Heating a large period house

[ElectronicFur]

We are very excited to soon be moving into our new old house.

Only about 30% of this currently has central heating by gas combi boiler. Luckily we're moving in the summer! The kitchen is heated by oil aga. The remainder is unheated by current owners apart from the occasional use of fireplaces.

We will first look at draught-proofing as much as possible. Some of the sash windows are very draughty. As it's Grade 2 listed, we will look into secondary glazing or just draughtproofing the existing sashes. Insulation is something else we'll look at, but I think the options there will be limited.

The house floorplan is about 600m2. Apart from the kitchen, which has quarry tiles, the remainder of the house is wood floorboards or parquet. So underfloor heating is not an option.

Due to the room sizes, cast iron radiators would seem a much a better option than steel or aluminium. Although one potential downside is that they are slow to heat the room. This is could be more of a downside than usual as I intend to use a smart home automation system controlling smart thermostats in each room, to adjust the individual room temperatures to suit us, and ensure rooms we aren't using at particular periods of the day are heated to a lower temperature. But I can probably just take the slower adjustment into account when configuring the system.

I have read through both the Old House Handbook, and the Old House Eco Handbook. The latter was not as useful as I'd hoped. And I'm no clearer to what the best option is to heat the remainder of the house, whether financially, practically or ecologically. Air and ground source heating systems seem to not make much sense for old draughty houses from what I've read. So from what I can see that leaves me with gas, wood, or pellet boiler options in addition to the existing gas boiler. I have no idea whether solar thermal or PV are an option with it being a listed building.

The Aga we are unsure about. Farmer friends who have one swear by them, but at first looks they don't seem too economical. Although with the lower oil price currently, less so than before.

As we have young children safety is another consideration when it comes to things like wood burners.

Would love to hear some input or hear how others have tackled this.

 

[Lostgardensof]

Hello. I am pretty new to this too so possibly won't be much help. I would be slightly cautious about blocking all the draughts as old houses don't have damp proof courses and need flow of air through the house to get rid of moisture. However, we are getting our sash windows refurbished and having ventrolla brushes installed to minimise draughts. We have also maxed out on loft insulation. Hoping that this plus thick curtains will help keep us warm. We have gone for modern steel radiators where they can be hidden and upstairs and hoping to get a few cast iron ones downstairs. Woodburner in one room and open fireplace in the other. We moved in in Jan with no heating including fireplaces and as long as you can keep one living area warm you should be fine. We have young kids too and they are loving it. Good luck.

 

[MikeG]

With the sort of heat load you are going to be needing, pellet boilers become a whole lot more economic. Not only that, but there are subsidies available which offset the capital costs (best to check on the latest situation).

 

[livias]

I have lived in a poorly insulated house with large rooms which were heated by radiators with a powered fan above. Mostly the radiators did the radiator thing but if a room needed bringing up to heat quickly then turning on the fan did it a treat. Mind you the fanned rediators were 1970s specials. Not sure if they all are or whether that would suit your decor :mrgreen:

 

[fernicarry]

Also have an Oil Aga to heat the kitchen in the winter but we retro-fitted UFH which is just fine for the other 3 seasons. We used to run the Aga year round mainly because that was all that heated the hot water at the time we moved in but now we're down to around 4 months of the year. It uses about 60l a week, so less than your average family car. We've had prices as low as 35p/l and as high as 65p so costs can vary enormously from one year to the next. Personally I would never give it up, its lovely in the winter and it keeps the back of the house nice and dry. It will also keep going quite happily without electricity which appeals to the survivalist in me. Only downside is its getting harder to find someone to look after it, my usual man having gone over to the dark side of renewables, but its all very low tech so I've learned to do a lot of it myself.

The rest of our house is central heating with most of the heat from gas. Most rooms have their own stats to control heat according to occupation. I work from home so I want the bedroom I use as a study heated on weekdays without heating all the other upstairs rooms. The proto-adults come and go as they please so their rooms can be put on holiday when they aren't in residence. You could achieve the same by running around twiddling the TRV's but this way I can see it all on a web page which is far more satisfying... One thing I'd like to be able to do is prioritise rooms so that if the heat input doesn't keep up with demand I can decide what to sacrifice.

