Topic: cold conservatory!

[kitty]

right-just built this lovely conservatory-and although i am not using it as a greenhouse(of course!)there are things in there that are growing-and i've received a number of complaints from the melons(in particular)and afew of the more nesh tomatoes that its a bit chillty at night-so...
how do any of you heat your conservatories?
and re-routing the central heating is not an option...i'm told ::)
kitty

[littlegem]

My BF is an air conditioning engineer and he says that the best and most economical way to heat/cool your conservatory is with air con. in fact, do the whole house, there are systems out now that you get more energy out that you actually use in electric, if you understand what i mean. kw in = more kw out or something, we're gonna have air con in our conservatory soon, as it doesnt face the sun

[Mrs Ava]

Ours is on the central heating.  My sister has an electric fan heater which is thermostatically controlled.  However, she doesn't have it on all the time.  The conservatory is also her boys playroom, so just before she goes to fetch the eldest from school, she turns it on to warm it up and leaves it on until they have finished for the day.  I don't know how economical it is though.

[kitty]

thanks for that both....i have a hankering for a small woodburner .......but i dont know how poly carb copes with a flue-mindyou they do it on narrowboats dont they?...hmmm..wonder if anyone knows.....

[honeybee]

As yet my conservatory has no heating as i am patiently waiting for the gas man to come and fit a radiator.....Grrrrrr, think hes got lost somewhere via Hong Kong  >:(

Anyway last year we bought a lovely looking silver electric heater......kept the place lovely and warm, we just switched in on in the evenings, then the winter electric bill came and it was an extra three hundred quid on top of what we normally pay  :o
So we kicked that into touch.

At this time of the year it doesnt get too cold in there during the evening, just a bit nippy perhaps, and during the day time, the thermomenter is already regularly reaching 35.

But i am afraid Kitty,mine 'IS' looking like a greenhouse :-[ :-[

For the next few weeks we have no chance of sitting in there, in fact i can hardly step in there.....lol, its so d**ned full of hanging baskets that i have to bring in at night , oh and then theres my lovely new three tiered fountain iron display thingy too  :-[
Plus lots of various other stuff

OH reckons it would have been cheaper to buy me a greenhouse  :D

[wardy]

The electric heaters come with a frost thermostat (well some do)  I have one in my outside loo which comes on if the temp drops below freezing.  In the conservatory you could set it to the temp required by your seedlings etc and the heater only kicks in if the temp falls below that which you've set.  It shouldn't be to dear to run it on that basis.  It gets pricey when you run it say at about 70 degrees from Jan to June  ;D

[kitty]

what we've done is put the 'quickheat' electric fire in there-which is fairly cheap to run-400W...on a timer-so it will give a quickblast about 10 pm for half an hour-that should keep the lil plantys going till sunup-it faces nor' nor' east-(harharrrrrrrr!pirate voice!)you see-so it wont bake in the summer(which on radio 4 today btw-they were predicting a scorcher )but i bet we'll need our woollly pully on in the winter...maybe i could turn it into a skating rink! ;D

[kitty]

actually honeybee......er... :-[i lied-you cant move in the b****y place :D-we better get some decent weather or i shall have to start saving for an extension! :-[ ;D ;D ;D

[honeybee]

actually honeybee......er... :-[i lied

Ohhhhh Mrs Kitty

Liar, liar, your bum will catch fire  :D  :D :D ;D

[Clayhithe]

heat/cool your conservatory is with air con.

But don't you need to turn it inside out?

[Clayhithe]

they do it on narrowboats dont they?

They do lots of things on narrow boats ;)

Ours has a coalburner with a flue,  but the roof is steel,  not polycarb.   There is a special waterproof and heatproof collar built into the roof through which the flue passes.

The woodburners in the house have flues which go up into the old chimney,  with a register plate to stop the room air going up the chimney.

You would need to replace one of your polycarb panes with a steel plate and collar to dissipate the heat and to waterproof the joint.

But beware :o

Once you start your woodburner you'll move into the conservatory:  we just sit and watch ours burning.   Better than the telly :D

[kitty]

Liar, liar, your bum will catch fire

AHA!
heating problem solved! ;D ;D
clay-iwe have a woodburner now-had it for 7 years0never been in a position to get it installed-its a looong story-but i think this one would be too big-its a monster!
i would love a stove in the con.
as it backs onto our regular open fireplace do you think it would be possible to 'tap' into the existing chimney?
or would the whole shooting match come crashing down?
kitty

[Clayhithe]

do you think it would be possible to 'tap' into the existing chimney?

You can tap into the existing chimney:  one of ours is.

BUT
when you light one of the fires the smoke falls down the other flue until it gets hot.
When the flue gets hot it then sucks warm air out of the room where there is no fire.

The other flue always acts as a vent,  and so neither fire 'draws' properly.

I'm told that you can instal a special damper where the two flues join to stop this problem,  but I haven't got around to it yet.

Whether your chimney collapses or not depends on your brickie,
  but they are pretty robust.

[Deeds]

The flue problem shouldn't be an issue as the chimney should be lined with a steel liner.

[wardy]

My gawd - your conservatory heating is spiralling out of control.  Now you need a whole new chimney for the stove which you thought was the perfect solution.Next thing will be your house is too weak to support your new flue so you'll have to rebuild the side of the house.  Where will it all end?   ;D

[Merry Tiller]

there are systems out now that you get more energy out that you actually use in electric, if you understand what i mean. kw in = more kw out or something

Sorry but you can't get more energy out than you put in, if anyone on here has managed this get yourself down to the patent office asap, you'll be richer than Bill Gates :o

[Deeds]

My brain was starting to hurt trying to work out the physics on that one too  ;D

[Deeds]

The flue problem shouldn't be an issue as the chimney should be lined with a steel liner.

Speaking as someone who had a chimney fire because the previous owners didn't install a liner, believe you me, it's worth the extra expense - the firemen were hunky though ;D

I believe it's a requirement these days and very sensible too.

[kitty]

b****y h*ll ;D
-wardy-take yer point...thanks chaps!



i really like that electric fire in there...... ::) ;D

[littlegem]

merry tiller & deeds and all the other physics experts out there my very clever & sexy BF says, and i quote
'Modern air conditioners (not B&Q ones, cheap nasty stuff) use DC hybrid inverters which incorporate PAM (pulse amplitude modulation) & PWM (pulse width modulation) which are very efficient, they have to be for the Japanese market where all air-con have to switch off at luch time- when there is a natural surge due to people having a brew- these modern hybrids can be left on rated as 'A' energy efficient, they would, if the the scale allowed, be 'A+5@ and have an EER-COP in the case of the heat pump of up to 4.5. In lay mans terms, that's up to 4.5kw of heating or cooling for every 1kw of energy used, compared to around 0.7kw of heating for the central heating in your house.