Being very cold

[Lightspeed]

Hope things are starting to look better for you MB and CH

As posted last week, its the wind that causes us most problems in keeping heat in our particular house in the winter.

If conditions are still, we've managed well at -20C just using the wood burning stove.

Your predicament(s) motivated me to get into our loft crawl spaces last Friday to beef up the lagging on the CH pipes that are routed there. After a bit of experimentation we found a good and easy to apply solution: Double thickness mineral wool battens (60 cm x 125cm) wrapped longwise along the pipe runs, held in place with a stapled-closed sheath of Tyvek vapour barrier. The outside diameter of the lagging is now over 45 cm (18") and the improvement in heat delivered to the radiators in the living space below has been immediately apparent. Were still basking in warm Atlantic air (8 -10C) so the proof of this pudding is still to come.

Out of interest, my understanding was that you guys habitually deal with long periods of cold below 15C at your locations. Is it the further drop in temperature or the combination that cold with strong winds that is causing you so much pain at the moment?