We have cast iron rads in the living/dining area and true they are slower than steel panel rads to respond but the building as a whole is even slower to respond so don't expect to get away with wild temperature swings during the day. Best you can hope for is a few degrees variation. In winter we go 16' overnight, 18' during the day then 20' in the evening. If its very cold I may tick the stat up sometime in the afternoon to give it a bit of a head start so that it has a chance to hit 20 before we go to bed! Once up to temp the stat switches on 0.5 degree intervals so the slow response from the cast iron rads matches that quite well, they're just starting to get cool when the stat switches on again.

Make the radiators as big as you possibly can. Since you will have zones the usual rules on sizing and balancing go out the window, you want each zone to heat up as fast as it possibly can. Conventional wisdom is to slow everything down to match the slowest rooms so that all rooms get to their set point at the same time and then the hall stat clicks off. Make sure whoever does this for you understands the difference, most heating 'engineers' won't get it.

We have a wood burner that gets used when outside temps head towards zero, and that was quite a lot this past winter. Its the single best thing I've done to the comfort of the house. It also has a back boiler so contributes to heating the rest of the house. The controls for this could use a bit more refinement though so that the gas boiler gives way to the wood burner when needed. Get a stove with an external air supply so that you're not creating more drafts into the room. We have a thermal store to combine heat sources so that might something to look at, and pretty much mandatory if you go with a biomass boiler. Gives you a bit of redundancy too in case of the inevitable gas boiler break downs.

Our windows were previously draught-proofed by Ventrolla. It works well enough that I'm not really too fussed about secondary glazing although undoubtedly that would help. Draught-proofing first then insulation. Its quite a straightforward DIY job so I wouldn't go to the expense of a company like Ventrolla. They used quite unsightly plastic brush carriers on ours bodged in place with gallons of caulking so that alone is a good enough reason to avoid. I've redone a couple of windows with wooden beads (there are a few regulars on here who are very good at this stuff and can talk you through it) and its *much* nicer to look at.

600m2 is big. If you try to meet the total demand with gas you're going to need a fair sized boiler and that in turn might mean upgrading the supply. You'll also need to look at your DHW situation if for example you have a full house and want to run several showers simultaneously or in close succession. Think about the space you'll need for all the plant and access for pipe runs etc. It'll be a big job.

Best of luck.

 

[ElectronicFur]

Thanks for all the advice, much appreciated.

Hello. I am pretty new to this too so possibly won't be much help. I would be slightly cautious about blocking all the draughts as old houses don't have damp proof courses and need flow of air through the house to get rid of moisture. However, we are getting our sash windows refurbished and having ventrolla brushes installed to minimise draughts. We have also maxed out on loft insulation. Hoping that this plus thick curtains will help keep us warm. We have gone for modern steel radiators where they can be hidden and upstairs and hoping to get a few cast iron ones downstairs. Woodburner in one room and open fireplace in the other. We moved in in Jan with no heating including fireplaces and as long as you can keep one living area warm you should be fine. We have young kids too and they are loving it. Good luck.

My plan is to block all the draughts that shouldn't be there, but ensure things like air-bricks, etc are kept clear. And where necessary I could put in ventilation that will only operate automatically when the humidity level requires it. With the home automation I plan to use a 6-in-1 sensor in each area which will measure temperature, motion, light level, humidity, uv level and vibration. So that would allow me to control that kind of thing, as well as toggle lights, set the smart thermostats, etc.

When researching what is possible with sash windows, I read a report from Glasgow Caledonian uni for English Heritage and Historic Scotland, which recommended not to draught proof them, if you were going to install secondary glazing. It suggested doing both would lead to condensation problems. So I plan to do one of them. Not sure which. There are also internal shutters on some of the windows, so I'm not yet sure if these would interfere with adding secondary glazing, even the magnetic strip type.

With the Aga and 30% centrally heated, we hope we can handle this winter ok if we don't get round to sorting the heating until next year. But ideally I can find the time and money to do it as soon as possible.

With the sort of heat load you are going to be needing, pellet boilers become a whole lot more economic. Not only that, but there are subsidies available which offset the capital costs (best to check on the latest situation).

Yes I'd love to hear from someone who has a pellet boiler to see what they think.

 

[ElectronicFur]

Fernicarry,

Do you have a gas hob in the kitchen as well then, for the times when the Aga is off? I think we're just going to have to live with the Aga for a while to see if it suits us.

Thanks for the point about the radiator sizing and zones, hadn't thought that through yet, what you say makes sense.

Similar to you I work from home. And my kids will be at school/nursery on some days, and my wife works part of the week. And in all honesty the house is a tad too big, but it was the only one we fell in love with. And plenty of space for more kids :shock: So I'm hoping that with the home automation system I can manage things enough to heat up the rooms we're using at the time, more than the rooms we know will be unused on those days or certain time periods.

