Domestic Nightime Background Power Consumption

[Vegelen]

What is the background night time power consumption in your house when you are asleep?

A/ Less than 100 watts?

B/ 100-200 Watts?

C/ 200-300 Watts?

D/ 300-400 Watts?

E/ 400-500 Watts?

F/ Greater than 500 Watts?

 

[FB.]

Mostly very little.

The fridge comes on-and-off. There may be a few things left on standby or perhaps phone charging.

On average, an hourly use of 100-200Watts most nights of the year.

However, when there's a frost we often leave a 1.5kW electric oil radiator running at half-thermostat in the lounge because the undersized lounge central-heating radiator takes far too long to get the room back up to temperature when we get up in the morning (drops by about 6'C in the lounge overnight when frosty and the rad has only a 2'C per hour warmup rate; it's a 7000BTU radiator in a room that needs 10000BTU split across two radiators).
I've estimated the heat loss of the lounge at around 1000W per hour if the lounge is at 21'C and outdoors is a mild frost. The 7000BTU rad delivers about 2000W per hour, but all at one end of the room. Half of the rad's output is lost through the walls when it's mildly frosty outside, so you can see the heat up time is very slow without it having assistance and buffering.

We don't like the central heating running at night because the pipes creak and the noise of the boiler firing-up and running tends to disturb our sleep, so we try to minimise use of the boiler overnight. Besides: a 20kW-gas-input non-condensing, old-type boiler heating the lounge all night is likely to be a lot less cost-effective than a 1.5kW oil radiator (only the lounge is under-spec; other rooms heat up adequately).

 

[jason121]

Your house crying out for heat pump, where abouts in cambridge are you

 

[FB.]

Your house crying out for heat pump, where abouts in cambridge are you

I'm just North of Cambridge - a couple of miles up the A10 between Cambridge and Ely.

I was discussing the cold lounge on these forums a few weeks ago - I'm keen to see what is finalised for RHI. I may look at a new heating system in spring 2013 if RHI is favourable.

 

[MicraShed]

Air source heat pump?
Are they really worth it?

 

[jason121]

If using oil or LPG. House has to have good insulation and windows, proberly will need to change Rads to qualify for RHI, buffer tank fitted and new cylinder apart from these small items yes worth it