whats the equivilent of scangauge for house heat loss simulation?
 

Hi

whats the equivilent of scangauge for house heat loss?

what i want is a data logger like scangauge that measures heat energy used (gas) and all the temperatures in all the rooms and outside.

then i can play around with the thermostat and see if i can save.

or

a simulator software spreadsheet which calculates the heat loss in the house? so i can play with it and simulate different senarios.

i know the uk .gov site has a bit where you can enter the EPC certificate of the house and simulate adding extra insulation etc, but i want more functionality.

hope someone can help

Mod, have you seen the EcoRenovator forum?
For starters, check out the Tools subforum and the Home energy data logging project thread.

...any commercial, readily available products?

It seems like building a thermostat that has data logging as to how often it comes on and for how long would be the best route, because what else is there to track? you can't really track air exchange rates or heat loss all you can do is track energy used and if your furnace is using that fuel then tracking how often it comes on and for how long will give you the info you are asking for.

FWIW--I'm using a multi-channel Oregon Scientific "wireless" Weather Station to monitor temperatures and HVAC "on/off" cycles through out our house since we just switched from evaportative cooler (28 years) over to airconditioning (less than a year). Using wireless TEMP/RH sensors in EACH room to monitor total house for hot/cold spots and one actually placed just "inside" the HVAC outlet duct closest to the HEATER--A/C unit to get rough "temperature" output curves.

Also, when the new A/C was installed had to have the main service box upgraded from 100A to 200A so the local power company replaced the old original spinning "dials" watt-hour-meter with a new digital readout unit...and I've been tracking and plotting both 'hourly' and daily consumption rates over the summer.

Pretty much every type of automatic heating system uses electricity, hot water heat has pumps that come on, hot air heat has blower fans that come on, so unless you heat with wood or passive solar or maybe have an old steam heating system that doesn't have any pumps, just a boiler, all of your heat loss can be tracked back to electrical use, by putting a device on your heating system like the Watts Up Pro power meter with data logging, or the TED 5000 home energy use meter you can track what your heating system is doing and how often it is coming on at what points in the day, this would be useful in learning how well a programmable thermostat works, or how much energy it takes to raise the temp in your house a few degrees or how long it takes for your house to drop to a new lower temp, all by tracking how long it takes for your heating system to kick on again or how long it stays on, most heating systems also have a BTU per hour rating so you can get an idea of how many BTU's it takes to increase the temp in your house.

I've had good experience with this data logger: HOBO U12 Data Loggers: Measure Temp, RH & More - Onset