11943 Most efficient heating for stone house

Do you live there full time or is it a holiday home?

It is a holiday home at the moment but we do frequent there a lot throughout the year and people who have been in autumn/winter/spring months have commented that 'they have never been so perished'!! Not good feedback really. We do want to be comfortable in the house and even when we put extra layers on its damn cold.

Not that I am an expert but stone/concrete houses are apparently difficult to heat up for short periods of time as the stone "absorbs " the heat letting it out slowly. this thread may give you some ideas. [url]http://www.italymag.co.uk/forums/building-renovation/11357-insulation.html[/url]

If you search the forum you will also see a lot of discussion on this issue. Good luck

What type of windows? [double glazed or not?]
What type of ceilings? [mine are 6" thick concrete], and are they insulated at all?
Is the house draughty?

These will affect things - as will the size/efficiency of the central heating, etc etc

We probably need a few more details.

.

[quote=typolee;113945]Hi We have a house in Abruzzo and the house is constructed entirely of stone/concrete walls. We have a stufa on the ground floor (kitchen) and central heating running off bottled gas however we simply cannot get the house to get warm. Is this a case of it just being a cold house or should we be able to get the house warm by some more efficient form of heating. Is the central heating insufficient for heating the house and do we need bigger rads/boiler?? If you know of any suggestions or know of a gas plumber who could visit us in Torricella Peligna please forward details.

Many thanks.[/quote]

You need a thermal engineer to check what heat loses are and work out your needs and dimension the system accordingly. Which will probably mean a larger boiler and more rads. Or why not a few jumpers and layers of underwear.

You can hardly justify the cost of the works for a few days in winter. Stay in the UK until the end of April.:winki:

Are your stufe pipes running indoors in order to provide a kind of radiator in the rooms they pass through on the way to the roof? This system gives us warmth in the bedrooms (when the stufes are running). We have a pellet stufe in the kitchen which can be set on a timer so coming down to breakfast is really toasty (pardon the pun!). We also installed electric radiators in the bathrooms, they are filled with water and a glycol solution (to stop them freezing) and then plugged into the electricity. We brought ours down from Germany but I understand you can get them in the local builders yard. We have also found electric blankets have made a real difference to the whole experience. When we visit in winter it still takes three days before the our breath stops frosting when we are in the hallway (which we head with a gas heater) but a couple of hours with the bathroom heaters and blankets on and the basic home comforts are there. We have upgraded the electricity in order to cope with these extras but it has been worth it. The first winter the mattress was damp and the towels just didn't dry ... burrrrrr! I hope these tips help :-)

cast iron wood burning fires with internal fans. stacked to the brim with wood make a big difference.

I think the thing to do is give the house a good blast of every heating type you have for at least the first 24 hours, to dry out the damp and start warming the walls. Then you can turn things down to tick over. Once the walls are warm they will stay warm. Same if you have an open fire; light it and keep it in so as to warm the chimney.

Just trying to warm the house with short bursts of heat will not work because the walls will take most of it.

Ours is an old stone house with a new addition, we have an open fire, double glazing and central heating. We try not to let the house get cold, it takes less heating just to keep it warm than to reheat it once it gets cold.

We are warm and cosy even though its snowing outside.

Also don’t be tempted to go ‘open plan’, at least if you can close the door you can be warm in one room.

Another tip is to throw a party - a good few bodies will heat a room very well and after a few glasses of the local vino you won’t feel the cold so much. :bigergrin:

[quote=Nielo;114160].

Also don’t be tempted to go ‘open plan’, at least if you can close the door you can be warm in one room.. :bigergrin:[/quote]

Ain't that the truth. We've had to erect big curtains to stop the heat all disappearing upstairs!

Nielo and Anne are both right, smaller rooms are easier to heat and to keep warm and heavy curtains in strategic places can help a lot. Our mill is also totally made of stone and we are on the river, but we have an excellent gas heating system installed (mains gas, not the bottles as they last very little and are awfully expensive) and the house warms up almost immediately. I should add that we also have great double-glazed windows. So everything adds up, you have to check and improve anything that can cause a loss of heat in the house. Worth getting an expert as you will save heaps in utilities, which are very expensive in Italy.

[quote=Gala Placidia;114234]....... I should add that we also have great double-glazed windows. So everything adds up, you have to check and improve anything that can cause a loss of heat in the house. ................[/quote]

If you are not double glazed, heavy[ish] curtains at the windows work wonders in winter.

