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Katalin Osz

Understanding Heating Practices: The Example of TRV Use

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Why radiators and TRVs?

Overview

Sensory ethnography and building energy monitoring

(Re)defining heating practices

The concept of improvisation and how practices change

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Space heating accounts for 66% of total energy consumption in the UK housing sector

Why Thermostatic Radiator Valves (TRVs)?

Heating energy savings achieved through retrofitting can be remarkably lower than calculated

Installing TRVs is now a legally binding practice for every new built and existing property with a boiler replacement in the UK

Households are expected to make significant savings through controlling individual radiators

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Questions….

How people control radiators and TRVs at home under real life circumstances?

What can householder’s use of radiators and TRVs say about the way these technologies are designed?

Is space heating always routinized and habitual?

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Sensory Ethnography and Building Energy Monitoring

Capturing the flow of everyday life

What makes a home feel right? (sensory aesthetics)

Movement of interaction with control points

Home video tours

Gas and electricity consumption data

Weather data

Indoor temperature profiles

Thermography of radiators

Building energy monitoring

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Householder’s relationship with radiators and TRVs

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(Re)defining heating practices

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The improvisatory nature of heating practices

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Improvisatory heating practices

A point of intersection that brings together materiality, human knowledge, meaning-making, skills, creative resourcefulness, and the surrounding physical environment

How human creativity can bring irregularity and change in routine practices

It highlights discrepancy between stereotypical assumptions, pre-determined design and actual use

A communicative medium because they are the users’ way of contributing to the design process

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Thank you for your attention.

E-mail: K.Osz@lboro.ac.uk