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An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

bbc.com

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Re: An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

#161

Post by b112 »

cenamus wrote: post #159
b112 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows last hundreds of years because glass lasts hundreds of years. Modern windows don't last very long, because the seals leak, and the argon gas or whatever leaks out. The glass is still good, but the insulative quality is gone. The parent poster didn't realize that if you don't have double pane windows, you have single pane windows, which have no gas to leak.

Even if it's mostly air it insulates quite a bit better than single pane windows. Of course worse than with the original gas filling, as the windows are optimized for maximum distance between the glass panes without having the inner gas start to "circulate" - which starts to happen at a smaller distance for air than for the noble gasses.

Yes, for sure. My house is 65 years old, and all the windows have leaked.

But my point was that windows, the glass part, lasts centuries, if not longer. Not the mere decades cited upstream.

Re: An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

#162

Post by maccard »

sandworm101 wrote: post #116
maccard wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An open fire is not a particularly warm thing to have unless you’re directly in front of it. Most of the heat goes straight up the flue, and it uses an enormous amount of air to keep burning - it will pull huge volumes from rvertwhere it can. This is why these old buildings didn’t suffer from damp issues - the open fires burning were ventilating them.

If it has a flue or chimney, it isnt really an open fire. Look at an ancient long house, or farmer's thatched cottage from say 400 years ago. They had a fire on a stone circle on the floor in the middle of the room, and a high roof sometimes with a hole but often not. It was smoky, but kept everyone warm.

Sorry, it’s not a topic I know an awful lot about. I was talking about an exposed hearth with a chimney like in the article, as opposed to a cast iron unit that recirculates the air like a stove

Re: An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

#163

Post by maccard »

bluGill wrote: post #138
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #89

The castles and mansions were relatively modern. Most people didn't have "good" home design, they had older, practical architecture. Their homes had thin walls, were drafty, and had no chimneys; there was a hole in the roof where the smoke from your fire would go, so your attic was filled with smoke (where you'd smoke meats for winter). You're better served by looking to 19th century lower and middle class architectu…

Modern insulation with hvac is better yet. You need hvac to bring air in as a modern house should be air tight. Not much heat or ac should be needed.

I’m inclined to agree, even in cold places. AC is remarkably efficient, especially when you reverse it (and get a heat pump).

Re: An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

#164

Post by maccard »

loeg wrote: post #133
dmd wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build, no. But here in New England (Boston suburbs) even double-pane windows are still quite rare, because most houses are ~100 years old or more.

Windows have a lifetime of only 15-30 years, though. If you have to replace them anyway, you might as well get double-pane (even if the rest of the house isn't well insulated).

I live in the UK and nobody is replacing windows every 15 years. 30 _maybe_

Re: An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

#165

Post by maccard »

dmd wrote: post #132
teiferer wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, nobody builds a house without modern insulation (rock wool etc) and 3-pane windows. It wouldn't be legal either.

Build, no. But here in New England (Boston suburbs) even double-pane windows are still quite rare, because most houses are ~100 years old or more.

I live in Edinburgh, and 100 year old buildings are the newest ones in the city. A good chunk of the city is what we call a “conservation area” - so you can’t modify the aesthetic of the building (windows included), but the vast vast vast majority of people outside that space have double glazed windows I’d wager.

Re: An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

#166

Post by bhickey »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #158

I was speaking with an architect a few months ago and dismayed to learn that they no longer bother designing for thermal management (relying on air-conditioning alone). They are fully focused on the aesthetic "integration" of the structure in the landscape. (I use quotes for the word "integration" because it implies a harmonious coalescing across domains, including temperature.) Their prior work beautifully incorpora…

> passive thermal management

I lived in an almost passive house for about a year. When the HVAC system stopped working* in July, I didn't notice until the middle of November.

* Air handler was running, compressor was off.

Re: An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

#167

Post by jaccola »

loeg wrote: post #133
dmd wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build, no. But here in New England (Boston suburbs) even double-pane windows are still quite rare, because most houses are ~100 years old or more.

Windows have a lifetime of only 15-30 years, though. If you have to replace them anyway, you might as well get double-pane (even if the rest of the house isn't well insulated).

I think this is the stated lifetime of insulated windows. But obviously single glazed windows were never insulated in the first place so there is no practical lifetime on them...

In my house and on my road a lot of the glass is 150+ years old.

Re: An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

#168

Post by rcxdude »

onion2k wrote: post #152
karim79 wrote: post #147

This just reminds me of a random discussion I had with a very close German friend. He pointed out that Tado (who do smart radiator valves) noted from a study, which drew from their data, that the UK sucks at insulation, losing heat up to three times faster than other European neighbours[0]. [0] https://www.tado.com/en-gb/press/uk-homes-losing-heat-up-to-... Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated nor am I a customer of Tado.…

I wonder if that correlates with the average age of houses. The UK has a lot of buildings that are well over 100 years old that can only be insulated by stuffing cavity walls full of an insulating material. My house is 126 years old, and despite my best efforts it's still terrible.

I would suspect so, but a lot of the stock since then isn't that much better. There was a lot of building up to the 60s but they weren't exactly well regarded for quality. And new builds have a bad reputation now for similar reasons, as even though the minimum standards have risen they're still not particularly great (and especially not a very good tradeoff between quality and cost).

Re: An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

#169

Post by megaman821 »

vl wrote: post #9
vosper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive house thinking comes from an era of peak oil concerns, no solar, and no heat pumps. None of those conditions holds anymore. Further, passive houses are notorious for overheating and because they’re so airtight they require expensive mechanical ventilation and make-up air systems unless you want indoor air pollution problems. People building houses today are much better served by spending their money on solar…

But any modern house is too airtight and essentially requires ERV. Which brings us to next interesting problem - you would think that ERV should be built-in into modern cooling/heating systems, but it’s no the case.

Also, they usually hook up the interior air intakes to bathrooms so smells and extra humidity have a constant flow out of your house.

Re: An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm

#170

Post by pvtmert »

I envision even simpler and more practical thing, under-the-floor heating with addition of disposal water.

Me and my wife are taking shower daily, hers being hotter than mine (apparently that's common difference between female & male).

Every time, I am thinking that so much heat is going down the drain as waste, why not circulate this under the bathroom floor until it cools down.

Since we have a tub, I usually close the drain, sit/stand on a bench above the tub, rinse thoroughly at the end, keeping hot water afloat for next 20 minutes.

Since tub itself absorbs the heat, even after I open the drain and let go all the water, tub itself stays warmy for an hour or so.

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