They were talking about consistently heating a whole room though. I guess there’s a case to be made if the thermostat for the central gas heating is in another room and can’t be moved… But you should probably organize your heating so that this is a corner case (which is why the thermostat is typically in the living room in detached living. Other rooms don’t usually need to be kept particularly warm).
Of course if you have a badly insulated house and no way to properly distribute the central heating or to pay to heat the whole space to 18 °C, use resistive if you must. But that goes against everything that central heating is supposed to be for.
Also you really should not let a building go under 15 °C. It depends on the specifics (insulation, ventilation), but you’re liable to get mold or other kinds of water damage due to condensation.
Good points. There are a variety of houses/buildings built during various periods of time according to various codes and standards, but if you’re within city limits (US/Canada) then your house was probably built after the 70s/80s and has decent insulation. If there is an issue with the central heating in that kind of home, I 100% agree that there’s an issue that you might want a GC to fix. If your house/building is old, or if landlords don’t want to fix shit (and complaints are too much of a hassle), then I can also see that space heating can be a reasonable bandaid: at least until you get out of that situation.
Condensation is something I also forgot. That’s important for you electrical system too. In my experience in electric distribution/collection, usually we’d want to keep termination points around 20/68, but thermostats could drop to as low as 10/50 before kicking in. Certainly keeping a house colder than 10/50 is a bad idea, but between that and normal 20/68 I’d think would be fine. You also have the risk though that your thermostat is a single point of measurement for the system. Other parts of a house might be cooler/warmer, so I’d agree with the advice to keeping your house warmer than 15/59, unless it supports multi-unit dwellings.
They were talking about consistently heating a whole room though. I guess there’s a case to be made if the thermostat for the central gas heating is in another room and can’t be moved… But you should probably organize your heating so that this is a corner case (which is why the thermostat is typically in the living room in detached living. Other rooms don’t usually need to be kept particularly warm).
Of course if you have a badly insulated house and no way to properly distribute the central heating or to pay to heat the whole space to 18 °C, use resistive if you must. But that goes against everything that central heating is supposed to be for.
Also you really should not let a building go under 15 °C. It depends on the specifics (insulation, ventilation), but you’re liable to get mold or other kinds of water damage due to condensation.
Good points. There are a variety of houses/buildings built during various periods of time according to various codes and standards, but if you’re within city limits (US/Canada) then your house was probably built after the 70s/80s and has decent insulation. If there is an issue with the central heating in that kind of home, I 100% agree that there’s an issue that you might want a GC to fix. If your house/building is old, or if landlords don’t want to fix shit (and complaints are too much of a hassle), then I can also see that space heating can be a reasonable bandaid: at least until you get out of that situation.
Condensation is something I also forgot. That’s important for you electrical system too. In my experience in electric distribution/collection, usually we’d want to keep termination points around 20/68, but thermostats could drop to as low as 10/50 before kicking in. Certainly keeping a house colder than 10/50 is a bad idea, but between that and normal 20/68 I’d think would be fine. You also have the risk though that your thermostat is a single point of measurement for the system. Other parts of a house might be cooler/warmer, so I’d agree with the advice to keeping your house warmer than 15/59, unless it supports multi-unit dwellings.
Good convo, cheers