Interesting thread. We live in a pretty well-insulated house but I’ve been upgrading it in the ten years we’ve lived there.
Two extra layers of glasswool in the attic – cheap as chips if you shop around in summer and makes a massive difference to the overall warmth of the building and to the gas bills.
Dry-lined a cold outlying bedroom above the garage, massive thickness of Kingspan above the sloping roof, Kingspan on the walls then everything re-lined with foam-backed plasterbaord and skimmed.
Twenty-tube solar water panel on the SW-facing roof, which means the boiler does very little work in summer and we have lashings of hot water for showers. See the project here:
http://www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=255833&start=0
We have an Aga, which keeps the kitchen nice and toasty and contributes to the overall warmth of the house as the flue goes right up through the middle. Got it for £1500 off Ebay. It had a water boiler but since that’s an inefficient way to heat your water we left that out when we reassembled the Aga.
Probably the most important aspect of heating a house is getting the ventilation right. Daily life creates a lot of moisture so during the day when the CH is off we leave windows open and the Aga, although expensive to run, does suck huge amounts of air and cooking steam and fumes up the flue. We also have two multifuel stoves, which also suck a massive volume of stale air out of the house.
The house is now so well insulated and the Aga and stoves contributing so much that the CH will only kick in once or twice on a typical evening once it’s warmed up. This meant that the cold bedroom above the garage was getting chilled between boiler firings, hence the need for dry-lining. If the problem remains, I will fit a 1000w electric panel wall heater in the room because they usually have very sensitive thermostats and will fill the gap effectively until the radiator comes on again.
Now, if only I could persuade Mrs Gti to turn down the TRVs on the rads and allow them to do their job…..
