SteamyTea

Would not have been me that suggested one of them. Fan heater, yes, oil filled is 2 steps removed. Heat electrical element, heat oil, heat case, heat air, which incidentally will just convect up to the ceiling, heat person. 5 Steps. An ordinary convection heater is similar, except it is does not heat any oil, or the case, that is just there for safety. 3 Steps. Fan heater is the same, except it heats from ground level where it disperses quickly. 3 Steps. Trouble with natural convection is that it takes a while for the air at the top of the room, to 'layer down'. The mean room temperature may well be the same, but 27°C, 2.4m from the floor is not as nice as 20°C at floor level, especially if the floor is at 15°C.

I could go on and explain how though the unique properties of quantum dynamics all radiative effects are caused by the absorption and release of photons, with the wavelength, which is related to the frequency, is really just how many photons are released as the atoms' electrons, instantaneously drop down to a lower energy state after being excited to higher state. All thermal energy transfer is the movement of light (photon), just how far those particles have to travel, and how much they spread out from the source in that distance. The further they are from the source i.e. this 'far infra red' wallpaper, the less chance they have of hitting another electron and raising its energy level. They may hit at a glancing blow, that causes some of the energy to be imparted, which will raise the temperature a fraction, but because of the exclusion principle, only a tiny bit of energy is imparted, and the original proton may cease to exist, giving up all the remaining energy to a surround atom's electron. There is a very good chance that it will hit a nitrogen atom which is very stable (almost a noble gas), and is around 80% of the air. This will hardly change in temperature at all, it will just bounce about a bit, shake a bit, then go back to rest. So if you want to make a room comfortable for people, heat the air directly, that is what is in contact with humans. Shortening the distance between the heat source and the heat sink is the best way of transferring thermal energy. There is a very short path between the air in contact with our skin, the photons have a much better chance of hitting the electrons that are exposed, or our clothes. That is what does the work, not the frequency per sec, that is just the magnitude of heating.

After 1 drink I start to feel it, after 2, anyone can feel it.

I always need another shower after. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.

Where, I want to crunch numbers faster. Or do I. If it takes two hours to sort and calculate a large spreadsheet, I can go out.

It is a statistical 'thing'. There is Absolute Humidity, the actual amount of water, by mass, whether as solid, liquid or vapour, in each cubic metre of air, then there is Relative Humidity, what we tend to talk about most as it is easier to measure and is the fraction, in percent, of the amount of water, as vapour, that can evaporate off a surface of water, into a cubic metre of air. Sounds a bit complicated, but it takes air pressure into account and you may well he terms like vapour pressure and partial vapour pressure. No need to worry about the terminology. It is possible to calculate one from the other, but easier to use an online calculator. What it basically comes down to is that even if you have extremely high external RH, once that is warmed a bit inside the house, the RH drops. I am currently at 5.6°C external temperature and 90% RH, once that air has warmed up in the house, the same mass of water is still in the air (about 7 grammes/m3), but because the temperature is now 21°C, the RH is now 42%, which is probably too low for fungal spores to start sprouting. So getting the place warmer will drop the RH, as long as it is not totally airtight, like a submarine. It is why forced ventilation is used in airtight houses. There is a lot of chat about CO2 levels, but high internal RH is what will make you feel uncomfortable, and unless you are used to it, sleepy. Think a Far Eastern holiday with 40°C and 99% RH, two drinks and it is tiring. Never seen anyone sleeping out in the open in the Central Antarctic, the driest place on Earth.

Get the insulation and airtightness improved, then worry about ventilation. I suspect that most of your condensation issues will vanish as you improve the basics. Worth remembering that you never really get rid of mould. The fungal spores are ever present and just go dormant when the conditions are not right for them. Luckily what they hate, warm and dry, is what we like.

I had raw swan for supper, taste similar to sea eagle. (actually had donner kebab, so who knows what I had)

That is where we differ, only me shivering away like poor little Annie.

Oh data https://heatpumpmonitor.org/ Shall have a look one day when I get time.

Been doing it for year, shame E7 users cannot benefit more. Be nice if the gave me cash back for not using power between midnight and 3 AM.

