How warm/cold is your home without heating?

madibe · Post by **madibe** » 04 Dec 2010, 17:33

cant afford it for four nigts in a row... LOL

But yea my mate has a pony, but I'm sure he would rather have the island

Mind a hammer and chisel would not have done the trick, neither would the bucket or two of hot water methinks.

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 04 Dec 2010, 20:20

Adam1 wrote:We are retrofitting our house and, once complete, the internal temp will never fall below 16C even if unheated and unoccupied, even during cold periods like the current one. I expect we will probably maintain 18C or maybe 19C, which will feel more like 20 or 21C due to complete absence of drafts or cold radiant from cold internal surfaces. Fuel use for space heating will be 2000kWh or less a year.

[/smugness]

Don't count your chickens! You might freeze to death in your caravan before it's finished, as a pioneer your PassivHaus calculations may be wrong, or TS might HTF just as you finish it, and the zombie hordes move into the house, smashing the 3G windows and MVHR, before you can move in

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featherstick · Post by **featherstick** » 04 Dec 2010, 20:30

JohnB wrote:
Adam1 wrote:We are retrofitting our house and, once complete, the internal temp will never fall below 16C even if unheated and unoccupied, even during cold periods like the current one. I expect we will probably maintain 18C or maybe 19C, which will feel more like 20 or 21C due to complete absence of drafts or cold radiant from cold internal surfaces. Fuel use for space heating will be 2000kWh or less a year.

[/smugness]
Don't count your chickens! You might freeze to death in your caravan before it's finished, as a pioneer your PassivHaus calculations may be wrong, or TS might HTF just as you finish it, and the zombie hordes move into the house, smashing the 3G windows and MVHR, before you can move in .

Yeah, or I might let the air out of one tyre so he keeps rolling out of bed every night, smug doomer git.

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 04 Dec 2010, 20:33

featherstick wrote:Yeah, or I might let the air out of one tyre so he keeps rolling out of bed every night, smug doomer git.

I have that trouble if I park my van on a slope

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Adam1 · Post by **Adam1** » 05 Dec 2010, 15:22

"Passivhaus Pioneer dies of hypothermia whilst defending his MVHR from zombie hoard onslaught" - I can see the headlines now!

I'm pretty confident about the calcs, as the method is well tried and tested and I've gone through them many times, got the official PH training and had some of my assumptions checked by a leading PH expert. Of course there's plenty that could go wrong, even without the intervention of zombie hoards!

The caravan is sitting on some concrete blocks, not the tyres, so no danger of it tipping but even if it did, the previous owner managed to squeeze a queen size bed into it, so there isn't really any other space in the bedroom to fall out into.

Hope to be getting some surplus straw bales this week to pack under the caravan. That, plus a curtain over the door and some extra draft proofing should make a difference.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 05 Dec 2010, 19:14

As regards the animals and their water freezing, the ducks don't really seem to mind, despite being voracious drinkers. By dint of my using a hammer on the contents of the water butts, they get water in the morning, evening and late at night, which keeps them happy.

The geese often manage to keep their water unfrozen, just by gowling away at it. They're very hardy creatures.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 05 Dec 2010, 21:18

I find the thought of ducks and geese who are able to wield hammers, rather scary...

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 06 Dec 2010, 12:53

edited...

bealers · Post by **bealers** » 06 Dec 2010, 17:09

We currently live in an ancient old Welsh longhouse. It's wattle and daub with some (lime, I assume) exterior render. It's rented so we can't insulate much. We have put a carpet down over the lounge flagstones and have heavy curtains over all doors/windows in the lounge. We will put that plastic film stuff over the single glazed windows if we stay here for another year.

Our kitchen has been around 10 in the mornings, this is surprisingly cold. We lit the (wood) Rayburn a couple of times on the weekend that it got proper cold (-18 outside). No idea how warm it gets in the lounge where we have a large wood burner but since this cold spell it has been running 7am - 11pm, closed down overnight. Since 14th Nov we've used 11 wheelbarrow loads of wood. A mixture of Ash, Willow and some Sitka. Luckily the lounge is in the half of the house where the bedrooms are so the heat definitely goes upstairs too. The burner is in an Inglenook so we have one of those 'ecofans' to push the heat out a bit, no idea if it's actually very effective.

We've put the - high tech wood pellet - central heating on once for an hour since the cold to make sure it was all OK and nothing had burst. We're leaving it off as we're trying to eke it's fuel out (for hot water only) as it is really expensive, it comes from miles away and we want to harden ourselves (and the kids) up a bit. No one has complained and we've been fine. It's amazing how quickly one gets used to it, esp my Mrs who is the sort to take a hot water bottle on holiday with her.

Default wear in the past couple of weeks has been Merino baselayer and 3 fleeces and 2 or 3 pairs of socks. One of my fleeces is a hoody, which has been used a lot.

Electric blankets for all of the family was an essential purchase.

Biggest issue in this cold has been the water supply. The borehole feed froze almost immediately and the back-up well went for a few days. It's back now but with forecast of -11 or more tonight I suspect it may go again. As others have mentioned keeping our chickens with water in a liquid form has been a challenge.

DominicJ · Post by **DominicJ** » 06 Dec 2010, 17:30

Without heating, dont know, but well below what could be tolerated long term, last year I slept on the sofa under a few jumpers without any heating (long story) and was honestly scared to fall asleep in case I didnt wake up.
It stays above freezing though, or certainly, no pipes ever burst.

With heating, dont really aim for temperatures I'm afraid, the boiler runs 5-7 in the morning and does 15mins on/off in the evening 5-9, along with a few 15min spurts overnight and during the day.
Only Radiators on are rooms in use, so living room, kitchen, main bedroom, and bathroom, but thats always covered in towels.
And its set to max so, heats the heating water to about 80, which I'm told is most efficient.
Thermostat in at "around" 20, but who knows how accurate it is?