Good point about the gas supply. I'll need to look into that anyway, as the house has two supplies, but one is currently unused.

What thermal store do you use? Do you just use it for the central heating or also the hot water? I did look at them briefly but I was unsure how suitable and how well it works with a combi boiler which already provides hot water.

 

[fernicarry]

Do you have a gas hob in the kitchen as well then, for the times when the Aga is off? I think we're just going to have to live with the Aga for a while to see if it suits us.

We now have a bang up to date electric kitchen, but we still wanted to keep the Aga. When we first moved in all we had was the Aga and a belfast sink, someone's idea of a country kitchen. Its great having an oven always up to temperature so you can just bung stuff in as needed, and of course ideal for the Mid-Winter Festival bird. Cooking on the hot plates requires a bit of a different approach. No temperature control obviously so you shuffle things around to control how much heat they pick up. You'll survive. I think we did two winters before we upgraded the heating and kitchen.

What thermal store do you use? Do you just use it for the central heating or also the hot water? I did look at them briefly but I was unsure how suitable and how well it works with a combi boiler which already provides hot water.

Ours was made by Newark Copper Cylinder. They will make them to your own spec. My friend has one made by McDonald Engineers. I'm looking at Akvaterm for my next project. Yes, its both heating and hot water. Our gas boiler is also a combi but the water circuit just isn't hooked up. It was like that when we got there, not sure what the plan was. The boiler just sees the store as a large radiator. This is less than ideal though because the boiler tends to shut down as the store gets up to temp because it thinks the radiator circuit isn't absorbing enough heat. I'll be changing to a system boiler as soon as funds allow. My friends system sits happily at a higher temperature than mine, which means more stored heat, so more draw off for the showers/baths. Personally I wouldn't trust any combi to give you the flow rate you need to run more than one decent shower but a lot will depend on the incoming water supply.

Hope that helps.

 

[skier-hughes]

We have about 300m2 to heat and have an oil fired rayburn in the kitchen which is turned on when it gets cold and off when it warms up in the spring, as it is an old wick fired version. It is great for cooking and keeps the kitchen nice and warm. I'd not get rid of it. I did consider changing to a jet burner, but for the cost of conversion I didn't go that route with too many other things demanding buying. The rayburn is stand alone, kitchen only.

We have solar hot water system which heats a 1000l buffer tank and 200l DHW tank and keeps us in hot water from around May to September.

We have a 40kw wood burner in the lounge, with a back boiler, so also heats the buffer tank/dhw system

We have a stand alone wood burner in my wife office and an open fire in our bedroom.

Last year we had a LPG tank and boiler fitted, replaced all of our old radiators for new ones and installed the Genius Home Hub smart heating system. This also connects to the buffer/dhw tank and took a lot of working out how to make it all work properly, but we had a fantastic plumber and lots of help from Genius so that the gas boiler didn't always come on when a radiator called for heat, as when the wood burner is going we didn't want it to overheat, (there are plenty of safety valves etc in place).

The new rads warm so quickly and are so much more efficient we do not regret having them in the house. The genius system allowing us to heat individual rooms is brilliant and has saved me loads of wood. The gas is just idyllic, we are on our way home at night and turn heating on, tell it to use the gas and we have a warm home when we arrive, instead of getting home, lighting fire and pumping loads of wood in and going to bed before it's really done anything apart from take the chill off the whole house.

I looked into a pellet boiler, but the cost of pellets was the big con. I looked at commercial log burners, but size and the need for pretty regular sized logs was the con. The wood burner won as we have loads of trees we can fell, a friendly arborist who drops trees off for me to cut and chop so most of our fuel is free apart from time, which luckily I have plenty of.

Cost of running the rayburn is ouch, sitting down to lovely home reared and cooked food is, I don't care how much it costs
Cost of gas is ouch ouch ouch for our sized house if just using it, which we do when we have a house sitter in when we go away in winter, but again, the instant heat you can get, combined with the genius system is just worth it and we hardly use the gas....... well, when we both had flu and getting out of bed was difficult, let alone going 100m to the fuel store for a barrow of logs......... you can guess!

Want any more info just ask.

 

[88v8]

Cast iron rads look right, especially with brass valves.
The four-column rads also have the merit of taking up little wall space. A 30" x 10-section 4-column rad will give 4,500 btu.
If you hang them on wall brackets as distinct from floorstanding on legs, they can be swung down for wallpapering without draining.
Six-column rads take up even less wall space, but have to be floor-standing. The cat will love a cushion on top.

