No Central Heating - Please Help

danielleg3

Please can someone help..

I have recently moved into an old, rented, farmhouse with my family (two adults and three Kids) and the house is starting to get rather chilly.

There is no central heating in the house but we have two living fires, one in the living room and the other im my bedroom.

The problem is that the whole house, except the living room, is starting to get quite cold and I'm starting to fear the not too far off winter. Can someone give me a little bit of advice on heating options? I'm kind of baffled on oil filled or convector and dont really want to be spending hundreds a month when I am already having to spend quite a bit on coal.

A big issue with the heating is that there is no insulation in the house. We did insulate the upstairs rooms when we moved in but downstaris a lot of the heat is dissapearing. I think we will probably need a heater in the downstairs hall and two in the upper bedrooms but just need a little advice on which would be the best and cheapest. I'm really hoping I can run three for less than £20 a week???

hostie

Like you, I live in a cottage with solid fuel and insulation upstairs only. I supplement it with two oil filled radiators which plug in. They cost 19.99 each and seem to be really cheap to run. I put them in the two rooms that I generally use and have them running most of the time.

I would suggest that you buy the biggest oil filled radiators that you can find as the bigger ones give off more heat. Make sure you have thick curtains too.

macman

All electric heating costs the same, as it's efficiency is the same: 100%.
What are your other options? how is your hot water heated-immersion heater?
If the loft is not insulated, that is the very first ting to sort out, but surely that is your landlord's responsibility?

manda1205

We've lived like that all our lives, except one fire in the living room(we wer lucky enough to get a grant last year and now have oil central heating). I suggest getting electric heaters, convector or oil filled, if you're like us though they will cost you a lot to keep you warm, you have to get used to keeping doors shut (my friends would come round and be so shocked when we'd shout "shut the doors the heats going out"), thick curtains help a lot, go round the house and shut them at about 3pm, also we had hot water bottles at night so we didnt keep the heaters on.

Harper09

Hi this is my first post!
We are interested in a 3 bed semi-detatched property. It needs some work. The main issue being it has no heating. It has a back boiler system currently installed. (A lot of pipes going down the wall) Don't know much about this. The village has no gas. So it's either got to be storage heaters, or a wet central heating system. Not sure which would be best or which would be most cost effective. Have only been looking into it for last few days but still a bit confused. It would be REALLY nice if we could get a wood burner in as it has a chimney.

Any ideas or anyone who has been in a similar situation please let me know.

Thanks x

albyota

harper09.......This is your perfect opportunity to install the most efficient heating system, get this wrong and you will be paying very high bills in the future, I would advise you research air source heat pumps as the heating source, along with a wet radiator central heating system.
If you need any help or advice, let me know.

lamplighter2

danielleg3 wrote: »

Please can someone help..

I have recently moved into an old, rented, farmhouse with my family (two adults and three Kids) and the house is starting to get rather chilly.

There is no central heating in the house but we have two living fires, one in the living room and the other im my bedroom.

The problem is that the whole house, except the living room, is starting to get quite cold and I'm starting to fear the not too far off winter. Can someone give me a little bit of advice on heating options? I'm kind of baffled on oil filled or convector and dont really want to be spending hundreds a month when I am already having to spend quite a bit on coal.

A big issue with the heating is that there is no insulation in the house. We did insulate the upstairs rooms when we moved in but downstaris a lot of the heat is dissapearing. I think we will probably need a heater in the downstairs hall and two in the upper bedrooms but just need a little advice on which would be the best and cheapest. I'm really hoping I can run three for less than £20 a week???

go to a local electric supplier wholsale and get a couple of radion heaters they have three lamps that heat up but on low wattage and it spins in a arc so warms the air around rather than direct when i got mine it was about £20 you can fell the warmth after 1o mins of use and can turn it down to two or one lamp. or look at what the hire companys hire its called a big red the heat that come from them you have to switch it off after a while as it gets to hot what they cost i do not know once again electric whole saler should be able to help

downshifter

danielleg3 wrote: »

Please can someone help..

I have recently moved into an old, rented, farmhouse with my family (two adults and three Kids) and the house is starting to get rather chilly.

There is no central heating in the house but we have two living fires, one in the living room and the other im my bedroom.

