controling heaters
Michael Weaver
this question apart from maybe Insight Radio's Technology person maybe but
does anyone have any ideas for controling heaters?
I ask because at the moment my heaters are bloody awful for a Blind person
to use. either that or I haven't found an effective way of controling them
and even mum and dad who are sighted say my heaters are crap.
All of the heaters apart from part of one in the livingroom and Bathroom are
slow to heat up and cool down.
In my livingroom of the flat I rent, I can put on a fan heater which only
works if the temperature is set high and the Bathroom one will heat up and
cool down in a few minutes but my hallway heater, my kitchen heater, the
heater in my bedroom and unless I use the fan heater in the Livingroom, all
of them are storage heaters which means they heat up at night and throw the
heat out during the day so you have to be a bloody weather Forecaster and
precdict whether the heaters need to be on or off.
I don't mind heat normally but if for example I am ill and feel under the
weather to the point where I am too hot I can't just turn the heaters off
and expect to get the heat down to an acceptable temperature. Also the knobs
apart from the on and off switches on the heaters are too small to be able
to label the input and output as the heaters work on a system where you have
an input and output so the input I presume stores the heat and the output
throws it out during the day after heat has been stored overnight. I talked
about it with dad and mentioned the Talking Timestat although I have never
seen this unit but he seemed to think it wouldn't be able to thermastat
these type of heating systems and I also assume it would need some kind of
plug near by to be able to plug it in anyway plus I would also need a unit
in each room.
Does anyone have any ideas?
I might be moving at some point anyway so I might end up with a different
heating system eventually anyway but it seems like a lot of houses seem to
have these stupid units in them.
Mum asnd dad had one at their previous house when I was little and they had
it changed but if you are in a rented place, you may be stuck with what you
have.
I know the one thing I did have changed was the electricity meter which was
a token meter which was impossible to operate as the tokens don't have any
distuinguishing marks or cut outs to indicate which way they went in and it
was a good job I changed to direct payments for electricity as they closed
the local post office. The meter is an outside meter so changing that was
probably easier than changing the inside heaters.
Does anyone have any advice for controling these heaters while I live where
I am because at the moment I am having to keep most of them off regardless
of whether or not it is cold or hot weather as the only heater I have any
control with is the livingroom which does have a booster fan heater which
when turned on switches on and off every few minutes.
Tiddy Ogg
<michael...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>I know this isn't strictly an IT question and I am not sure where to post
I'm afraid storage heaters are just the inflexible beasts you have
found them to be, and there's not much you can do about it.
Hope you feel better for the rant, though, and all I can suggest is
that you indeed keep a close watch of the weather forecasts, or lower
the settings to just give a background heat, using some other source
as top up.
Can't you even fit some "bump ons" as labelling devices?
Brian Gaff
fitted as they do not need hot water plumbing all over the place, just a
circuit to the meter.
You are correct in saying that you cannot use any external device to help
with control of the output. All you in effect have is a controllable flap or
louver inside the lagged box the heated bricks are in.
The input control is just a simple thermostat in the bricks and this
dictates the temperature they are heated to over night when the electricity
is cheaper.
Some, but not all, have an over ride switch but mostly they are only able to
draw current overnight, controlled by a switch on the circuit supplying the
heaters.
In my case, yes, you do need a source of emergency heat should the weather
get cold suddenly. The knobs on mine both have slots in them so they can be
operated by the end of a yale key or coin. If you listen you cam hear the
thermostat click as you turn the input knob, so you can, after a while get
the measure of this one.
In the case you say, where you are getting too much heat though, it is
pretty obvious either the output know is not fully closed or the input is
set too high.
I have noted that with age the output knobs can get very stiff as the
mechanism seems to lose its grease and its only some form of cam moving the
louvers.
The fan heater is the solution I use, but of course other heaters are
available.
Brian
--
Brian Gaff - bri...@blueyonder.co.uk
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Brian Gaff
for free, they have round plastic knobs recessed in a rectangular hole with
not much room for bump ons.
As I say, they can be more or less sorted with the slot they have in them.
The output is often stiff.
In my view, better lagging on the bricks could make these devices a whole
lot more efficient. The design looks like it was invented in the 1950s to
me!
Brian
--
Brian Gaff - bri...@blueyonder.co.uk
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"Tiddy Ogg" <tidd...@madasasheep.com> wrote in message
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