A tip - paint them once with a thin coat, then never again. Thick paint cracks. That's why they used to have a factory coat, usually gold, then nothing more.

Yes, they have a slow heat response, but as has been said, so does the house.

Despite zoning, design balance is still important. The right size rad in each room, preferably under the window to minimise the heat gradient. There will be times when you want to heat the whole house, it's no use having rooms receiving unnecessary amounts of heat, and rads that are too small will be permanently calling for heat because they cannot reach the design temperature.

Sizing also affects pipe diameters. Respect the maximum heat one should put through different pipe sizes.
15mm for example should not carry more than 15,000 btu, and should not exceed a total length of 80ft in the whole system, otherwise the rads may not receive enough heat.
22mm will carry up to 38,000 btu / 100ft total, and 28mm 68,000 btu / 140ft total**

Sometimes installers attempt to do things on the cheap by running a higher pump pressure but that makes the system noisy.

Keep it simple. Technology is all very well and fine, until it goes wrong.

A further point: thick curtains can save as much heat as double glazing. Do not have the curtains covering the rads!!

Ivor

** I last designed and installed a system in 1982, so best check my recollections. But it was still working fine when we sold the house 29 years later.

 

[CliffordPope]

Why bother wasting money heating the whole house? Why buy a period house and then try to make it like a modern one?

 

[Flyfisher]

Absolutely!

Fully heating a very large period house will always require deep pockets - you can't change the laws of physics.

This is yet another example of trying to impose modern living standards on old properties that were never designed for such things. Sure, it can be done, but it will be intrusive to the property and expensive for the owner.

We also have around 600m2 and don't even attempt to heat every room. Electric blankets remove the need to heat the bedrooms and there's nothing so pleasurable (well almost) as stripping off in a cold bedroom and jumping into a hot snuggle bed! In the morning, the reverse is quite refreshing!

Rooms actually being used need heating for comfort of course and cast iron radiators generally blend in fairly well, even if they are 'modern' additions to many (most?) period properties. There are many options for actually heating them but all will be expensive, with mains gas probably being the cheapest and most convenient.

We have a multifuel boiler stove that provides our DHW, heats our main sitting room, heats our large kitchen via UFH and takes the chill off our bedroom via a 'heat leak' radiator.

We burn wood but have to reload every 40 minutes or so - which requires a LOT of wood for 10/12 hours everyday of the week. Fortunately we have plentiful free wood (though it requires felling, logging, splitting, storing, transporting) otherwise it would be cheaper to burn coal rather than buy it in. We also have a mains gas boiler that can drive the DHW/Heating system, which means we don't have to wake up to freezing cold rooms.

For the occasionally used rooms we have multifuel stoves that we light as needed and generally burn coal on them because the refuelling times are much longer. If we burned wood on all five of them it would be a full time job tending them. Oh for the good old days of cheap household servants!

We looked at wood pellet boilers but concluded they only made any sense if we could buy in bulk, which would mean around 10 tons at a time. Even though we have the sapace for such storage bunkers, the idea did not appeal. We also looked at heat pumps and even had the option of air, ground or water as the heat sources but the capital costs looked too expensive and the running costs were no cheaper than mains gas. Very roughly, heat pumps run on electricity and are around 300% efficient, so 1kwh in gives you 3kwh out. All very good until you consider that mains gas is around three times cheaper than electricity, so just as cost-effective in operation but without the capital expense (this was quite a few years ago not so those numbers may have changed, though the principle hasn't). Finally, as for solar thermal and PV, don't discount them just becAuse you have a period property. While it's true that LBC for roof installations might be a problem, such systems can be installed on the ground or on sheds/outbuildings if you have those options.

Meanwhile, a decent set of thermal underwear and some proper winter clothing will be by far the most cost-effective investments. It's no accident that multiple layers and thick tweed suits were so popular in the 'good old days' before all this new-fangled central heating malarkey turned us all soft

 

[malcolm]

I'm a softie! I was quite lucky - I only have 300m2 and have a heating system with 3 zones. One zone downstairs, one zone upstairs, and one zone for the bits I don't heat (arguably those bits don't need a zone but they might one day become a heated garage and workshop).

