Low cost effective heating for bedrooms

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5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1260074 16-Mar-2015 10:33

a dehumidifier in each room would be very expensive, I am more wondering whether by drying the wet end of the house out at night that the ecoheat panel heaters would then be able to heat the rooms enough for the desired heat with the heat expelled from the dehumidifier enough to keep the hall at an even temperature so not to suck the minimal heat output that the panel heaters would give.

alasta

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#1260076 16-Mar-2015 10:41

Mumx5: Will the dehumidifier be quiet enough to run at night, utilizing the "heat" output to assist in warming that end of the house?

Noise is a good question - make sure you test this in a quiet environment before you commit to buying any dehumidifier.

Several years ago I had a Goldair unit which I bought for $300 and it was very, very noisy. It sounded like having a truck idling right outside the house. The much more expensive Mitsubishi Oasis is considerably quieter, although depending on how sensitive you are you may still find it too noisy to leave running all night. Chances are you'll probably be comfortable to sleep with it running in the hallway or an adjacent room, but not in your bedroom.

Fred99

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#1260088 16-Mar-2015 10:54

Summary of a "Consumer" test here:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10892301

Batman

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#1260089 16-Mar-2015 10:55

Mumx5: a dehumidifier in each room would be very expensive, I am more wondering whether by drying the wet end of the house out at night that the ecoheat panel heaters would then be able to heat the rooms enough for the desired heat with the heat expelled from the dehumidifier enough to keep the hall at an even temperature so not to suck the minimal heat output that the panel heaters would give.

i don't understand how a dehumidifier in the corridor can work magic in a room. that's just me. in theory all the molecules even out ... but in practice the 60s house is not a closed system. otherwise you won't have this problem.

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#1260090 16-Mar-2015 10:58

Fred99: Summary of a "Consumer" test here:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10892301

mmm ... all tests done in insulated rooms ... i dread to know the effect on uninsulated ones

Fred99

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#1260111 16-Mar-2015 11:21

joker97:
Fred99: Summary of a "Consumer" test here:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10892301

mmm ... all tests done in insulated rooms ... i dread to know the effect on uninsulated ones

Poorly maintained, uninsulated and drafty would be typical of many of the rental homes I see (not all).
Unfortunately - you can add "expensive" to that at the moment.
In Chch in the depth of winter, overnight temperatures frequently drop to the point where heat pumps lose efficiency.
Even on the hills where we live, our heat pump can be next to useless when we get a cold southerly blow (OK though on frosty still nights, as we're well above the inversion layer).
Even colder out west, where many of the new subdivisions are, but at least the new homes have to be well insulated.

Jeeves

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Ultimate Geek

#1260132 16-Mar-2015 11:31

Mumx5: Let's start with the priority, which is your babies room. It's much cheaper, and easier to retain heat that is already there than pour money into generating heat - so with that in mind:

Are the windows in this room double glazed - If not, then do you have thermal (eg: thick and heavy!) curtains, that drape all the way to the floor? If not, then make this a priority above any heaters.
Does this room have a crawl space in the ceiling above it? If it does, does it have insulation in the roof? If not, perhaps think about buying just 1 roll of batts and put some insulation in yourself if your landlord doesn't want to.
Do you leave the door open at night time? If you do, I'd suggest buying/using a baby monitor and closing the door, and use a draft stopper if there is a gap underneath.

That's the best we're going to be able to do to avoid losing heat. Next thing is moisture:

I know this sounds daft and counter-intuitive - but seriously, open the bedroom windows during the day - and the doors into the bedrooms. Even in the middle of winter, open them for an hour or so. What this does will help remove a lot of the moisture from your house that has built up overnight - especially using the dry air that is around Christchurch. And the best thing is it's free. Yes it will cool the air in the house down a bit, but that air will now be much easier to heat.

Please, please, PLEASE do NOT get a ceramic wall panel heater! They are so slow to react, and as mentioned, don't do nearly enough. I don't know how big the rooms are, but I would recommend an 800-1000w traditional wall mounted panel heater (Not ceramic/Ecopanel).
If you do buy a wall mounted heater, mount it on an internal wall, not an external one. A portion of the output from the heater goes to heating the wall itself - if this is an outside wall then most of that heat goes outside and is wasted.

I would advise against putting a dehumidifier in the hallway. Hallway's are barely used at night time, you don't want to put energy into making that a nicer environment, and it will be very hard to enough airflow into the bedrooms to make a difference. Personally I wouldn't run a dehum at night time at all - focus on drying out the house during the day.
As a side note - when my wife and I inspected the house we now live in, I noticed a dehumidifer in the master bedroom. It was the middle of winter and all the windows were shut, and the place felt/smelt damp. The occupiers obviously kept all the windows shut all the time and wasted money on dehumidifying and heating humid air.
When we moved in, we just opened the windows during the day - even in winter - and we have never needed a dehum. We only occasionally use an 800w wall panel heater in the bedroom.

Also regards the moisture. Make sure when the shower/bath is in use, the ventilation fan is on or a window is open. Try not to dry clothes inside - if you do, again, have a window open in the drying room. When cooking, use the extraction hood as much as possible, or (you guessed it..) open a window.

