Wot no heating??

When will the Spanish build houses with insulation? Great big concrete blocks with nothing. We had nothing in the way of heating in ours so had central heating installed. I am hopeful I won't have to turn it on untill November as gas bills are massive compared to the UK due to the lack of insulation. People have already turned the heating on in the UK though.

Bought first gas bottle yesterday

Now 18€ was 15€ last winter - I know the IVA has increased but that's a big rise.

  Hold out there mi amigo! Prices dropped October 1.

v v v murcia today com October 1 article. Price of gas dropped by 4.6 percent!!! Wow! Sorry cannot post link.

Juan

K5, thats an good question. Technically, new buildings currently under const. should be designed to meet EU regulations regarding energy efficiency. Given the general abuse of planning regulations on the costal areas though, I doubt enforcement is very vigourous, so I for one am not holding my breath on this.

With homes intended for foreign buyers, there is no financial incentive either - a lot of the places aren't used year round, and on top of it foreign buyers often assume the weather is always warm, so don't tend to actively seek out well insulated buildings - meaning the builder who leaves it out can undercut the one who does a proper job and still get business.

 Maybe wrong here but surely insulation should help to keep out the heat in the summer as well as help to keep out the cold in the winter?

This is yet another controversial subject!  The unsuspecting person dips their toe in, not realising they could drown.  We were told when we moved to Spain that winter lasted from December to January.  In fact, when we rented a country house (less than an hour inland from the Costa Tropical (previously known as the Costa del Viento, before being rebranded for tourism) by November it turned freezing and didn't get better while we were there (the owners rented it to us for six months from October to March, so that they could enjoy it for the summer).  We couldn't get the hot water to work after 3pm each day and in any case wouldn't want a bath after 4pm when the sun went down and the chill descended, as the bathrooms were freezing.  We later found out the reason the boiler wouldn't work was that it was minus 0 in the kitchen and that made it stop working. 

Despite paying a lot of money to rent this three bed, two bath country house with land, we ended up sleeping on the couch next to the wood burner which was a cheap make and useless - but the room was marginally better than  the icebox of a bedroom.  Friends who came to stay had the brainwave of bringing an electric blanket.  I pooh-poohed it at the time and it took years before we got around to getting one, but when we did it revolutionised things.  Like another poster said, just switch it on a bit before getting into bed and it's warm as toast, with the benefit of the cold air around your face.  Of course, this was in our own house which we had built with lovely thick walls.

The Spanish way where we have our house is mostly to use a brasero and be stuck permanently around the table with the blanket drawn up over your lap.  Your bottom half is boiling and might even burn, and your top half is freezing and you have to stay still all day as you remain glued to the telly, watching the bull-fighting, the South American soaps, the football and  Se Llama Copla. (and sometimes you forget to switch the brasero off and your house burns down)  We, of course, have a marvellous and very expensive Scandinavian wood-burner which initially heats up the one room and then gets really hot, so we open doors and the heat spreads downstairs.  Then, later, off to the heated bed.  I think that if the walls of the rental that the OP chooses are thick and there is a high quality burner and they bring an electric blanket, they should be sorted.  There is the occasional mild winter, but there are also very cold ones.  Daytimes are usually great as many have pointed out, but nights can be sub-zero in many places.

I live in a small village in granada and we have a metal hand made fire that burns the residue from the olives after they have been processed. It is a relatively new idea and the fires are made locally. The stuff (not sure how to spell the name of the fuel, but it sounds like gueso) is now sold in sacks at 6 euros a sack, and is only available during the olive picking season. It is very economical and extremely warm, however I imagine this is only convenient for people who live in the areas surrounded by thousands of Olives groves. 

Jerry - Yep. Insulation simply prevents heat trasnfer between inside and outside, in most cases regardless of direction (in to out, or out to in). But from what I've seen in Spain, it seems a suprising number of people don't have A/C, so bad insulation in summer doesn't cost anything - it just makes your flat bloody hot. Flat roof designs exacerbate it too. A pointed roof basically traps heat coming in through the roof in the loft to some degree, sparing the rooms underneath. Of course, homes aimed at foreigners tend not to have this as northerners like the idea of having solariums. Whilst I actually am a bad fan of Solariums, they do heat the interior.

 I agree illeg...etc but I was thinking in the summer of the insulation assisting to keep the heat out of the house thereby reducing the air conditioning costs.

Dunno why someone said Log Burners were expensive to run. So far this winter we have used approx 1 ton of almond which was €100 delivered to the house. I may need a few hundered kilos more but for the heat it chucks out it's well worth it.

We built our own house, and in fact four more which we sold. They were all built with cavity walls complete with cavity wall insulation, they have klimalite glass or as it's known in the UK K Glass. We fitted a good log burner and keep it running permanently when its cold. Our house is not cold!

It is true a well insulated house will keep out the heat in the summer and keep out the cold in the winter.

I fit air conditioning for a living, I fit almost as many units in the winter for heating as I do in the summer for cooling. It is a very efficient way of heating a room on a short term basis, for long term heating it is not the cheapest. To warm up most houses takes three days. When I say heat up the house, I'm not talking about making you feel warm, I'm talking about the fabric of the building, the walls and floors etc. Once your home is warm kepping it warm is easier.

Wine helps too!!!

Have to agree with you Chris- my biggest problem is insulation - it's non -existant here. I have Climalit glass but the walls are single sking and the place is very chilly in the winter and roasting in the summer.

 I do find it strange that people who buy or rent on mailand Spain expect it to be warm all year round. It doesn't take a lot of investigation to know that this is far from true. Maybe it's because we are so used to carpets, insulation and central heating that we feel it to be so much colder than it would feel in the UK, or people look at the average temperature charts and not the lowest temperature data. 

I am coming out to Spain for 3 weeks in March and am expecting it to be cold. Warmer than Glasgow hopefully but not summer holiday weather that's for sure. I'm really hoping the villa has heated bathrooms!

people dont expect it to be cold

they do think spain is warm all year round and never even consider that it gets below freezing.

but

the first few years i was never cold in the winter and laughed at the spanish pikeys in thier bubble jackets.

now i have been here many years and got spanisified the place is freezing for many months.

but as i am sat in my house shaking like leaf i see the tourists walk past in shorts and tshirts.

I saw some people swiming in the Mar Menor last week.

For us the best mode of heating a house is the under floor type , we've had it installed into bathrooms etc in the UK when we built extensions and it makes an amazing difference - you get the heat where you want it.

But there appears to be a lack of expertise in Spain where we are pondering more meaningful heating for our house in Murcia.  Can anyone please recommend a contractor who has successfully installed underfloor heating to an existing house.  We are thinking about installing a gas boiler to power it, rather than electric, but any comment and advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

We have done a few in Spain, but it is a fairly major project. If you want more info PM me. Underfloor heating is superb but as an after fit it is a lot of work

Chris in Spain-how I wish our developer had used someone with your expertise, when he started building this urbanisation!

 I had underfloor heating on my wish list when I was looking at properties until I realised that it is generally only installed in very expensive villas. It is the best heating system to have with tiled floors so I don't understand why it is so rare in Spain. I don't relish buying something within our budget and having to rip up all the floors to install it, at huge cost.

We fitted it for a friend of mine here in Spain while he was building his house, which was luckily just down the road from ours, and it is superb, and easy when fitting during the build. As a retro fit is can be a lot of work and it's down to the individual as to how much they want it.