Wall heaters

@Norman,

"I trust my disagreement will not produce another round of infantile insults.

It really is time you grew up and became an adult."

One could say the same about you!

I compared living in a house on the CDS during summer to living in a greenhouse in summer, based purely on the heat of the summer here.

And it is you that have no idea what you are talking about, I am afraid. Please read below, then maybe you will understand what we are talking about.

If a building has insulation, then any heat inside the building is better retained. Thus the older buildings here on the CDS were built without insulation, allowing the property to be cooler at night, over the long, very hot summers.

You just don't seem to understand that these older dwellings here on the CDS were built for the Spanish as 'Summer Houses' (holiday homes)and not designed to be permanent residences.

Over the last decade, there has been an influx of Northern Europeans purchasing property on the CDS as holiday homes, and some of them cannot grasp the simple premise behind why they were built with little or no insulation. It is, as I said, to allow cooling over night, however during the winter they become very cold, because of the lack of insulation.

As I said, they were never built with permanent residence in mind!

Now then, some of these Northern Europeans who purchased a 'summer house' as a holiday home, have decided to use it as a permanent residence, and as a result they require heating during the winter... umm! Not unlike properties in the UK, which need heating during the long, very cold winters!

Then you have Northern Europeans, such as myself, that have purchased what you might call a hybrid property built with permanent residence in mind, in that it's basic design is that of a 'summer house' in order to help keep it cool during the long, hot summers, however have added insulation in order to help keep it warm during the cooler winters!

You are trying to compare UK properties built with permanent residence in mind, with their Loft and Cavity Wall Insulation and Central Heating Systems designed to keep them warm during the winter,  with Spanish properties built as holiday homes with little or no added insulation or heating systems but with Air Conditioning Systems, designed to keep them cooler during the summer!

"the point of course is that the general build quality in Spain is very bad and needs to be improved."
 

Build quality doesn't enter into this equation!

Dear Techno,

thank you again for the lack of insult.

However I am afraid I cannot help you further with your complete misunderstanding of insulation physics.

Perhaps if I suggested that such insulation itself has no idea where in the world it is located, whether at the equator or the poles, its characteristics and function does not change.

Does that assist?

Regards

Norman

A friend once told me how her kids started a fight over a cerial box. One did not like how the light reflected of the box which was standing between the kids on the table and moved it. This provoked the other guy to move it back. After shuffling the box to and fro a couple of times a big fight followed.

 Just reading through this thread and was grateful for the advice to put foil behind the wall mounted panel heaters.

We found it extremely cold over the last Christmas visit and it was our first winter with these low energy heaters.

So I was a bit disappointed with the heat output.

I am going to give the foil a try this visit.

Thanks for the tip! 

@Norman,

This is what I said on my last post:

"If a building has insulation, then any heat inside the building is better retained. Thus the older buildings here on the CDS were built without insulation, allowing the property to be cooler at night, over the long, very hot summers."

Taken from the Energy Saving Trust website:

"Heat will always flow from a warm area to a cold one. In winter, the colder it is outside, the faster heat from your home will escape into the surrounding air.

As you can see Norman. insulation doesn't keep the cold out, it helps to retain the heat inside the building.

Therefore, in Spain insulation on was not put into the older 'summer houses' (what we call holiday homes) helping the heat from the day to escape at night!

However, you were correct in suggesting

"that such insulation itself has no idea where in the world it is located, whether at the equator or the poles, its characteristics and function does not change."

It doesn't know where it is, and it does the same job - in keeping heat in!

The problem with most of these low wattage heaters is that individual units, although they are cheap to buy, are not sufficent to heat an average room and at best they are good to take the chill off a bathroom

Here is a good site into which you can put in the room size, hight, windows and wall type and it will calculate the size of heater that you require to comfortable heat the room, for example for my own lounge I need just over 3kw  http://www.plumbnation.co.uk/heating-calculator.php

Typically these wall panels are 250w or 500w so I would need 6 to match the power of one of the better class A electric wall heaters which will actually use less electricity, and have a build in thermostat and sophiscated timer, and cost less compared to buying 6 wall panels which are only low energy because they are low wattage and output

Fpegman thank you very much for that info, will have a look in February.

Pat 

Dear All,

whether you buy a larger heater or try adding insulation and reflection behind heater positions is a matter of economics and appearance.

but if your property has good insulation it will reduce the passage of heat in both directions and save you energy costs summer and winter, night and day.

from my limited knowledge of CDS where I have shivered in winter and sweated in summer I know that it is not unique in the world.

The people letting to us were acutely conscous of the running costs of the air conditioning.

The global warming lobby are also involved and our low energy light bulbs are currently heavily subsidised here.

I even received a free gizmo in the post the other day to fit on my shower outlet pipe that is supposed to save £30 per year.

I have not yet fathomed out how it is supposed to work if not by flow reduction.

I hope that helps Techno's continuing confusion.

Regards

Norman