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

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

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

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.


1912 terraced miners cottage
2 storey at front, ground floor level with main road
3 storey at back, cellar door level with rear garden
there are no cavities (45cm stone walls) and the cellar is below ground
on 3 sides

heating is via a combi/radiators, looking at the pipe work I couldn't
zone upstairs and downstairs without ripping up the flooring to access
the pipes (not an option).

LJ

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 16:46:50 +0100, "in2minds"
wrote:

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.


1912 terraced miners cottage
2 storey at front, ground floor level with main road
3 storey at back, cellar door level with rear garden
there are no cavities (45cm stone walls) and the cellar is below ground
on 3 sides


heating is via a combi/radiators, looking at the pipe work I couldn't
zone upstairs and downstairs without ripping up the flooring to access
the pipes (not an option).

LJ


OK.

Given that the walls are stone, the normal impact is that the heatloss
is quite a bit, but with different behaviour to a brick built house
because the stone will store more heat. I suspect that the effect is
that when you have been away and the house has been left without
heating it takes a while to warm up, but once warm doesn't cool that
quickly either.

I think that I would be inclined to continue heating the house as you
have been - just when required. I guess that it's not realistic to
insulate the walls of the house either and it wasn't in the scope of
the question. You could try out the impact on energy consumption of
running the heating when required vs. during the day as well to see
what extra is used to do that. A simple way to do that, would be
to read the gas meter daily and note outside temperatures at the same
time each day for a week with heating on part of the day, and then
repeat the exercise the following week with heating on all day.
Assuming your use of hot water is reasonably constant day to day, you
could pick days out of each week where outside temperature is about
the same and compare. This isn't going to be super-accurate, but
will give a reasonable idea.

For the cellar, I assume you have more or less a clean sheet of paper.
I definitely think that insulating it is worth doing, because apart
from reducing heat loss dramatically, it will mean that the space will
warm up very quickly.

With a combi based system, if you can conveniently access the main
heating flow and return pipes, and you can run pipework to that point,
you could create one zone of the cellar and one zone of the rest of
the house using two motorised valves. Running cost for that will be
less than heaing the cellar with electricity, but you have to weigh up
whether the installation work is worth it.

At least if you've insulated the cellar, you will have achieved the
best situation if you do decide to go with electricity. In that
situation, I think I'd go for oil filled radiators on the wall or fan
heater fitted out of harm's way. Underfloor heating will take longer
to warm the room,





--

..andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

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


Off peak electricity to warm the floor slab overnight may not be too
bad...but will be getting chiilly by dusk.

best solution is to use water based U/F heating, and install separate
pump and timer for it.

the other alternatives are an electric heater or electric underfloor
heating, but I'm worried about the cost.

Use your central heating.

Ensure there is good insulation throughout the house and especially in the
cellar, which has massive cold bridging to surrounding land. Use at least
50mm of celotex attached to the walls, preferably more.

As a minimum, ensure rooms (except those with room thermostats) have TRVs.

If the pipework layout allows it, subzone the heating and use programmable
thermostats. This way, each zone gets its own time and temperature control.

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

If you're willing to pay those costs, you may be willing to pay the costs of
converting your heating system to S-Plan-Plus with subzoned control, which
would be a grossly superior solution, will probably end up with a system
cheaper to run than before and may even have a lower capital cost.

Christian.