Zoning upstairs and downstairs is handy if you tend to be downstairs during the day and upstairs at night. Modern thermostatic controllers for the zones are brilliant! I saved about 50% on bills fitting modern controls as well as avoiding the too hot and too cold cycles from the old thermostats. I'm running gas using a 30kW boiler and am comfy enough at about 18C increasing to 20C in the evenings with about £1k/year gas usage. I expect to get that down with a bit of insulation.

Planning heating is impossibly complicated. There are too many human factors. A wood burning stove in a room is great for getting the family together in the evenings and will compensate for colder rooms elsewhere. Flexibility is probably the key. It would be nuts to try to heat 600m2 to a comfortable temperature, but it will take a while living there to get an idea of how you will use the house.

 

[mardinor]

Fabulous that you are so excited about your period home. But please put aside such anachronisms as underfloor heating, smart thermostats, draught proofing and (heresy) insulation!

We’ve been in our place 20 years. We have thick stone walls and single glazed 120 year old sash windows. No draught proofing or insulation. Here’s what works for us. It’s an alternative and unfashionable point of view, but you asked.

There is nothing better than walking into a wonderfully cool house after a scorching day in the garden. Or noticing the fresh air in a room from a sudden blast of oxygen that makes you feel alive. Or drifting quickly to sleep in a cool bedroom. Or admiring the beauty of the cast iron radiators and the subtle reflections of the sky in the old glazing. Or putting the house to bed by closing the curtains in each room and door to wrap up snug. Or not having to faff about with switching the heating on and off because the house is one big storage heater that stays constant. Or even, dare I say, having a proper attic full of junk rather than rockwool.

I am more than happy to pay a bit more in energy bills for this experience. Judicious use (in winter only) of removable secondary glazing, chimney balloons, thick curtains and door curtains keeps the character of the building and allows the freshness of summer to be properly enjoyed. (And I have no time for talk of eco nonsense in a world of plastic disposable windows, excessive heating and concrete. I live in a recycled house with ancient windows I stripped back with my own hands and which are far better than new).

Living in a stuffy, vacuum sealed house heated to 22 degrees is no way to treat a human being. In my opinion and experience.

 

[ElectronicFur]

The boiler just sees the store as a large radiator. This is less than ideal though because the boiler tends to shut down as the store gets up to temp because it thinks the radiator circuit isn't absorbing enough heat. I'll be changing to a system boiler as soon as funds allow.

I was actually looking into boilers and how to control them from my home automation system. And if you have an OpenTherm compatible boiler, or a Bosch EMS boiler, then I did find ways of controlling them. So if you have one of those, it might be a way to avoid needing to replace it with a system boiler.

Thanks for the info on your setup, very useful.

 

[ElectronicFur]

Why bother wasting money heating the whole house? Why buy a period house and then try to make it like a modern one?

I thought I made it clear I was not planning to heat the whole house.

One of the reasons for deciding to use a modern home automation system is that it can make use of smart thermostats and sensors in each room and only heat the rooms that are in use.

I really don't understand the objection to smart thermostats, draught proofing, insulation, etc., when done properly taking the historic fabric of the house into account. I plan to treasure my house, but I won't live in the past, I'll repair and adapt it for the the world of today. Call me modern if you like

The current owners spend thousands heating just a fraction of the house, and a large part of that heat is disappearing due to draughts. Why not fix those draughts, ensuring there is only the ventilation that is actually required, and save on heating costs?

 

[MikeG]

Fabulous that you are so excited about your period home. But please put aside such anachronisms as underfloor heating, smart thermostats, draught proofing and (heresy) insulation!

We’ve been in our place 20 years. We have thick stone walls and single glazed 120 year old sash windows. No draught proofing or insulation. Here’s what works for us. It’s an alternative and unfashionable point of view, but you asked.

There is nothing better than walking into a wonderfully cool house after a scorching day in the garden. Or noticing the fresh air in a room from a sudden blast of oxygen that makes you feel alive. Or drifting quickly to sleep in a cool bedroom. Or admiring the beauty of the cast iron radiators and the subtle reflections of the sky in the old glazing. Or putting the house to bed by closing the curtains in each room and door to wrap up snug. Or not having to faff about with switching the heating on and off because the house is one big storage heater that stays constant. Or even, dare I say, having a proper attic full of junk rather than rockwool.

I am more than happy to pay a bit more in energy bills for this experience. Judicious use (in winter only) of removable secondary glazing, chimney balloons, thick curtains and door curtains keeps the character of the building and allows the freshness of summer to be properly enjoyed. (And I have no time for talk of eco nonsense in a world of plastic disposable windows, excessive heating and concrete. I live in a recycled house with ancient windows I stripped back with my own hands and which are far better than new).

