Upgrading my heating and new shower head!

[soccercelt]

Have a 2400sqft house built in 2000 with not great design if I'm totally honest. Large open planned living,dining,kitchen (75sq meters). Large windows and French doors and not great insulation. I'll be separating living area from dining/kitchen with double doors. I'm getting walls pumped next week and next I want to upgrade my heating. As if now, the house has been getting heated by oil and an open fire . Any suggestions about up grading heating. Im thinking maybe a would fuel/wood stove where I can burn coal,timber and turf but been told the size of stove I'll need will eat the fuel. Someone mentioned to zone the system but don't know what this is! All suggestions welcome.


Also, I'm installing a new electric shower and wanting to know, is there any decent nozzles on the market thatll fit these showrts rather than the silly ones that come with it or silver in colour but look same.

 

[NickDavies]

hi, You really need to do some heat loss calculations, which shouldn't be that difficult if you can get your head round some simple maths and lists of materials used in the construction of the walls,floors, ceilings and fenestration or maybe a youngster in your family whi is a maths whizz, quite a bit of info and guidance about this online, apps for smart phones etc eventually when you do these calcs for every room you will have an idea of the output required, you need to include and take into account orientation, elevation, location & exposure to the elements and infiltration (cold air getting in)....you will obtain a figure expressed as watts per metre sq Kelvin, then you can accurately size and order the heat emitting source.

you are looking in the right direction regarding minimising heat losses first by increasing insulation, there will be many ways you can do this, secondary double glazing, cavity wall insulation, additional loft space insulation. grants may well be available for some of these energy saving home improvements : )

As for the shower google shower riser kit quite a few to choose from

 

[lucas121]

As said above, first port of call is insulation, no point upgrading heating if your just going to lose the heat.

Solid fuel stoves are known to produce more heat into the room compared to open firs. Alot of heat from open fire places go up the chimney. Make sure you use a HETAs engineer if you go down that route.

Zoning is where you separate the areas of a house and control the heating in them individually. Your house might already be zoned upstairs and down stairs. An easy way to retro fit a zoning system would be to install the Honeywell Evo home system. Decent kit but works out expensive in my opinion.

Honeywell Get connected

 

[soccercelt]

As said above, first port of call is insulation, no point upgrading heating if your just going to lose the heat.

Solid fuel stoves are known to produce more heat into the room compared to open firs. Alot of heat from open fire places go up the chimney. Make sure you use a HETAs engineer if you go down that route.

Zoning is where you separate the areas of a house and control the heating in them individually. Your house might already be zoned upstairs and down stairs. An easy way to retro fit a zoning system would be to install the Honeywell Evo home system. Decent kit but works out expensive in my opinion.

Honeywell Get connected

Yeah knew this about the losing heat up chimney in open fire hence why I want a back boiler stove but the guy in the plumbing store says I'll need a large 24kw or more stove for the size of house I have. He also mentioned it takes alot of fuel to heat it up.

As for zoning, we plumbed my house out in all plastic fittings and pipe and not zoned thou I could probably zone it in 2 because can access the pipes boxed in going up outside of wall in utility room. When you say control the heating around the house, will I be able to do this now the house is finished all then years ago.