Our space-heating appliances are not the only sources of heat within our homes. Additionally, there are ways to keep heat inside the home for longer, like EPS insulation for example. It is adaptable as it can be cut to any shapes and sizes required, and it does make a difference, not just in the long run. With that being said, what are the sources of heat you will be attempting to keep within?
Other sources of heat are:
- Lights
- Cookers
- Hot water
- Refrigerators
- Colour televisions
- Washing machines
- Dishwashers
- Clothes dryers
The heat from all these sources should be borne in mind when considering our overall heating requirements. If you hire reputable home insulation contractors like these great solid wall insulation installers, all this heat can be conserved and these additional sources then begin to provide a larger contribution to heating your home. Kitchens for instance often hardly require any additional heating. However, the list above does not include two very important sources of heat:
- Light and heat from the sun
- Heat from our bodies
What is the relationship between the heat we produce in our bodies and the thermal environment within our homes? The main purpose of having to purchase a heater for your home is to keep your body warm, especially during winter, but you should inspect it before the cold weather comes in so you aren’t getting a heater repair mid winter. A secondary purpose is to keep our homes dry to preserve materials, but this could be done more efficiently by other means. What is not generally appreciated is that heating our environment does not heat our bodies; it only slows the rate of heat loss. The heat generated by the human body has to be dissipated to keep its temperature from rising unacceptably. In other words, to remain comfortable we require surroundings that are cooler than our bodies. To a large extent we are the source of our own warmth: we have ways of * increasing the heat we generate within ourselves through exertion, as well as ways of insulating ourselves to remain at a comfortable temperature by wearing clothes.
From the above we can see how we keep ourselves warm and the way we use clothes to moderate the effects of both surrounding temperature and exertion. We do the same at night when we put more insulation on our beds when we are cold. If we are looking for ways of housing ourselves ecologically, it is these more natural ways of keeping warm that we must return to. It is then also possible to carry out a thermal imaging survey with services like https://www.scantherm.co.uk/, that will find where your home is losing heat which then allows you to get that fixed. So for older buildings this can be invaluable in getting that home better insulated, so if you live somewhere like that then you should definitely book a thermal imaging survey right now.
The importance of these factors becomes apparent when we realise that for every degree rise (°C) in temperature that we turn the thermostat up, we increase the fuel burned by approximately 10 %, resulting in increased CO: emissions.
So the message is one we knew already: we can save considerable amounts of heat by wearing more clothes and sitting around less. When we are in bed we certainly don’t require any heating, as it is much more effective to buy a good duvet. If we do require to sit and work for longer periods, we need to use the room that stays warmest or is the easiest to heat.
