Leaderboard

Well it was only inhabited for a few stays over winter (Christmas, New Year, and a couple of weekends in February) so I can't really make a fair comment. The only form of background heating that was left on was that the water tank- which is within the heated envelope- got a boost overnight for either half an hour or a whole hour during the coldest spells of weather. This was enough to elevate the temperature to a few degrees above ambient- I think the coldest I ever saw was around 7degC. Thanks to the MVHR there has been not even a hint of dampness, though. Our own house would never have tolerated getting that cold! When it came to heating the place back up in advance of people arriving, I would put the stove on the morning, or if I was out at work would plug in the electric oil filled radiator. Either one of these was enough to get the house back up to around 20degC by the time people checked in. I'm afraid I haven't been terrible scientific about measuring the energy input. It's a reasonably efficient building, considerably in excess of BRegs minimum, but quite a long way from passive standard. The exposed underfloor, and the small overall size (which gives a high surface area to volume ratio) count against it. It's also quite hard to justify overly thick walls in a small house, as they eat up a lot of your footprint. My walls are about 330mm total thickness and I wouldn't have wanted to go any thicker.