personal Fan Heaters vs Central Heating (student house)?

5tarving

Hello there,
I've not been able to find any other posts which are like this issue specifically, and apologize if there are in which case I'd be happy to have a look at it. If not, here is my post:

I know it seems like an obvious question, electric vs gas heating, but here are my circumstances:

I live in a rented house as a student with 4 other students, and for the first quarter of the year we decided to have no gas at all (shower, cookers, etc are electric) and see how we fare. During the cold times we decided to heat ourselves with personal fan heaters or electric heaters, our reasoning being as follows:

If we use them sensibly to heat ourselves and not the entire room, the usage/cost would not be too bad. Our house is not insulated well at all and our windows are single-glasing, so if we had central heating it seems a lot would be wasted, and we would waste a lot of gas just trying to maintain a steady temperature. In addittion, we aren't all always in the house, so personal fan heaters would only be on when a person is in the house and actually turns it on.

In short, fan heaters would be used sparingly to heat very specific spots, so would that be cheaper than central heating which would always be on everywhere?


We were all a bit concerned as the bill for the first quarter for electricity was nearly £400, so I thought I'd ask here what other people's opinions are. We are divided now as to whether to get central heating now or to stick with the electric heaters and just be more sensible with them (as we probably have been a bit liberal with them so far).

Thoughts? As for me I grew up in the tropics and have zero experience with heating and its management so I feel particularly lost! Any helpful advice would be appreciated.
Thank you

P.S: We are pretty sure it is the electric heaters bloating the cost, as we are all pretty sensible with our electricity use otherwise (turn off lights, and electronics at the plug, etc) So I am just talking about the heating in this post, but am aware of other potential energy-suckers.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum?

I assume none of you are taking science degrees;)

Seriously the cost of electricity is three to four times the cost of gas.

That said, the efficiency of gas boilers can reduce that advantage quite a bit, but even in a worse case scenario gas will be half the price of electricity for heating.

One problem with student accomotation in houses is that some of the students live in rooms that were originally bedrooms. The radiators in these are sized so that they do not achieve the same temperature as those lucky enough to have the living rooms; so it may be that a little additional heating is required.

But in general terms always heat with gas.

P.S.
CH does not require to be on everywhere - radiators can be shut off when a room is unoccupied.

Magentasue

We have a three bed mid terrace Victorian house. We moved in Feb and used plug in electric heaters and one gas fire. Our electic bill was sky high - we used immersion heater too - but we expected this as we've been all-electric before. In May, we had gas CH put in and have been using that this winter. To be honest, the combined gas and electric bill is not much less than we were paying for electricity when we moved in. However, our house is warm, the basthroom is no longer damp and we have all the hot water we need. With plug in heaters and the gas fire, we were warm enough in the sitting room in the evenings but couldn't afford to heat the bedrooms. It was freezing in the mornings and we couldn't heat the bathroom enough to keep damp at bay.

5tarving

Cardew wrote: »

Welcome to the forum?

I assume none of you are taking science degrees;)

Seriously the cost of electricity is three to four times the cost of gas.
...

But in general terms always heat with gas.

P.S.
CH does not require to be on everywhere - radiators can be shut off when a room is unoccupied.

Thanks for the welcome, this was indeed my first post. And you are right, none of us are doing science degrees :P
Thank you very much for the advice, I'll be referring my housemates to this thread and hopefully we can have a good discussion about this. I personally think we should go for gas, as I've seen other examples of much lower bills, but I suppose we will have to take a vote or something.

Magentasue wrote: »

We have a three bed mid terrace Victorian house. We moved in Feb and used plug in electric heaters and one gas fire. Our electic bill was sky high - we used immersion heater too - but we expected this as we've been all-electric before. In May, we had gas CH put in and have been using that this winter. To be honest, the combined gas and electric bill is not much less than we were paying for electricity when we moved in. However, our house is warm, the bathroom is no longer damp and we have all the hot water we need. With plug in heaters and the gas fire, we were warm enough in the sitting room in the evenings but couldn't afford to heat the bedrooms. It was freezing in the mornings and we couldn't heat the bathroom enough to keep damp at bay.

Thank you, so you also reckon gas is an overall better option. Our bathroom gets so cold as I'm sure you could relate to, having no heating, so getting out of the shower is more like a race than a refreshing new start!

richardc1983

Using fan heaters as a personal heater is not a solution, the heat is still going to be lost into the room, if your sat in a little box and ur heating urself at least ur containing the box but heating a corner that ur sat in is pointless. U might as well just have the central heating on sensibly. Get your landlord to service the boiler and radiators to check they are working effectively. Dont have the boiler turned up too high, maintain a temp of about 20C in the living areas and wrap up warm if your still cold.