yes dirt gives mold food to grow but the walls are made out of food. even with clean houses you can still get mold growing if you give them enough moisture. moisture level is the important bit, mold needs above 80% humidity but a lot of nz has an average humidity level of 80%. can you see why heating is so important ?
jozhu06,
May 29, 8:26pm
Not a problem in the UK as they all have central heating. An even warmth throughout.
martin11,
May 29, 8:36pm
And they also have huge heating bills .
tweake,
May 29, 9:04pm
that depends on the house. there is a lot of very very old houses in UK so heating bills are always expensive.
the problem here is we don't make efficient new homes, and then we make excuses and put up with being cold and damp.
martin11,
May 29, 9:35pm
You can when you build if you improve the building code minimums like we did when we built in 1996 .
tygertung,
May 29, 10:10pm
We don't have any mould in the house as we aire out the house during the day.
In the summer we use fans in the bedrooms.
I believe it is better for your body to get used to the seasons. I don't believe it is healthy to have a blazing warm house and then when you go outside into the freezing cold you start perishing. Just wear a jersey inside and don't heat it excessively. Likewise in the summer, I don't think it is good to have a freezing cold house with aircon blasting and then when you go outside you end up with heatstroke.
I will put a heater on in the children's bedroom if it is quite cold, as you can't trust them not to kick off the blankets. In adult's bedrooms we only will put in heating in extreme circumstances.
However we are in Christchurch and it doesn't get very cold here. Obviously if one lives futher inland, it is going to be much colder and more heating will be required.
You can get nice warm feather and down duvets which provide excellent warmth. Also different people vary on how cold they get when sleeping. Some are more susceptible to the cold than others when sleeping.
tweake,
May 29, 10:12pm
yes you can certainly build better. but 99.9% of people will only ever do the barest minimum allowed by law, which means for everyone else they can only buy a bare minimum house as thats almost all thats ever built. what compounds it is the products are not common so you pay a bit more for it, and finding a builder that can actually understand and build better is hard to find.
none of this will change until the govt changes minimum code.
tweake,
May 29, 10:28pm
not trying to take a personal dig at you but i think your post is a good example of the issue which is common in nz. it simply an excuse, because you have been taught to put up with the cold. eg "chch doesn't get cold." winterless north is not very cold, chch is downright freezing. having to wear outdoor clothes inside means lack of heating. just like having blankets on the couch to wrap up in. going from warm inside to cold outside is fine, if your wearing correct outdoor clothing. in summer houses are not freezing cold with aircon and most certainly do not get heatstroke by going outside. otherwise i would dead 1000 times over by now. try working in air conditioned room then go work in the main steel shed thats 40-50 degree temp at 80-90% humidity.
the whole point of houses is to separate you from the outside. if you make it as cold/hot as the outside you might as well just live in a tent.
the other factor is that heating homes helps maintain the house itself. heat moves moisture.
martin11,
May 29, 10:50pm
The code has been updated with insulation requirements a few times over the last few years . Higher rated batts /double glazing requirements etc .
tygertung,
May 29, 11:03pm
I take your point, however I would consider wearing a thin jersey and heating the living area to 18 degrees or so during the winter to be acceptable.
We don't heat areas of the house we are not using to keep heating costs down. For example it only takes about 10 minutes for the heat pump to warm up one level of the house. The living area is downstairs so we don't heat that during the night.
