Understanding Heating Practices:
The Example of TRV Use
Katalin Osz
1I
Overview
Why radiators and TRVs?
Sensory ethnography and building energy
monitoring
(Re)defining heating practices
The concept of improvisation and how practices
change
2I
Why Thermostatic Radiator
Valves (TRVs)?
Space heating accounts for 66% of total energy
consumption in the UK housing sector
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
3I
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?
4I
Sensory Ethnography and Building
Energy Monitoring
Home video tours
 Capturing the flow of
everyday life
Building energy monitoring
 Gas and electricity
consumption data
 Weather data
 What makes a home feel
right? (sensory
aesthetics)
 Movement of interaction
with control points
5I
 Indoor temperature
profiles
 Thermography of
radiators
Householder’s relationship with radiators and
TRVs
6I
(Re)defining heating practices
7I
The improvisatory nature of heating practices
8I
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
9I
Thank you for your attention.
E-mail: K.Osz@lboro.ac.uk
10 I