porridge,
Fascinated to hear about your experiences especially in the light of the large floor to ceiling patio doors I have seen employed in some houses and extensions.
Am I correct in assuming that you have a separate pair of rooms for reception;
- the living room that was heated with the bedroom with the Lotus stove, and
- the open plan kitchen/living/dining room that was heated by the M-Design?
And that only the smaller living room was heated regularly?
Two further questions, just to tie things down a little;
- does the open plan kitchen living dining get any direct sunlight especially south light?
- do the smaller living space and bedroom get any direct sunlight especially south light?
Making certain assumptions, I would venture to suggest the following scenario may arise.
Even a well-insulated house will lose heat over time.
Unless the interiors are heated by solar gain during the day [limited though that may be in the winter time, it still counts], they will gradually lose their heat.
Similarly, insulation only helps retain heat, it doesn't generate it per se, so with no heating internally and even with some solar gain, if the total source of heat isn't sufficient to counter the heat lost at night and when its extremely cold, the building will get cold.
The fabric of the building itself will lose heat until the walls and even the insulation in the walls will eventually grow cold.
Heat transfer from the rooms that are heated will go some way to reducing this phenomenon, but many people building today seem to be using Rockwool and other insulants to sound-proof their internal walls.
This, together with tight-fitting internal doors and insualted first floors, will keep heat clsoe to the source and will tend not to disperse and heat the whole house.
The principle was first mooted in the 1997 Building Regulations with their relatively low interest in internal insualtion between spaces, which treated the house as an entity with separate zones for sleeping and living with only the living zones getting heated during the day.
While the bedrooms being used were heated, others could grow cold and attract damp and fungal growth, with likelihood of increased risk of pipes freezing during cold weather if the water tank was over one of those.
It gradually became apparent to some that allowing the rooms to get cold in very cold weather was counter productive to the health of the occupants if conditions caused condensation leading to damp and fungal spores to proliferate.
Everything has become magnified in the later regulations, with internal insulation meaning that heat transfer is further minimised while air-tightness can mean a higher incidence of air borne water vapour.
Judging from questions and accounts of issues arising both there and on boards.ie it seems that people are not being well informed as to the requirement to keep a certain minimum level of heat to avoid condensation/damp and/or long heat-up times.
Two log burning stoves may find it hard going to heat up a modern home if there is no background level of heating from radiators and/or underfloor heating to keep the "unheated" spaces at a certain minimum level at all times.
The current cold winters are not typical of Ireland over the past 50 years or so in my experience and hopefull will disappear with the sunspots peaking after 2013 - but thats still two years away!
So much for global warming.
ONQ.
[broken link removed]
All advice on AAM is remote from the situation and cannot be relied upon as a defence or support - in and of itself - should legal action be taken.
Competent legal and building professionals should be asked to advise in Real Life with rights to inspect and issue reports on the matters at hand.