Christchurch is warm compared with inland south island, and we live up the hill a bit so rarely even get a frost.
tweake,
May 29, 11:12pm
minor upgrades that leaves a lot to be desired. insulation has not changed a big amount since the 80's. double glazing came in, which is good. but when parts of nz need triple glazing its not good. plus, as it sounds like OP has this issue, it allows non-thermally broken frames and i think the insulation standard does not include the frames in the calculations. so non insulated framed windows actually have lower insulation value than what the label says it has.
put it this way, how much different is winterless north house compare to freezing cold southland houses (seeing as they got down to -10c this week). the wall insulation is basically the same. the floor insulation is the same. the ceiling is roughly double for southland compared to northland. however many homes here upgrade their ceiling insulation to basically southland standards.
so overall southlanders have roughly the same insulation as us in winterless north have. thats pretty bad for areas that get that cold.
tweake,
May 29, 11:21pm
in comparison, in summer i have bedroom aircon on at 18c and thats cold enough you want to be under the duvet. yet plenty of people think that 18c is so hot they can't sleep, tho they don't mention how they get on in summer.
not heating parts of the house is another issue. we are used to spot heating, tho thats often due because we are not heating places up enough to start with. thats where a lot of dampness issues tend to arise from. you guys in dry aeras can get away with it, but do that in northland humidity doesn't work well.
part of all this all comes from that we used to heat the whole house from a single fireplace. plenty of free wood, shove it in and heat the place up. however now we have to buy firewood or we are electric only. so heating costs have gone way up. so we don't heat instead.
annie17111,
May 31, 8:52am
When we are home, our whole house is heated. We have ceiling and underfloor insulation but that's it. We spent $700 on firewood this year and our power bill is about $250 a month over winter. I refuse to have electric blankets on the beds and don't think it's good for my kids to breath cold air a night. My youngest start coughing if the air is too cold at night. People have different priorities and mine is having a warm, dry house.
tweake,
Jun 1, 2:07am
hopefully the govt will listen and make people build decent houses, so those power and heating bills come down a lot, and then everyone can have a nice warm home because its so cheap to do so.
hazelnut2,
Jun 1, 2:12am
My husband and I also believe in having a warmer room for sleeping rather than electric blankets. I know when it's 13C or below because I get a cold nose! lol But much prefer 17 or so. We have a biggish room so a small panel heater on each side of the bed does the job, after the log fire heat transfer system is switched off for the night.
We also take a radiant heater with us when we travel with the car, so if necessary we can warm up any cold or badly-equiped motel rooms!
bergkamp,
Jun 1, 8:36am
kinda agree with this - and astounded that some organisation (was it BRANZ?) recently stating 19 - 25 degrees is the bdrms temperature to aim for
apollo11,
Jun 1, 8:42am
Anything over 15 is too hot for me.
tygertung,
Jun 1, 6:27pm
I think maybe 16 is nice, any hotter than that is unpleasantly hot in the bedroom.
bergkamp,
Jun 1, 8:15pm
My parents are well into their 80s and leave their exterior bdrm sliding door slightly open so the dog can go and do his thing, even in winter . they say its not a problem , grew up hungry and cold through ww2.
kateley,
Jun 1, 8:24pm
Aside from the argument about what is a 'comfortable' overnight temperature for you hardy folk, the original question was how to avoid ICE forming inside overnight. This will not happen at 16 or 14 but at 0. HEATING is the only way to avoid this happening. My heatpump has a feature that won't let the temp drop below 10deg. This feature is for exactly this situation. It won't make the room too warm, and it wont use much electricity but will stop the windows icing up and (hopefully) water freezing inside your plumbing
tygertung,
Jun 1, 8:37pm
It is because aluminium is the second best common metal conductor of heat in the world. The aluminium will conduct heat very quickly to outside, becoming very cold, and ice up. It doesn't make a great deal of difference how warm the room is if the outside is very cold.
apollo11,
Jun 1, 8:46pm
A wooden framed, single glazed window is more efficient than an alloy framed double glazed window, on average.
the wooden or pvc single glassed windows are better than the bottom end non-thermally broken aluminium window. i think one of the issues is the R rating from manufactures is taken from the glass and does not include the frame. thats something the govt is looking at fixing. ie make the R ratings cover the whole assembly.
tweake,
Jun 2, 3:45am
yes, its the only way to make up for the low standard of building allowed in NZ.
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