Using one radiator...is it worth it?

Joyful

A few years ago I was trying to help out an old lady who had very high bills so would not pay them saying we were wrong. When a rep called at her house she showed she only had the bathroom radiator on. He advised her and I that this was costing her more than having them all on a low heat. I needed to get help to prove this to her and he was correct. Once her other radiators were on a low heat her units used were lower.

Mazio_2

My view is that a central heating system becomes more cost efficient the more rooms are heated as there is only one fire and the more rads that are on means a small increase in the time its burning gas in the boiler and if you had heaters in every room you would need to turn them on that means in a 3 bed semi you would potentially need in exccess of 7 fires but if you are only heating 1 room then a single fire in some circumstances could be cheaper. But there is another problem with this and thats duration of the fire being on if you only need to heat a bedroom just before you go to bed with say a gas/electric fire you would only need to switch it on for say 20-30 mins before you enter and central heating would be on for the duration of the timer so could be on all evening even if set low .

If using a gas fire check its efficiency as they can range from below 40% to above 80%.

Every system and install has other variables though eg insulation levels size of rooms etc and really needs to be checked in each instance by the occupier.

louiser123

i agree with joyful and others who say it is cheaper to have the system working throughout the house.
once the boiler is on it fires up and heats the water to hot then flows around the system to each radiator and back to the boiler in a continuous circle flow, if you only have one radiator on in a bedroom say, the rest of the house is cold and each time you openthat door the heat will be lost and the boiler firing up again to re heat. the water is heated to hot regardless of how many radiators you have on so as i was told by my engineer it is far better to allow it to flow through the whole house on low keeping it all warm rather than using the same cost to heat one room, ok it may cost a little more if outside doors are opened ect to go out thus loosing heat and ect but i tried this thinking it would cost less and i agree it actually cost more.

Cardew

Louiser,
You should really read Kim's post #11 about heating a small cupboard.

Your engineer is plain wrong or you have misunderstood.

You don't get 'ought for nought'. Put simply - you pay for the heat you produce.

An analogy is the water system in your house.

Water flows around the pipes in your house. If you open any tap, you use water.

Well in the same way water flows round a Central heating system. If you turn on a radiator, you use hot water. The radiator cools that hot water and it has to be reheated.

louiser123

probs been misinformed then, but i tried this a couple of years ago, when i did eventually ask the engineer as i was using more gas to heat the one living room, ( closed off with door ect) than i did to heat the whole house. i do however have a non combi boiler if that makes any difference,

sensibly_insane

Cardew wrote: »

Louiser,
You should really read Kim's post #11 about heating a small cupboard.

Your engineer is plain wrong or you have misunderstood.

You don't get 'ought for nought'. Put simply - you pay for the heat you produce.

An analogy is the water system in your house.

Water flows around the pipes in your house. If you open any tap, you use water.

Well in the same way water flows round a Central heating system. If you turn on a radiator, you use hot water. The radiator cools that hot water and it has to be reheated.

The water system and the Central heating system are perfectly analogous PROVIDED there is no heat loss from the circulating water in central heating system, as it travels through the piping system in the cold areas/rooms.I am not sure how comparable old systems are with the new ones with regards to the efficiency of heat transfer mechanism.

IMHO, if the heat loss from the piping system is miniscal (which I suppose is the case with new central heating systems), then operating a single radiator will be more economical as compared to turning all the radiators on.

silvercar

Your firing up a large boiler, capable of providing hot water to the whole house, just to keep one radiator warm. That has got to be inefficient. If you are intent on just heating one room, it would be more economical to turn the boiler off and use a single electric heater.

Lalaladybird

Thank you all for your replies. I now have all the radiators on at no.3 on the thermostatic valves on each radiator (as taught to me by Weston Dave:D) and I am keeping the thermostat set to 16 while we are in the house....I switch it all off while we are out. Hopefully that will keep the bills as low as poss :rolleyes:

Cardew

silvercar wrote: »

Your firing up a large boiler, capable of providing hot water to the whole house, just to keep one radiator warm. That has got to be inefficient. If you are intent on just heating one room, it would be more economical to turn the boiler off and use a single electric heater.

On what grounds do you reach that conclusion?

Electricity costs 3 to 4 times as much as gas.

Obviously there will be some losses in the gas boiler, and some heat from the pipes, but never enough to reduce its cost effectiveness to the level of electricity IMO.

Also the heat 'lost' from the boiler fabric and pipes is not really lost as it warms the house.

I would agree that it might make sense to use an electric heater to warm a room for a few minutes, rather than put on CH. However to warm a room for a longer period gas will be cheaper.

I also suspect that many people use gas CH to warm one room during the day/evening, while the radiators in the rest of the house are shut off.

loulou41

If I understand correctly, it is more cost effective to leave all radiators on even in unused bedrooms? I live in a 3 bedrooms semi. It's only two of us, I did switched the thermostat off the radiator in the two spare bedrooms. After reading this post, I have just switched them on again. Thanks