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Syndicate
Oct
23
| Ask The Expert: Home Heating Dilemma |
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| Tuesday, 23 October 2007 | |
Dear NNN,
This is a little complicated but it's been bothering me for a while. I live in a 40-year-old suburban home. It has the original windows, which I won't be able to change soon. I also have the usual New England oil-fired hot-water heating system. The house has central unheated halls on each level. Each room has windows and radiators on the outside walls. There is one thermostat in the dining room.
Does it make any difference in energy efficiency if I leave the room doors opened or closed? Closed doors reduce the window and wall heat loss, but also cuts off the heat from the radiators. Open doors do the opposite. What do you think?
Sincerely,
Olivia Obezky
Click on "Read more" for the response from alt-energy expert Karina Lutz, director of development and advocacy for People's Power & Light.
Dear Olivia,
Good question! It can get tricky to adjust individual radiators, but it sometimes can be done. Depending on the radiator, there may be a valve, usually about halfway up one side of the radiator. These valves can be adjusted, so that the pressure has to build more before the steam comes into one radiator relative to the other radiators in the home. Most of the older and cheaper valves don’t work well, but some do, and some are even thermostatic. [In hot water (also known as hydronic) systems, radiators or baseboard heaters sometimes are adjustable too.] If your radiators are not adjustable or if the valves don’t work, you can check with a plumber or heating contractor to see if the valves can be updated.
Turning radiators off at the base (the big round knob near the floor) is more tricky, too. Don’t do it while the system is warm, or it can trap water in the pipes (which causes clanging) or unbalance your system. When you do turn it, make sure you turn it all the way off or all the way on for the same reason.
You may not want to play with your radiators if you’re not willing to call the heating contractor to bleed the air out of your system—usually after a night of banging pipes. A less risky option is to ask your service contractor to adjust your radiators for the season when they come to clean and tune up your boiler and inspect and/or clean the flue—things that for most heating systems should be done annually anyway. Right about now, before the heating season begins.
One more note of caution: don’t let closed rooms get too cold if their walls contain pipes that might freeze, or if moisture condensation could be a problem in the outer walls.
If you do want to try it, to save energy in an unused room, here’s how. Turn the radiator valve down or turn the radiator off and close the door. If this unused area includes the dining room where your thermostat is, you can put a thermometer in the area you want to keep warm. Then adjust the thermostat—subtracting the difference between the thermometer and the dining room temperature. It can take a bit of experimenting to find the balance where you are comfortable in each room you use. And with many systems, some radiators get the steam first and other rooms may be colder than you want already, so it’s not just a matter of setting the valves according to the thermostats or dials.
The cheap and dirty way is what my dad resorted too after giving up on the radiator controls. Throw blankets over radiators in unused rooms. This slows the heat transfer, though it’s not necessarily as efficient as slowing the steam into the pipes coming to that radiator. But it does avoid the risk of unbalancing the system and trapping air in the pipes. [Be sure your blankets can absorb this much heat safely and are not flammable.] And if you do it in the morning in bedrooms, you can take off the warm blankets and put them on your bed when it’s time to climb in. Toasty!
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