Kevin explains;
"We thought straight away about making half the garage into Naomi’s living area, but space was still a factor. I didn’t want radiators as although she can walk reasonably steady unaided, I was worried about her stumbling onto it, or even worse holding onto its hot edge to maintain her balance. Digging the floor up for under floor heating was prohibitively expensive and even the over-floor types would have created a step from the main house to Naomi’s bedroom; and we wanted level access throughout for her."
Taken from the blog; Tim and Sam’s house
http://timandsamshouse.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/tims-heating-system-dilemma/
"With the heat source decided I wanted to find a more innovative way of heating the house than using radiators. I see so many houses which are heated by radiators only to have furniture in the way. Radiators also produce hot spots so you tend to turn up the heat more in order to get an overall even distribution of heat. This house has never been heated, so it has some condensation and cold corners. To reduce this dampness, it's best to have a level temperature all across the house.
The first option was Scandinavian-style water based underfloor heating. However, this would mean we would have to rip up the parquet floor, one of the features we liked about the house. I remembered seeing a skirting board heating system called Thermaskirt on BBC’s ‘Dragon’s Den’. After a bit of investigation and seeing the ThermaSkirt system in action at the Home Renovation Show, we are really excited to be installing this very efficient new technology. By heating each room at floor level, it gives us the option of having good overall heat and a similar feel to underfloor heating. It should also help with those damp spots, as well as running at an overall lower temperature than a standard radiator.
We have found a plumber willing to take on the challenge and Discrete Heat are going to come and give us a day’s training by installing the ThermaSkirt in one room. I’m looking forward to getting trained up too and seeing how the system works.
So, it’s not the dream renewable system that I had originally hoped to install, but it will hopefully prove to be even better, whilst keeping our gas bills low."
