew Gabriel
escribió:

learned a few days ago that our overhead HV conductors run
at around 90-100C.

Deliberately, or because the system is overloaded?

That will be normal temperatures, short term, in the order of 30
minute, overload temperatures are about 150 deg C

make that *300* minutes


--

NT wrote:
On Oct 24, 3:48 pm, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
NT wrote:
On Oct 24, 11:39 am, fred wrote:
In article
, NT
writesOn Oct 23, 1:07 pm, fred wrote:
The whole object is to avoid heating the rest of the house.
I think the object is to pick the cheapest to run system
I'm sure the o/p now has enough information to make his choice.
Why would
this waste heat hang around until the evening? I expect the energy will
have dispersed to the ether long before then.
If you heat a house to 20 in the morning, and leave the system off
till 6pm, a good 80% of that heat is still retained indoors by then.
If you've ever had a home heated by storage heaters you'd know that
isn't the case.
I know its usually the case from many examples of heating being left
off for hours.
Either way I don't see that as the main issue, I view it as bad practice
to design a system that will repeatedly short cycle a boiler. I designed
my system for a long slow burn to avoid the thermal stresses that
repeated cycling inevitably brings and I hope to reap the benefits of
this in a longer system life.
Is thermal cycling a major failure mode in boilers? I didnt think it
was.
The more you cycle something the shorter it lasts, cars, electronics,
whatever. If the ignition circuit of the boiler lasts for say a million
hits then the service life will be reduced by repeated over-cycling.
there is no such blanket rule, only some things die from cycling,
primarily lightbulbs.
ANYTHING mechanical will supper strain on joints from thermal cycling,

nonsense. Stuch strain only occurs where the design doesnt avoid it.


Oh? so a steel rail that is simply one piece of steel with no joins,
doesn't suffer strains on heating and cooling?

up to and including integrated circuits.

Remember the boiler itself will lose a lot of heat to the room its in.

you dont say

Actually I do. If you are losing 100W of heat into the boiler room and
100W in the pipes to put 100W into the room you actually want heated,
you are spending more on gas or oil than you would be on electricity.

On 24 Oct,
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

Indeed. If you split the rest of the house up into one zone at the boiler,
you'd need to run new pipework to the room in question. Only alternative
to that I can think of would be some form of radio linked TRVs on every
rad, centrally controlled. But even something like this exists, it
wouldn't be cheap to either buy or install.

I've just made my kitchen and futility room a seperate zone. Half a dozen
plumbing fittings plus 10 metres of 10mm plastic pipe in addition to the zone
valve and wireless thermostat. Cost about £100.

Odd thing after installing -- thermostat set to 17deg and room temperature
never fell below 22deg. Eventually noticed heaters were cycling hot. I'd left
the wireless thermostat on the default channel, and presumably it was trying
to satisfy e neighbour's demand for heat. Changed channel and all fine now.

Now will the neighbour pay the gas bill?

--
B Thumbs
Change lycos to yahoo to reply

On Oct 24, 10:44*pm, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
NT wrote:
On Oct 24, 3:48 pm, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
NT wrote:
On Oct 24, 11:39 am, fred wrote:
In article
, NT
writesOn Oct 23, 1:07 pm, fred wrote:
The whole object is to avoid heating the rest of the house.
I think the object is to pick the cheapest to run system
I'm sure the o/p now has enough information to make his choice.
Why would
this waste heat hang around until the evening? I expect the energy will
have dispersed to the ether long before then.
If you heat a house to 20 in the morning, and leave the system off
till 6pm, a good 80% of that heat is still retained indoors by then..
If you've ever had a home heated by storage heaters you'd know that
isn't the case.
I know its usually the case from many examples of heating being left
off for hours.
Either way I don't see that as the main issue, I view it as bad practice
to design a system that will repeatedly short cycle a boiler. I designed
my system for a long slow burn to avoid the thermal stresses that
repeated cycling inevitably brings and I hope to reap the benefits of
this in a longer system life.
Is thermal cycling a major failure mode in boilers? I didnt think it
was.
The more you cycle something the shorter it lasts, cars, electronics,
whatever. If the ignition circuit of the boiler lasts for say a million
hits then the service life will be reduced by repeated over-cycling.
there is no such blanket rule, only some things die from cycling,
primarily lightbulbs.
ANYTHING mechanical will supper strain on joints from thermal cycling,

nonsense. Stuch strain only occurs where the design doesnt avoid it.

Oh? so a steel rail that is simply one piece of steel with no joins,
doesn't suffer strains on heating and cooling?

up to and including integrated circuits.

Remember the boiler itself will lose a lot of heat to the room its in.

you dont say

Actually I do. If you are losing 100W of heat into the boiler room and
100W in the pipes to put 100W into the room you actually want heated,
you are spending more on gas or oil than you would be on electricity.

this was addressed before

In article ,
wrote:
Indeed. If you split the rest of the house up into one zone at the
boiler, you'd need to run new pipework to the room in question. Only
alternative to that I can think of would be some form of radio linked
TRVs on every rad, centrally controlled. But even something like this
exists, it wouldn't be cheap to either buy or install.

I've just made my kitchen and futility room a seperate zone. Half a
dozen plumbing fittings plus 10 metres of 10mm plastic pipe in addition
to the zone valve and wireless thermostat. Cost about £100.

Presumably the boiler is in one of these rooms? If so, the easiest option.
The OP wants this for a box room. Likely as far from the boiler as
possible when sod's law applies. And that will need new pipe runs to it to
zone things.

Of course some are happy with surface mount pipes running everywhere. I'm
not. So it would be a great deal of work to do that here.

--
*Don't byte off more than you can view *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Andy Burns writes:
Andrew Gabriel wrote:

I learned a few days ago that our overhead HV conductors run
at around 90-100C.

That'll be why you don't see many crows perching on them!

They also don't like the corona discharge from around 33kV up.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher writes:
CGT is not payable on a house that is your 'principle domicile' or some
such legal ********.

Yes. I suspect the point is that you aren't expected to be paid
expenses to use your principle residence, so if you are, then that
part doesn't count as your principle residence anymore.

It's something that several past employers who will pay for heating
etc if you are a home worker have warned about. I've never looked
into the details - I've been a home worker for most of the last 10
years, but I've never claimed things like heat and lighting.
I guess it's OK if you're renting, but IANAL.

Neither is it clear that an office at home whether your principle place
of work or not constitutes a commercial premises, for council tax and
planning purposes.

Its a pandoras box few people would care to open..

Insurance is another one on two sides. They all seem to be OK with
SOHO now (wasn't the case when I started). However, you still have
to be careful if your employer provides any expensive equipment
which might make your home more of a target, even if your own
insurer isn't insuring it. Back in the days when we had expensive
Sun workstations provided, we were recommended to declare these to
our home insurer and Sun would pay any resulting extra charge,
although we were not allowed to have our insurer actually insure
the company equipment. (There are also complications with car
insurance if you carry expensive company equipment in your own car,
which I used to, but we don't do that anymore.)

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article ,
NT writes:
Is thermal cycling a major failure mode in boilers? I didnt think it
was.

It's down to the boiler design.

I have a 20 year old Potterton Profile which is designed to cycle
as it can't modulate, and does so very efficiently with no waste
in the cycle.

OTOH, I have a 10 year old condensing Keston which is designed to
moduate down to 7kW, but cycles below that. The cycling in this
case is not at all efficient or well designed, and it would be
bad practice to design a system which relied on this boiler
cycling to generate 7kW.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]