BillBullock

The construction of houses obviously varies a lot in Portugal. My house was built for the first British owners in 1996 to the Portuguese building standards of the day. It has a concrete frame for earthquake resistance and the brick walls have a 2 cm cavity which is ventilated to the outside air. The wall surfaces are concrete rendered.

In 2003 I tried to find a firm in the Algarve that would insulate the walls by injection of an insulating material but failed to find anyone. I gave up and accepted that I had nice dry walls in the rainy season. The house also has usable loft spaces and so the roof is very watertight. I thought about insulating the external walls on the inside but didn't want to lose the room space. External insulated cladding would have meant extending the roof tiles to maintain the overlap. The money I've saved by not insulating the walls has been spent on extra electricity to power our night storage radiators in the winter which seems to have been extended this year into April!

liveaboard

I saw pu foam being sprayed onto the inside of a warehouse here recently.
I don't know if they can also pump it into wall cavities, but it would seem likely.

ricko

Is gas heating not common in Portugal?

From the other responses, it seems that insulation is very variable, and not uniform in any region - am I correct in thinking that??

macliam

Outside the Lisbon and Porto areas there is a very limited gas network - and bottled gas is far, far more expensive so makes gas-fired central heating uneconomic. Most CH is solid fuel, but can be simple ducted warm-air - and reversible air-conditioning units are not uncommon either.

The levels of insulation in new-build is far higher than a couple of decades ago - and back then houses were cold in the winter (and I recall a wet Easter in Lisbon as one of the most miserable, cold and uncomfortable experiences in my life!). It is still not uncommon to see Portuguese eating in restaurants with their coats on - and I have even been to a meeting with a lawyer where he was seated at his desk in overcoat and scarf!

The climate also makes a considerable difference - just as a temperature of 40c would be almost insupportable in London but is OK(ish) in the Alentejo, so a temperature of 6c which is OK in London, feels very cold here. So now imagine when it occasionally drops to zero or below........

ricko

Is the bottled gas less economical than electricity for heating?

Would it be safe to assume that buying/renting a house built in the last twenty years would give you a comfortable winter?

macliam

I believe there is little in it - others may have more direct experience. Bottled gas heating is almost certainly more expensive to run than using a heat pump. I don't know of anyone having gas-fired heating installed any more than I know of anyone with oil-fired heating.

It is more likely that a recent build would be better insulated, but "comfort" is a personal thing. On thing that works against Portuguese properties in Winter is that room sizes tend to be larger and ceilings higher than in the UK - great for summer, but harder to heat.

However, Portuguese winters are far shorter!

BillBullock

I removed the gas central heating system from my house as it was costing about €90 a week in bottled gas and I was not warming the whole of the house. Mains gas is generally not available in the Algarve countryside. As previously mentioned, I changed to night storage heating and have a warm house in the worst of the winters. My electricity bill is €2160 approximately per year and that includes the cost of running the pool pump and heater, heating domestic hot water, the electric gates, cooking and lighting.

peterfc

For what it's worth this is to anybody who is going to build a new house demand the house is insulated to the very highest standards. If you can't find an Architect who will do what you want so find another who will. Take ideas from world wide it's your money and don't be put of and finding yourself coming to a Forum because you got it wrong.

Peter

Jonny22

Bill, presumably you’re heating up the heaters on dual tariff at night? Do you find they keep the heat through the daytime without needing ‘recharging’? What make/model of heater are you using. We have an oil heater in the kitchen just to keep that area warmish and I’ve found that it uses more electricity to warm that one room than the reverse cycle ACs use to warm the rest of the house. Also have a recuparador which tends to be on most of the time in January / February but only reaches half of the house so night storage could be an option. They were quite the rage in the 70’s!!

BillBullock

For Jonny22:

Yes, the dual tariff is from 2200 hrs to 0800 hrs and modern NSHs keep pushing out heat all day. They are more controllable than the old ones as well as being smaller. I do not top them up during the day with the higher rate electricity. I imported mine from the UK where there are many makes to consider.

liveaboard

I actually still have an oil fired heating system. I know from the guy who delivers the oil that I'm not the only one.

It's a dinosaur; I installed it as a temporary measure because I had an old furnace I could use and had no cash left for anything else. Oil was expensive but now it's gone up 50%.

You can have a big LPG tank installed, but the fuel cost is unattractive now [and the high capital cost of the installation traps you].

Cheapest and least convenient moving down to most expensive and convenient;
Wood
pellets
electric reverse cycle AC [heat pump]
Electric with storage buffer [you'll need radiators or underfloor loops]
Cheap resistance electric

Gas and oil don't even make the list.
Solar heat is theoretically possible but more difficult that you might imagine.
Hybrid systems with solar gain, a buffer tank, and a fuel heat source can work very well if properly designed and sized. You need radiators or underfloor heat loops.

Tight doors and windows of course, which many homes here don't have.
And insulated walls as discussed above.

riv

I am not scientifically qualified but are reversible aircon units not basically using the same science as air based heat pumps ?

If so does that mean they are cheap to run ? ( on the heating mode ).

What would it cost roughly to use an aircon unit pumping out the equivalent of 2 or 3 KWs of heat per hour / evening ?

RichardHenshall

They are efficient and effective but the electricity can cost €0.25 per kWh, on top of standing charges of up to €1.10 per day.

riv

I am not scientifically qualified but are reversible aircon units not basically using the same science as air based heat pumps ?

If so does that mean they are cheap to run ? ( on the heating mode ).

What would it cost roughly to use an aircon unit pumping out the equivalent of 2 or 3 KWs of heat per hour / evening ?

riv

Useful to know - but presumably, unless you have solar electro panels, there is no escaping the standing charge, even if you did not rely on elec. for heat ?