Not sure yet, I am working on the last 4 years data. It is not brilliant because I have to manually twiddle the input knob on the storage heaters (50p piece works a treat). I have also had a peculiar last 15 months having been away for a couple of days most weekends in late 2021 and early 2022, then away again every 2 weeks or so since then, and there was lockdown in 2020. I also have a nice 'problem' that my house is quite thermally stable, so need a lot of data points to start to find out what is actually making a difference, so just working on the 104,446 hourly data point for house power, internal temperature and external temperature. It keep the data small enough to use Excel. So far, what I can say, is that adding secondary glazing and heating just the top of the water cylinder (200lt, E7) has made a huge difference, and fixing the back door (I hardly use the fan heater now). A mean power reduction of between 150W and 200W. 1.3 MWh.year-1 to 1.7 MWh.year-1, a saving not to be sniffed at with my low usage, previously between 4.4 MWh.-1 and 4.8 MWh.year-1, last year was 3 MWh,year-1. And my house was warmer, between 0.6°C and 0.9°C, how brilliant is that. Fixing the leaky back door will have helped a bit as the draught blew on my feet. Here is a chart that shows the all year data for 2019 up to 2023. Ignore anything below an internal temperature of 16°C as they seem to be corrupted data reading (or something else, not investigated yet, but they do only account for around 2% of reading. Every thing about that internal temperature, is pretty linear, and it is including the non heating times as well. I shall be looking at heating times only, later, and temperature slopes, which is what prompted me to get on and do it. So hopefully, once I have digested all my data, I should be able to do as @TerryE does and simply vary the charge times for the storage heaters, rather than the input temperature controlling it. Teasing out time data is often tricky as things like running the washing machine at night 3 times a week can throw it out a bit, but should be able to filter that out.

When he got his Nobel, he was asked to explain what it was for in 2 minutes. "If I could explain it in two minutes, it would not be worth a Nobel" He played the Bongos, and had a camper van, as well.

I know a lot of this electronics and hardware programming is, like most things, a little knowledge and a lot of practice. But I am really impressed with what you can do.

@TerryE does exactly this. And I do it manually with my basic storage heaters i.e. I adjust the input value according to the expected ambient temperature.

I think part of the problem is that people treat it like old fashioned gas heating. Turn it on for a couple of hours at full power, turn it off, then hours later, pull power again till bedtime. Going to be hard for people to realise that has never been a good way to heat a house, but 50 years if it being the norm is going to take some changing. I could drain my car fuel tank in less than 2 hours at maximum speed, and only go about 180 miles, or I can run it for 12 hours and do over 700 miles. Start and end points have not moved.

What @pocster was singing behind me, wondered what it was all about.

Better get two wives

What happens if she wears Ann Summers?

It is a bit of an archaic system, based on property values in 1990 I think (was around then when the poll tax came in). Find a similar size house nearby and see what the charge is.

Go outside with a thermometer in hand, they will soon bolt though the tunnel. This may not translate into French, they take their medicine differently there.

I live (alone) in a small house, 48 m2 total floor area. While it is fine for me size wise, the two things that annoy me is the narrowness, 4 metres wide on the outside, and the stairs in the living room. It makes the living room very narrow, 3 metres wide, and in effect, it is a corridor with a sofa in it. So rather than think in square metres, think about what needs to go in each room, what needs to go against a wall, and what must not be against a wall i.e. 3 sides of a bed. I find that most houses have oversized kitchens and bathroom. It is a great idea that we spend loads of time creating the perfect meal, and a romantic notion about wallowing in a candle lit bathroom for hours. Reality is different. Showers are often too small though. I like @ProDave's idea of building to a Council Band tax limit.

Well hopefully Google, and ChatGPT will put us to the top of the lists. And you know your RCD works, as intended, as well.

And kw/h, Kwh, kwH, KWH, KW/h, KW/H. We should, as a species use the correct units of energy the joule, not Joule (unless referring to the man or at the beginning of a sentence). MJ is the more appropriate unit, 1 million joules, there are 3.6 MJ in a kWh, or 1 MJ is 0.2778 kWh when rounded to 4 decimal places, but in reality, 2 decimal place would do, so 0.28 kWh to the MJ.

Because the PR/Marketing people have got hold of it and are misrepresenting the science. To give you an example, today is a bit chilly down here, about 7°C, but sunny, 170 W.m-2 on the horizonal, so higher if face on. Now if I stand out in the sun, and out of the wind (mean speed 0.44 m.s-1, with gusts of 3.1 m.s-1). So at best I probably have 200 W.m-2 of solar energy hitting my 1 m-1 of surface area facing the sun. But I would not stand out here without a jacket, and thermal leggings. Now, if I covered my one main wall, about 2.4m high and 6 m long, I would have ~14 m2 of area. Now let us say that without and wind chill factor at home, I could get away with a quarter of the power (bit of a guess as hard to test, but not a stupid, uneducated guess), that wall would be consuming 700 W and I would, at 100% absorption be getting 50 W of that. But in reality, I would be soaking up a lot less, maybe 20% at best (as good as a PV module), so 10 W. 700 W out, 10 W in. Bargain. As a reality check, yesterday when I was out all day, my house used 21 kWh, of which 3 kWh was for DHW (had a bath before I left). So that is 750 W to heat the whole house (and it was at 22°C when I got in last night, bit warmer than normal) So rather than heat just one room, I heated 2.5 times the area, for 50 W more, and overheated the house. That is a better bargain. Now I know that these 'far infra red' system do not run at the same power as our sun, but if they were at a level that is comparable to what I am already doing, and all the energy get reradiated back, then they would still be lot less efficient, by at least 2.5 times. And I would have a cold house, even if I felt warm. Condensation would become a problem, and there would be many 'shadows' that would be quite cold.