Living in a stuffy, vacuum sealed house heated to 22 degrees is no way to treat a human being. In my opinion and experience.

There is absolutely no reason whatever to have a well insulated house feeling "stuffy & vacuum sealed". There is absolutely no reason for a well insulated house to overheat in summer. I'll take my £100 annual heating bill any day, thanks, whilst enjoying a well ventilated even-temperatured 300 year old cottage....... You aren't the first on here to completely misunderstand the role of insulation, and it is ridiculous to demonise something that our forefathers would certainly have stuffed everywhere if it had been available to them.

 

[ElectronicFur]

We have about 300m2 to heat and have an oil fired rayburn in the kitchen which is turned on when it gets cold and off when it warms up in the spring, as it is an old wick fired version. It is great for cooking and keeps the kitchen nice and warm. I'd not get rid of it. I did consider changing to a jet burner, but for the cost of conversion I didn't go that route with too many other things demanding buying. The rayburn is stand alone, kitchen only.

So you would recommend just keeping the Aga then, and adding a gas hob for non-winter use?

We have solar hot water system which heats a 1000l buffer tank and 200l DHW tank and keeps us in hot water from around May to September.

I'm quite keen to get a solar hot water system if I can get consent for placing it somewhere. How large a surface area of collectors did you need for your setup?

Last year we had a LPG tank and boiler fitted, replaced all of our old radiators for new ones and installed the Genius Home Hub smart heating system. This also connects to the buffer/dhw tank and took a lot of working out how to make it all work properly, but we had a fantastic plumber and lots of help from Genius so that the gas boiler didn't always come on when a radiator called for heat, as when the wood burner is going we didn't want it to overheat, (there are plenty of safety valves etc in place).

The new rads warm so quickly and are so much more efficient we do not regret having them in the house. The genius system allowing us to heat individual rooms is brilliant and has saved me loads of wood. The gas is just idyllic, we are on our way home at night and turn heating on, tell it to use the gas and we have a warm home when we arrive, instead of getting home, lighting fire and pumping loads of wood in and going to bed before it's really done anything apart from take the chill off the whole house.

That's great to hear that the Genius Hub is working out for you. It sounds similar to what I plan to do with my home automation system. Are your new radiators steel or cast iron?

I looked into a pellet boiler, but the cost of pellets was the big con. I looked at commercial log burners, but size and the need for pretty regular sized logs was the con. The wood burner won as we have loads of trees we can fell, a friendly arborist who drops trees off for me to cut and chop so most of our fuel is free apart from time, which luckily I have plenty of.

Once I've moved I guess I'll have to start asking the locals what kind of fuels are readily and affordable available.

Thanks for all the info.

 

[ElectronicFur]

Cast iron rads look right, especially with brass valves.
The four-column rads also have the merit of taking up little wall space. A 30" x 10-section 4-column rad will give 4,500 btu.
If you hang them on wall brackets as distinct from floorstanding on legs, they can be swung down for wallpapering without draining.
Six-column rads take up even less wall space, but have to be floor-standing. The cat will love a cushion on top.

Thanks for all tips on painting, zoning, pipe sizing etc. I have a bit of reading up to do to get up to speed on all that.

The big attraction for me is that they look right in a period property, and take up a lot less wall space than steel ones.

I've also seen quite a lot of refurbished cast iron radiators advertised. Do you have any experience with refurbished ones? Is that a good route to take if I can find a reliable place to buy refurbished ones?

Also, are you the same 88v8 that posts on the Fool?

 

[Flyfisher]

I really don't understand the objection to smart thermostats, draught proofing, insulation, etc., when done properly taking the historic fabric of the house into account. I plan to treasure my house, but I won't live in the past, I'll repair and adapt it for the the world of today. Call me modern if you like

I've no objection to any of that and have said time and again that if period properties are not allowed to be altered to suit modern living demands and fashions then they will become unoccupied and suffer the consequential slow decay.

What I find interesting is the disconnect between the aspirations of 'period style' living and the truly authentic reality. In other words, what is the real attraction of a period property? Because whatever it is, it would seem insufficient to overrule modern fashions such as central heating of every room, en suite bathrooms with hot running water at the turn of a tap, luxury kitchens, not to mention wifi controlled everything from lighting to heating to security systems. Not to mention those 'Georgian' electrical fittings. :wink:

All mod cons but with wonky walls and sloping floors/ceilings - could be a market opportunity for the building sector there.