Hope that helps a little

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CokemonZ

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#1260402 16-Mar-2015 16:35

Hi,
Full disclosure - I own 50% of cleverhome (www.cleverhome.co.nz) . We import and distribute Heatermates, and a similar concept for dehumidifiers called cleverplug.

I recommend cheap and cheerful oil fin heaters ($30 from the warehouse - cheaper on trademe) and a heatermate.
Set the temp at 19 degrees and it will stay there.
The asthma foundation recommends childrens bedrooms are kept between 18 and 20 degrees, big changes are tiggers for asthma as is too hot and too cold.
Watch out for baby monitors with temperature monitors - they wake you up in the middle of the night to change the heaters temp. pain in the rear.

As for the dehumidifier - same thing.
bedrooms should be between 35% and 45% humidity.
Buy the cheapies - unbelievably they tend to do the better job at dehumidifying, but don't have the fancy controls.

enter the code geekzone - I'll do free shipping.

richms

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#1260405 16-Mar-2015 16:38

Just have to watch the tank size on cheap dehumiudifiers. The one I run in the bathroom to keep the towels dry etc fills up in no time, and slack flatmates dont empty it.

Richard rich.ms

timmmay

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#1260433 16-Mar-2015 17:00

Dehumidifier in the bathroom is an unusual idea. Venting it well is obviously necessary, then a heated towel rail, freestanding if required.

CokemonZ

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#1260437 16-Mar-2015 17:02

True - though family home should have less of a problem with slack flatmates.

I have a heatpump in one of the kids bedrooms. The thing would wake the kids up everytime it turned on.
That's part of the reason why heatermate and oil fin heater - blessed silence.

richms

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#1260443 16-Mar-2015 17:05

Heated towel rail does nothing to get the towels dry, they just end up warm and damp, whereas the dehumidifier gets them really dry and stops the others from absorbing moisture during showering and then not drying out. Power use is about the same since once the rooms air is back to dry it cycles off and on, whereas the towel rail just goes non stop unless I put it on a timer which means needing predicting when it will be needed.

Its also a laundry and has the cupboard with all the clean washing in it, so getting it dry after showers etc as quick as possible is important. Leaving the fan on just makes the place cold and doesnt actually get the moisture off surfaces, and the fan pulls so much air thru the house that you can see the cat door swing inwards when its turned on.

Richard rich.ms

timmmay

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#1260713 17-Mar-2015 06:16

As an aside, I got a controller for my heated towel rail that lets you set on time and power, within it's two cycle a day pattern. So you can set on for 1-6 hours at 50-100% power, twice a day. In summer you don't need much. Seems to keep our big thick towels dry.

Niel

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#1260715 17-Mar-2015 06:52

joker97: your house is not the same as OPs house, OPs house more like my old house. 60s. roughcast build. L shaped. 3 bedrm. barely 100m2. my ex house gets all day sun. i used to have 2 6kw heatpumps and 1 10kw one. 1 for lounge, takes the chill off. 1 for dining. takes the chill off. 1 for the square bit containing narrow corridor, toilet, bathroom, 3 bedrooms. corridor very warm. bedrooms, untouched. because the ceiling and floors were fully insulated i'm guessing all the heat escaped through the walls. all of it.

You did not say, but I assume you are referring to my post. I did the heater+fan thing in 2 houses, our 1960's 70sqm bungalow with no insulation and our new 200sqm house with full insulation. I've done the ventilation in both houses, but the old house I've installed the air circulation like a heat transfer system and could measure the temperature drop through the ducting. In the end in the old house I've used a window mounted aircon box to heat/cool the whole house, setup strategically to cause air to circulate through eh house (would need to draw a floor plan to explain what I mean).

You can never have enough Volvos!

Mumx5

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1261056 17-Mar-2015 13:54

CokemonZ: Hi,
Full disclosure - I own 50% of cleverhome (www.cleverhome.co.nz) . We import and distribute Heatermates, and a similar concept for dehumidifiers called cleverplug.

I recommend cheap and cheerful oil fin heaters ($30 from the warehouse - cheaper on trademe) and a heatermate.
Set the temp at 19 degrees and it will stay there.
The asthma foundation recommends childrens bedrooms are kept between 18 and 20 degrees, big changes are tiggers for asthma as is too hot and too cold.
Watch out for baby monitors with temperature monitors - they wake you up in the middle of the night to change the heaters temp. pain in the rear.

As for the dehumidifier - same thing.
bedrooms should be between 35% and 45% humidity.
Buy the cheapies - unbelievably they tend to do the better job at dehumidifying, but don't have the fancy controls.

enter the code geekzone - I'll do free shipping.

Thank you for your response CokemonZ, I actually picked up last year I think it was 3 of the oil fin heaters from the warehouse on clearance for $5 each, but after being told they were expensive to run, they are still sitting in the boxes.

I was aware of the temperature requirements as one of my children is asthmatic however its been trying to address a form of heating that I can actually afford has been my issue.

I will give the heatermate + oil fin heaters (at night) a go, doesn't need to be during day when kids are at school and during day baby can be at warmer end of house. Maybe this combo with the dehumidifier will work.

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