.

Its strange this as now (March) in our UK stone 18th cent cottage we are lovely and warm . No need for heating !

We are grade 2 National Trust owned house so no double glazing but we made internal windows from acyrlic sheeting and wood.The sun shining in for more than a week has heated rooms enough to allow us to switch off central heating ! Upstairs its even warmer! If it gets cold again then we'll need to put the heating on eves but even so the temps in Abruzzo will be higher than here so houses should be ok without heat on .

Italian houses seem to built in such a a way that they never benifit from 'passive' heating .It could have something to do with the need to be cooler in summer time?The house position and windows seem all wrong.

If you are thinking of buying an unoccupied house look at it in March or April.We did this and found inside temps ranged betwween freezing and just a slight chill.The main reason we decided on our house was it actually appeared warm inside when the agent opened the door!Its not built on a concrete slab either which will make a difference.

Its's all historical - As the summers were hot they placed houses on a north facing slope to benefit from the shade in summer. With plenty of wood and short winters and plenty of layered clothing. Italians got by - hence the small windows a necessary evil too large too much heat gain in summer and a form of heat loss in winter plus of course their initial cost, stone was plentiful and cool but once heated and continually heated really not a problem....

The arrival of building technology, science, new materials, efficiency, and comfortable living. Now these old quaint stone houses aren't so efficient any more and modern man (not all) want light and space, central heating and passive solar heat gain.

Now it isn't so easy any longer expensive to heat because we are used to 20ºc plus in each room.Orientation is all wrong; sun light having two components heat and light - modern windows and shading allows changes in design without over heating in summer and exorbitant bills in winter.

Now do the Italian planning authorities take any notice of this and allow some modern buildings into their landscape - no hardly so how does modern architecture develop in Italy?? The answer - it doesn't well not in certain parts of Italy's country-side...?? :smile:

Actually where I live there are lots of new buildings going up and to modern architectural designs too.

If you bought an old stone house in the UK you would have just as many problems with heat and light.

It has been a long cold winter but when temperatures hit the 40’s for a week or so you will be glad of your stone walls and small windows and be unable to believe you were ever cold or will ever be cold again!!

I must take issue a bit with lotan, when he suggests that in traditional construction to design passively is a matter of either sun OR no sun. It is quite possible, with proper orientation and attention to eaves details - extending to verandahs and even to clever deciduous planting - to design a house which gets the sun in the winter and does not get the sun in the summer.

However - the orientation and the shelter offered by the topography are of primary importance, and this is where politicans and pseudo-economic considerations get in the way of efficient building. Either the planners won't let you build the house facing mainly south, with a hill behind: or the builder has set out a street so 50% of the houses face north.....or you don't own any land on the south facing side of the mountain!

[quote=Nielo;114308]Actually where I live there are lots of new buildings going up and to modern architectural designs too.

If you bought an old stone house in the UK you would have just as many problems with heat and light.

It has been a long cold winter but when temperatures hit the 40’s for a week or so you will be glad of your stone walls and small windows and be unable to believe you were ever cold or will ever be cold again!![/quote]

1. Most new buildings are in residential zones and not in the country side. Where there is a tendancy by planning to build as it was 200 years ago?

2. All secondhand already built suffer from the same dilemma which ever country they find themselves in.

3. You failed to grasp that with new technology and new building materials and old methods such as orientation a building can be kept cool in summer and warm in winter. You don't need to have 2 foot walls to keep cool and you can have large windows in which to see the views we came here for ... or....??

:smile:

Have you considered using solar power, I think there may be grants available in some areas.

[URL="http://www.clean-energy-ideas.com/solar_panels.html"]Solar Panels[/URL]

[quote=Charles Phillips;114310]I must take issue a bit with lotan, when he suggests that in traditional construction to design passively is a matter of either sun OR no sun. It is quite possible, with proper orientation and attention to eaves details - extending to verandahs and even to clever deciduous planting - to design a house which gets the sun in the winter and does not get the sun in the summer.

Charles with all due respect - I was talking about existing buildings already built; trying to re orientate or move them to a south facing slope would I think you'd agree be rather costly
New buildings can naturally take advantage of all the architectural and design criteria there is available.:smile:

[quote=typolee;113945]Hi We have a house in Abruzzo and the house is constructed entirely of stone/concrete walls. We have a stufa on the ground floor (kitchen) and central heating running off bottled gas however we simply cannot get the house to get warm. Is this a case of it just being a cold house or should we be able to get the house warm by some more efficient form of heating. Is the central heating insufficient for heating the house and do we need bigger rads/boiler?? If you know of any suggestions or know of a gas plumber who could visit us in Torricella Peligna please forward details.

