Finding the chase and cutting to it

It’s 2.6°C at this moment in time and I don’t feel too much of a whimp saying it’s cold outside.

Today is day three of our “replacement windows, making a hole bigger, and centrering a window in an existing wall” adventure or our trek into how cold can we go in our house?

It’s going to be worth it, but I sincerely believe the gentlemen doing the work are earning what they are being paid. It is so cold, I am wearing treble layers and gloves inside.

Of course, we’re doing our best to retain what heat we can. Making the most of the kitchen being completely vented, I started the automated cleaning on the cooker. Fuggy smoke from the cooker went straight through the open holes and the heating was off anyway…

The UPVC windows have three fitting stages, the last being the application of some glue to finish off the trim. The easiest way to vent this is to open the windows for 30-60 minutes, depending on the wind. Off goes the heating in the room and set a timer for when to reclose and reheat!

Even with retaining the heat, raising the temperature from 8.8°C back to 16°C is hard work. Over the build we have spent far more than our usual 8 kWh a day on heating, to put it mildly.

Our “base usage”, lighting, cooking, EV charging, etc, is typically 7 kWh a day – a little heavy but we both work from home. Our usage yesterday was 54 kWh. And we were both out for the majority of the day – 42.5kWh was on the heating, 6 kWh was spent charging the car.

You should have done the windows first – then that heat would have come from nice, cheap gas!

Not really, because that 8 kWh of electricity would have been 12 kWh of gas a day and the 42 kWh would have been over 60 kWh! We would have saved money on heating the house when we’d moved to the heat pump but the tasks would still have burnt a lot of gas to heat the house.

The multiplier effect is still making a difference – the 42.5nkWh of electricity translated to 144 kWh of heat – an SPF of 3.4 (it wasn’t that much warmer yesterday, to be honest). We generated 4.9 kWh from the roof yesteday too, which covered a 10th of that power used.

Ideally, the work would have been on a warmer day of the year. But once it’s done, it’s done 🙂

The big thing I have found with this process is how quickly the house has got back up to temperature – the image above is four hours after the previous picture. The windows vary in their u-values between 1 W/m²K and 1.1 W/m²K for the triple glazing and a pair of south facing double glazed french door who have a u-value of 1.5 W/m²K – but we have paired these with heavy duty curtains and external shutters which should help reduce our loses. The consideration with this window was its ability to make the best use of solar gain during the winter – something triple glazed windows can struggle with.

Not long now before the job is completed. Of course, that is only the begining in terms of our responsibility in getting it finished. Painting needs to be completed once the plaster is dry and I really need to hem our new curtains for that set of French doors!