The build

What type of door is it, wood or UPVC. If the first that’s easy enough and reclamation yards carry old doors so a quick call should find something . The latter in a stone building is a bit harder as you need to measure from outside and measure its narrowest points. You infill the gaps then with expanding foam before cutting some thin plastic to cover the foam. There are a few miss measure upvc companies in South Wales where you can pick up new doors more cheaply.

Not a downer at all. The underground heating is used as background heat. We’ll be having secondary heatIng in living rooms & bedroom to boost as and when needed. Possibly inferred from  jigsaw solutions. Bob’s not 100% convinced. But he can shove the panel heaters he keeps rattling on about where the sun don’t shine   . As you can see not everything is written in stone already. 
Our first couple of house designs were done around us having a wood burning stove. But we scrapped it, when we realised that in 15/20 years time we’re not going to want and quite possibly be able to cut & split our own wood. Definitely can’t afford to buy in ready split. So we scraped it. Hence the ongoing discussions about heating.

The jury’s out with me on infrared heaters essentially they are indoor suns, heating objects rather than space. There’s obviously positive effects to some radiation the widening of capillaries, increased blood flow. I’m just unsure about the long term exposure, there’s some anecdotal evidence of them causing dehydration, headaches and dizziness, though I’m not sure there are any specific studies to this. I’m uncertain of the long term exposure of furniture to this type of heat source. Sun radiation causes bleaching over time and can cause moisture loss in all of things through evaporation. Will you need humidifiers to balance the equation, I don’t know.

I’ve never sat in a room heated with infrared heaters for any period of time so I have no personal experience of their effects but, they are certainly more cost effective than radiators. I’m just unsure whether they might effect guarantees on other items in your home. Wooden kitchen doors for example will not cope with direct radiation it will split.

interesting though, that’s an unusual combination of heating methods.

Hi Mikey. Its a disabled access supposedly stable door, but it not what I really wanted. He built it in a door frame with a tilt and turn window at top, that was first to break. Its in the kitchen extension, so seems to be set into a upvc surround, which has the locking system in. Its the lock and hinges that is really broken, as it seems to have dropped but there is no adjustment left. My husband can fit yale locks, so hoping he can fit the weird upvc lock.

What type of door is it, wood or UPVC. If the first that’s easy enough and reclamation yards carry old doors so a quick call should find something . The latter in a stone building is a bit harder as you need to measure from outside and measure its narrowest points. You infill the gaps then with expanding foam before cutting some thin plastic to cover the foam. There are a few miss measure upvc companies in South Wales where you can pick up new doors more cheaply.

Not a downer at all. The underground heating is used as background heat. We’ll be having secondary heatIng in living rooms & bedroom to boost as and when needed. Possibly inferred from  jigsaw solutions. Bob’s not 100% convinced. But he can shove the panel heaters he keeps rattling on about where the sun don’t shine   . As you can see not everything is written in stone already. 
Our first couple of house designs were done around us having a wood burning stove. But we scrapped it, when we realised that in 15/20 years time we’re not going to want and quite possibly be able to cut & split our own wood. Definitely can’t afford to buy in ready split. So we scraped it. Hence the ongoing discussions about heating.

My inlaws used coal and split wood until we lost fil at 84. But he was a miner, so had his coal pension, hence them sticking to it. We have a coal multi fuel fire and a wood burner. Being disabled I found feeding the fires not too bad, but emptying ashes very difficult. My husband and children chop wood.

Hi Mikey.  Its a disabled access supposedly stable door, but it not what I really wanted. He built it in a door frame with a tilt and turn window at top, that was first to break.  Its in the kitchen extension, so seems to be set into a upvc surround, which has the locking system in. Its the lock and hinges that is really broken, as it seems to have dropped but there is no adjustment left. My husband can fit yale locks, so hoping he can fit the weird upvc lock.

UPVC locks are easy to change there are just a few screws that hold them in place. UPVC adjustment can be harder as it might depend on whether it was fitted square in the first place, if it was fitted by a handyman originally they have a habit of over screwing the frame fixings and pulling the plastic frame out of square, you are then fighting with the packers on the hinges to try and realign it. There’s generally 3-5mm tolerance in the hinges so not a lot of variation. Pop a spirit level around the frame and see if you can square the frame up first before messing with the hinges.
a local UPVC supplier is likely to have someone that can swap handles etc, if your husband isn’t confident then a call might fix it for few quid instead of having to take it out.

If I was renovating our house now, I would definitely go for an air source heat pump with underfloor heating as probably the cheapest option to run. We have got a ground source heat pump now but it was quite a bit dearer that air source to buy and the outdoor temps don't really justify it here. I have got a wood burning fire for the living room as an emergency backup if the electric was to go down - but that is still in the conservatory waiting to be installed 5 years later.

I remember him mentioning something about the packers have no more room.... I thought they may have been a bug .

The only real negative to underfloor heating is you can’t leave presents under the Christmas tree just in case some nice soul has bought you chocolates. Anyone for chocolate fondue?

The strange thing about Air source heat pumps is they are more efficient in the warm when you don’t want the heat, but are generally geared to be run at temps that are cooler than most of the UK, I think Scotland is ok, they come into their own in that zone around -5 to +5. Down south it’s not often we get those temperatures our winters are a lot milder.

Theoretically they can generate heat from extreme cold, as absolute zero is -273 degrees but, obviously the materials used in the operation would fail before getting there. They were being used as the heat source for the apartment we stayed in in lapland which was toasty, while the outside temp was -30 to -40 during the day. I didn’t measure it overnight but imagine by comparison it was cooler.

The only real negative to underfloor heating is you can’t leave presents under the Christmas tree just in case some nice soul has bought you chocolates. Anyone for chocolate fondue?

The good thing is - you don't need a propagator as you can put your seedtrays on the floor  for bottom heat.