Sunday, December 13, 2009

This Radiator

Yesterday night, I woke up to change the temperature control setting in the device situated in the living room.

I noticed that if I set the temperature in the living room to 60˚ F, my bed room temperature becomes 64˚ F, but when I set the living room temperature to 62˚ F, the temperature in the bed room goes up to more than 70˚ F, which is uncomfortable. Ideally, I like the temperature to be 68˚ F.

This is because the radiator's size in the living room is the same as the radiator's size in the bedroom, while the size of the living room is more than two times the size of the bedrooms.

While 62˚ F is not warm enough for the living room, the temperature in the bed room becomes uncomfortably hot.

During the day, if the living room temperature is set to 68˚ F, the bed room temperature becomes unbearably hot and we either sometimes shut down the valve to the radiator, or open the windows slightly.

Most American homes are heated with indirect heating thru radiators. Hot water or steam comes to the radiators from the water boiler, usually located in the basement. These homes are single heating zones controlled by a single thermostat/temperature control device, mostly located in the living room.

The raditor sizes in the home can be changed to keep the temperatures in all rooms more or less the same. However, that would still mean loosing energy costs to keep the living room warm enough in the night , when it is not being used.

Probably, there is a big market to replace the existing heating systems with systems that can save energy costs by keeping the rooms not being used at slightly lower temperatures.