Heating hallways?

Tar.Aldarion · 22-12-2022 12:20am #1

Just moved in and never had air to water before (nor UFH) so trying to figure out what is expected. Downstairs have UFH in the rooms, upstairs have radiators in rooms and heated towel rails in bathrooms. In the hallways there is nothing, downstairs or upstairs. Downstairs bathroom also no heating.

What is the case here, am I meant to leave the doors open and the rooms heat the hallways, or keep them shut and just heat the rooms, but have cold hallways?

Also have a question about the radiators with air to water, are they meant to barely be warm?

youtheman · 23-12-2022 12:55am

Why would you want to waste energy on heating a hallway?. It's purely down to preference but when my house was being built I specifically instructed the plumber not to put a radiator in the hallway. Also had to make sure the old fashioned tradition of putting the thermostat in the hallway was not followed.

Air to water systems operate at a much lower temperatures compared to your traditional gas or oil fired systems. That is what you really need an extremely well insulated building. The logic is that the heating system puts out much lower energy levels than normal but it is compensated by very well insulated rooms such that the heat is retained retained longer.

Tar.Aldarion · 23-12-2022 2:59am

Thanks, it has a good BER and the main thought for me was that the whole house should be losing heat slowly, so why not heat it all. If a lot of space in the house is always kept cold, then it's reducing the temperature everywhere else, every time you open a door the cold comes in/goes out (with a cat and a few people it's happening a lot), lowers the temperature and starts the heating off again. I suppose it'll take a bit of testing to see how that compares to having the whole house warm. Probably best to just leave them cold, had wondered if that was normal practice.

Sleeper12 · 23-12-2022 8:32am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120027740#Comment_120027740

You are 100% right. In a modern home with complete insulation & air tightness heating a hallway isn't a waste of energy. Your sitting room isn't insulated between it & the hall. Cold hall makes the sitting room heating work harder. Heat moves from an area of higher temperature to cooler temperature area. Cold hall creates heat loss from sitting room & kitchen. Warm hall reduces heat loss from kitchen & sitting room etc. The cost to heat the hall is very small when you factor in the cost of covering the heat loss from other rooms if the hall is cold. There is even an argument not to lag the heating pipes inside the sealed home as the heat is only going back into the home.

There should be some form of heating in the toilet.

With air to water heat pumps the water isn't heated as much as compared to gas or oil. Rads need to be much larger for air to water because they only get warm & not hot.

Most people don't know how to use the heating system in their own home. For example modern condensing boilers are not designed to run on & off. The boiler only becomes efficient & starts condensing when all the rads are up to temperature. A lot of people turn off the heating just as it starts running efficiently. They let the room cool down & turn it back on again. It's more efficiant having warm rads all evening long compared to hot rads that you turn on & off over the evening

Tar.Aldarion · 23-12-2022 6:18pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120027862#Comment_120027862

Thanks! I'll leave the doors open and try to heat the space, see what happens and if it is enough as things stand to actually heat up everything. It's actually hard to find out good information about how your own heating system works or doesn't work. What temp to set the boiler at and so on.

My main problem at the moment (apart from both zones can't be on at once) is that upstairs the rads are mostly off because the stat says the rooms are warmer than the are, so it's cold. When on they are just warm like you say, so they go on for a little while, get turned off and the temperature has not changed much - says it's 22 or 23 and feels like 17, I don't know if the stat is in err, my judge of temperature is wrong or the rads are not getting warm enough, are the properly sized - they don't seem large (and are sized for the rooms for sure, not for adding in the hallway), and it's hard to get proper info. Guess I'll buy a thermometer, talk to a plumber and work from there.

Also currently messing with the balancing as one is barely warm at all, even though they are new, bled, seems closest to the boiler, and opened the lockshield. Also it seems badly deigned with there being a second stat downstairs in a bedroom, but it won't actually heat even if it tells the system to unless the main living room stat says it needs to be heated too. The joy of it all. :D