Heating a Village Hall with Electricity

coolagarry

The heaters in our Village Hall have given up the ghost and have to be replaced (about 8 fan heater types attached to the wall). They were fairly inefficient and noisy.
Is there a better option for heating a large space?
We only have electricity as a power source

Inactive

Storage Heaters on Economy7.

brig001

Talk to your local council. They may have grants for community schemes like this where you could fit a heat pump, add insulation and generally improve its efficiency. They like schemes like this because it gives the community an energy efficient focus and improvements tend to follow in you own houses.
This http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/cafe/Green-Communities/Guidance-and-useful-tools/Case-Studies might give you an idea where to start.

vivatifosi

Taking what brig001 has said forward, many county councils give their councillors £10000 per year to grant to community schemes. This could be the type of scheme they are looking for, and you may be able to double up with some other work on the hall to benefit the local community. It's worth contacting your county councillor to see whether they operate such a scheme. Good luck!

sandiep

If there is no mains gas, consider an oil fired system. Usually works out long term much cheaper than electricity.

Jonesya

Definitely worth looking at heat pumps, air source heat pumps (either dedicated or as an aircon unit) can have COPs of ~3 eg. for every kwh of electricity you put it you get 3 kwh of heat out, so cutting your electricity bill substantially if you use the heating a lot.

thechippy

Jonesya wrote: »

Definitely worth looking at heat pumps, air source heat pumps (either dedicated or as an aircon unit) can have COPs of ~3 eg. for every kwh of electricity you put it you get 3 kwh of heat out, so cutting your electricity bill substantially if you use the heating a lot.

Totally agree. I install these regularly. The cop can be up to 5.3 these days on the better systems. This will be the most economical route by far and the savings on electricity will be huge.

economiser

If you do use electricity use radiant heaters rather than fan or convector heaters.

vaio

As others have said, heat pumps/air con will be way more efficient and have the estra benfit of summer cooling too.

The down side is capital cost, replacing the fan heaters will cost maybe £100 each, installing air con/hear pumps will coat maybe £1000 each.

Whether it’s worth doing depends on how much the building is used, 8hrs a day every day or one hour a week are easy, in between you have to do the sums.

AdrianW2

If you're feeling radical, a wood chip boiler would be an alternative. Cheaper to run than oil and arguably greener than heat pumps but a hassle to keep topped up.

Our village hall just uses wall mounted convection heaters, and bills anyone who forgets to turn them off.

ormus

time switches are very cheap now. you should never have a problem with heaters left on all night.