wolfi

Thanks, Sachina!

After working for fifteen years the heating system now has to be cleaned - says our expert.
Next week he'll rinse (is that the correct word? ) all the radiators with some cleaning fluid...

scrubbedexpat0105

Surely this only happens if there's a source of damp in the house?

Since I don't use my house in the winter, I don't heat it. I've never had a problem with mould (apart from one very localized area that was affected by a leaking roof).

wolfi

Again, I'm not an expert there but as I see it the damp creeps up from the floor and maybe through the walls - if you put a sensor there that measures the humidity (often in combination with a thermometer) you'll find a humidity of 80% and more and that means that in cold corners eg water will condense ...
Many of our neighbours have dehumodifiers in some unheated rooms - they work with calcium chloride which takes in the water and as a liquid falls into a receptacle -a few weeks ago Lidl sold it here.
Generally it's good idea to measure the humidity of cold rooms.

PS:
Of course with heating and good insulation you often have the inverse problem that the humidity is too low for humans - it should be between 40% and 60%. So people instrall humidifiers or air washers.

Aquavit

Isn't this damp problem an issue with most, if not all, older Hungarian houses which were built without any damp course? I see it to some extent in my house and others around the village where the houses are all built in a similar fashion.

wolfi

Aquavit, I think you're right - and also that there already was a thread on this problem, but I'm not sure.

scrubbedexpat142

I find opening a bottle of wine works wonders with the humidity levels!

hobgoblins

Some of it was covered here Wolfi….

http://britishexpats.com/forum/hunga...-903001/page4/

Peter_in_Hungary

+1 , although generally I find we need a bottle each

fidobsa

I have largely abandoned my house in Hungary for the duration of the winter because I am so low on firewood. I could buy more but it would be unseasoned. I could have bought a load 2 years ago but was hoping the house would be sold by now. I have never actually bought logs in Hungary because I was offered a source of firewood by the woman from whom I bought the house and I buy from her in an attempt to be a good neighbour. It is scrap oak from a sawmill, available either in short lengths that are mostly ready to use or longer pieces that can be cut using a small electric mitre saw.
Cost is 30,000 ft for a Transit size pickup load. I would think the sawmill has a weighbridge and sells the stuff by weight, so a load is perhaps a tonne. I think the wood is seasoned before sawing (I assume that would be standard practice for expensive wood like oak) but then the scrap is stored outside so can get quite wet. There was quite a lot of this wood nicely stacked in one of the outbuildings when I bought the house so it took a while for me to get a feel for the cost, but I think it is an expensive way to heat the house. The problem is, all the wood is effectively kindling size, so there are no thick logs to burn slowly and keep the fire ticking over. That would also be a drawback with buying those wood cages of split logs, in practice it is better to have some logs split thicker, to burn slower.
At my place in Croatia I also buy wood from a neighbour but in that case it is the normal 1 metre long logs and they arrive by tractor and trailer. I have to cut the logs to length then split them with a hand pumped hydraulic splitter. Cost is about £22 per cubic metre and I probably get through about 1.5 cubic metres a month. That is for a cooking range with back boiler, heating 4 radiators. I can only half fill the fire box because the stove needs more radiators. There are actually 7 radiators but 3 have never got hot and I've never managed to solve the problem I thought it was down to air in the pipes but I think I have eliminated that possibility. The pipes in question go up high, above the entrance door in the hall. I would prefer to keep them at skirting board height but the hall floor is tiled, so I can't run them under the floor.

wolfi

Fidobsa, do these radiators have thermostats?
There often is a problem with the little pins that regulate the water flow - when they're pushed back once they don't open again ...
There are several recipes how to get them to open - use some oil spray and then a hammer and knock on them ...
Do the pipes get warm at all?

Sometimes I have the feeling that many things installed here have only a life time of 15 or 20 years - then they have to be repaired or totally replaced even!

fidobsa

No, none of the valves are thermostatic as I care more about safety than control over individual rooms. The radiators need to give out their maximum heat all the time to avoid the system fluid from boiling up. Last thing I tried was rigging up a valve and hose to the normally blanked off hole at the top corner of a rad. connecting that to one of those drill driven pumps and pumping that to bleed the rad. On the return side that seemed to work OK, with a steady flow coming through. With the return valve shut and the flow valve open, I was only getting sporadic flow through the pump, suggesting there may be an obstruction somewhere. The system is open vented with an expansion tank in the loft. I did have a problem once when a large dead fly got stuck in a pipe fitting. The radiator plumbing is done with Hep2O plastic pipe. The ends of the pipes have metal inserts to maintain their roundness. The fly was caught at the first of these inserts because it represents a slight reduction in diameter.