Many thanks.[/quote]

I do a stay and teach-in on this topic - show farmhouse near Umbertide, Umbria - ... there are rather a lot of techniques to outline here but the bottom line is this: wood heat costs less than half LPG heat so whatever you buy and cram into a Stufa knocks twice as much off your gas bill. You can go far with this idea - almost zero gas use is possible (40 mins a day here, and going for zero on a clients house). Integrating wood + solar is the tricky bit but our panel pump runs 8 hours a day at the moment even when the heatstore is already hot.
If you oversize the stufa you can open up all the doors and let a bit of wafting take the edge off the whole house - subject to layout. Perversely your problems could change to coping with excess heat - timed dumps to heating etc.
There is much chat about underfloor having poor response times. Actually a couple of hours after firing up a cold house you can feel pretty cosy as the ground floors warm your feet up and the oversized stufa warms the air around you even though the walls are still cold.
It is unlikely that there is anything unfixable with your house... usually having the right combination of carefully chosen components does the job.

I was a bit chary about underfloor because I worried it would take too long to have any effect. Especially relevant if you are coming for a short winter visit. But I'm really pleased with mine - and coupled with an Esse stove (a frivolous purchase in the UK which nearly killed us in transportation!) which finally has the correct length of flue, plus hard core curtains on the stairs - it works really well. My next step is to "wire up" the underfloor to solar panels. Maybe I'll come over the mountain for a lesson, sagra

[quote=lotan4850;114311]1. Most new buildings are in residential zones and not in the country side. Where there is a tendancy by planning to build as it was 200 years ago?

2. All secondhand already built suffer from the same dilemma which ever country they find themselves in.

3. You failed to grasp that with new technology and new building materials and old methods such as orientation a building can be kept cool in summer and warm in winter. You don't need to have 2 foot walls to keep cool and you can have large windows in which to see the views we came here for ... or....??

:smile:[/quote]

The only thing I failed to grasp is what you are trying to say.

The new builds I am talking about are in a very rural place and are using a lot of new techniques and materials to provide very comfortable living.

My own house was built a very long time ago but has cleverly optimised the local landscape. The house has open views to east and south , with a nice big hill to protect from the north and west. The garden is planted such that at the height of summer trees shade the southern aspect.

Those old Italians knew what they were doing when they picked this spot to build a house!
:smile:

Reading about heating ; when you've been away by putting on underfloor heating and firing up woodstove just made me wonder about what sort of damp and condensation problems are going to occur when you do this?
A constant warmth is better than huge swings in temperature.This is where passive heating is even more desirable but as was pointed out most truly modern houses are rejected by planners as not being in keeping with local surroundings!

Its a no-win situation and although I dearly love our old stone house if there should ever be a next time I'd like to build e real eco home from adobe with a 'green roof'! I'm not holding my breath about getting that past the planners!

You were lucky nielo however not all are as fortunate as you with the orientation of their house and most will be orientated with no regard to the southern aspect.

40% of all our energy needs are required to keep us warm or alternatively cool in our habitats and commercial properties. Therefore there is an enormous demand – no an essential demand(!) - for better insulated houses even in Italy

.… with the new planning rules, with planning committees looking at rural locations as museum pieces, with geometras and Italian builders incapable of change and not wanting to change, et cetera, et cetera

All leaves very little place for residential architectural developement and better building technology in Italy and leaves heating efficiencies nowhere.

It is everybody’s duty to build in an as efficient manner as possible and that’s not easy in Italy.:smile:

We have an old stone house and no central heating and the first winter there it was plus 4C outside and minus 5C inside!!!

We have a lovely neighbour who we keep in contact with when we are in England and she checks our house regularly when we aren't there. When she knows we are coming over in the winter months, about 10 days beforehand, she opens the windows every day when it is sunny and then closes them in the afternoon before the sun goes down. This makes all the difference. When we arrived on 27th December the house was warm inside because the sun was pouring in.

I am going there next Sunday and she will have opened our windows so that the house is aired and warm.

I cannot begin to tell you what a vast difference this has made.
Maralyn