by Perry525 »
Tue Apr 30, 2013 8:22 pm
I know this is old.
Concrete or brick are the best things to use for storing heat.
In one of my houses I had thermostat controlled gas fires that were on 24/7, that was before I installed my own skirting board heating system.
When it came to making the change over, the brick chimneys kept the house warm for four days.
It turns out that concrete has one of the highest heat retention capacities.
It works best as a four inch thick wall, insulated on five sides. One side facing the sun.
Concrete stores up heat, filling the whole slab, the heat doesn't stay on the top like water or air.
Concrete has a slow release, but it only releases the heat as the surrounding temperature drops.
Concrete is used in glass fronted office buildings to absorb the heat from the sun, it provides a system where it soaks up the heat from the sun, thereby slowing the heating of the building by six hours, that saves on air conditioning costs, the air conditioning only coming on for the last few hours of the working day. To make the system work, you have to open the windows overnight to loose the heat, cool the concrete slab and get its temperature down for the next days sun.
Most people go for under floor heating, using a concrete slab, that is well insulated.
I prefer a light weight UFH system as it responds more quickly when you are trying to cool down.
Having found in the past that when the sun comes out, you cannot turn a concrete slab down.
