My beloved does not seem to understand the correlation between a thermostat and open windows.. I don't know how many times, just in the last month, I explained to keep the windows closed when the central heating is on.
At the start of this winter when everyone was out the house I would open all the windows only to notice after an hour the temp in the house would drop by 5C if it was really cold outside and to get this back to normal it would take an hour for the gas heating to regain what it was before, watching my smart meter I was to notice this cost me around 50p for that first hour to then reduce by around half that to maintain the set temp. So now I no longer open the windows instead I was to get a Dehumidifier running this for a couple of hours to clear the condensation from the windows of the two bedrooms at the front of the house costs me 8p, my own bedroom at the rear has its own smaller unit and this runs at 3p and hour, if it happens to be a clear day which often follows a frosty night my solar system will take care of the running costs of both of them. this past December my solar made 35kwh for that month roughly 1kwh per day, in Jan is was to double that, come May this will give as much as 600kwh for the month. There is a spare room in which I dry the clothes in winter this also has a Dehumidifier in there it takes around 6hrs to dry a double load with this costing 24p for this time, according to the web site of Currys one load in a tumble dryer costs £1.54 to run? I use the Meaco brand of Dehumidifiers these are really good and recommended by Which.
More energy saving tips ! Thing I don't like about Dehumidifiers is you end up carrying buckets of water around to empty them all the time - have you looked at putting a whole house system in ?
Well John that is a bit of an exaggeration to suggest I am carrying buckets of water around? I have 3 of these units all with 2.5ltr tanks, the one in the clothes drying room this is always emptied as soon as a washing is hung there, most time it is only half filled, the one in the hall is perhaps emptied once a week and the same for the one in my bedroom, usually these two switch off when the humidity gets down to an acceptable level which I can set. I could never see the need for a system that would cover the whole house? using a good modern extractor hood in the kitchen this displaces a lot of air around 600ltrs an hour 30yrs ago most of these were just a joke and only a cosmetic addition to any kitchen only extracting around 200ltrs an hour into a 4inch outlet pipe, modern ones with high displacements require 6inch outlets.
Probably is as I am thinking of when I had something similar - crystal thing - that used to absorb water - bloody useless - think I upgraded but probably got something cheap... I was just wondering if you'd looked into it... like you say - not needed - doesn't an aircon work like a dehumidifier ... ?
Yes you are correct AC does dry out the air, my car uses it automatically when I switch on the demister on a cold morning, having a solar system at my house, during the coldest months with the short days it is of little use, however during December it will make around 1kwh a day this is enough to run all three of these low wattage Dehumidifiers for a couple of hours, now we are into the middle to end of February it produces around half the house requirements in a few weeks time I expect it will produce enough to supply all of my daily requirements.
