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Night store heaters were very popular in New Zealand a long time ago and you still see them occasionally in older houses. Because of their length they were usu

Night store heaters were very popular in New Zealand a long time ago and you still see them occasionally in older houses. Because of their length they were usually installed in corridors, so they warmed corridors rather than bedrooms or living rooms. I am not sure why stopped being popular but maybe it was the rise of heat pumps which are ubiquitous in most of the country now.

formerly_proven 4y ago
Unpopular because the amount of heating you get tomorrow is set today.
- ericd 4y ago
  It seems like with better automatic controls hooked to weather APIs, this would be a lot less annoying?
  - glic3rinu 4y ago
    Indeed, I recently built one for my old storage heater https://github.com/glic3rinu/SmartStorageHeater https://github.com/glic3rinu/SmartStorageHeater
    - walterbell 4y ago
      Nice work and writeup!
    - ericd 4y ago
      Awesome, thanks for making my hypothetical concrete :-) A while back, I made some stepper motor automatic window openers to let in cool night air and try to cool down all the thermal mass in our place based on whether it was going to be hot the following day, and then closing them when it didn't help to have them open anymore, kind of a similar idea. I like your license :-D
- walterbell 4y ago
  With modern insulation and accurate sizing, heat could be stored longer than one day. Finland's gigantic commercial "sand battery" stores heat for months. Hopefully their techniques can be adapted for smaller use cases, https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61996520 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61996520
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  I wonder why you say this. Having actually had them, they're insulated and you can open/close vents as you choose. And weather is usually pretty predictable; when it's winter it's cold. Oh look, the article even says this: "Today's storage heaters have such good insulation that the only heat coming into the room is from air being blown through the hot core by an ultra-quiet low-speed fan the length of the heater with the warm air coming out of the bottousually m of the heater at floor level - even when the core is full charged the outside of the heater is usually barely warm to the touch - and never hotter than a water-heated radiator"

formerly_proven 4y ago

Unpopular because the amount of heating you get tomorrow is set today.

ericd 4y ago
It seems like with better automatic controls hooked to weather APIs, this would be a lot less annoying?
- glic3rinu 4y ago
  Indeed, I recently built one for my old storage heater https://github.com/glic3rinu/SmartStorageHeater https://github.com/glic3rinu/SmartStorageHeater
  - walterbell 4y ago
    Nice work and writeup!
  - ericd 4y ago
    Awesome, thanks for making my hypothetical concrete :-) A while back, I made some stepper motor automatic window openers to let in cool night air and try to cool down all the thermal mass in our place based on whether it was going to be hot the following day, and then closing them when it didn't help to have them open anymore, kind of a similar idea. I like your license :-D
walterbell 4y ago
With modern insulation and accurate sizing, heat could be stored longer than one day. Finland's gigantic commercial "sand battery" stores heat for months. Hopefully their techniques can be adapted for smaller use cases, https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61996520 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61996520
zasdffaa 4y ago
I wonder why you say this. Having actually had them, they're insulated and you can open/close vents as you choose. And weather is usually pretty predictable; when it's winter it's cold. Oh look, the article even says this: "Today's storage heaters have such good insulation that the only heat coming into the room is from air being blown through the hot core by an ultra-quiet low-speed fan the length of the heater with the warm air coming out of the bottousually m of the heater at floor level - even when the core is full charged the outside of the heater is usually barely warm to the touch - and never hotter than a water-heated radiator"