The problem is that the whole house, except the living room, is starting to get quite cold and I'm starting to fear the not too far off winter. Can someone give me a little bit of advice on heating options? I'm kind of baffled on oil filled or convector and dont really want to be spending hundreds a month when I am already having to spend quite a bit on coal.

A big issue with the heating is that there is no insulation in the house. We did insulate the upstairs rooms when we moved in but downstaris a lot of the heat is dissapearing. I think we will probably need a heater in the downstairs hall and two in the upper bedrooms but just need a little advice on which would be the best and cheapest. I'm really hoping I can run three for less than £20 a week???

I'm in a similar position, old rented stone house on side of cold hill with cold winds blowing from all directions. I paid to have roof insulated and it was the best thing ever! Then coal/wood fire downstairs which although cheapish to run, doesn't throw out much heat but psychologically makes me feel better to look at! A multifuel stove would be wonderful but in a rented house this would be too expensive to install. I have a couple of 2kw convector heaters which I got from Argos for around £20 each, as long as you keep the doors etc shut (try telling that to the dog and cat who immediately want to go through as soon as you shut them!!) and heavy curtains, then I keep individual rooms warm. I have one in the living kitchen and another in the lounge but actually don't use that room in winter. They cost around 25p an hour to run, so I reckon in winter, to spend around a pound a day, which I can afford. In the bedroom I have a fan heater which I just use for 10 mins after the shower, a quick blast in the morning so I can get dressed. Though I wish there was a way of heating the bathroom, the toilet seat is painful! Oil filled radiators cost more to buy initially (though Netto have some on offer this week, 2kw heaters for under £30 each.) I wouldn't buy less than 2kw as you can always turn them down, if you get something that is lower than that, you can't exactly turn them up! They give out a longer background heat but take ages to warm up the room so that's not the kind of heat I want but may suit you better. Those horrible halogen bright light things don't heat anything much, they are supposed to heat you and not the room which is probably fine if you sit still but moving around keeps you warm. And the bright light is blinding!

If you look at the preparing for winter II thread, (https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/37819762#Comment_37819762) there are masses and masses and masses of brilliant ideas for keeping warm - in fact last year in the heavy snow some of the ideas kept me alive I'm sure!!! Insulation makes a huge difference too, not just to bills but to your comfort too. Get lots of foam round windows/doors, snakes for under doors, bubble wrap double glazing, double and treble lined curtains everywhere, electric blankets, lots of layers under top sheet of mattress, fleecy pjs, getting dressed/undressed in the warmest room and so on, it's all on that thread!

Good luck, I feel your pain....as they say....and lots of others are in the same boat, which actually quite shocks me in this day and age

DS

Poosmate

Ditto Downshifter! I too am shocked at how many properties still don't have "modern" heating. I thought I was the only one on earth that didn't have central heating!

I just have a crappy, cold gas fire in my lounge which I can put on and stand directly in front of and not get burnt! A couple of years ago I was trying to save some dough so decided to put a coat on instead of the gas fire. BIG MISTAKE! The whole house got so cold that by December I found it impossible to reheat it.

I took some temperatures in my house - bathroom 7.5 degrees!!!, bedroom 9.5, kitchen 11-12 and lounge 13! This was at about 7.00pm when I got home from work with no heat on during the days. I'd get home from work and put the gas fire on and the temps would raise by about 2 degrees in all rooms except the lounge which rose to about 16-17. I have to sleep in the lounge as the bedrooms are just too cold.

I have curtains everywhere and always drawn! I even seal up the garage door (in the kitchen) with masking tape/sellotape/electrical tape/ whatever I have tape and then put a sheet up against it too (don't have any more curtains).

Last year I bought a couple of oil filled radiators, a small 1kw one for the landing and use it in the bathroom before taking a shower (it goes back out on the landing before I take the shower), and a 1.5kw for the kitchen. I used them as and when I needed them last year and they didn't seem to use too much, I think my leccy bill for the worst 6 months was about £160 - but I am very frugal with electric everywhere else.

I thought this year I might put the oil filled radiators on timers and have them come on over night using the cheap electric on Economy 7 and turn the gas fire off when I go to bed.

I think there is a danger of leaving unused rooms completely void of heat as they tend to leach heat from wherever it's being generated. Or maybe that's just my house?

Poo

moneysaverbloke

macman wrote: »

All electric heating costs the same, as it's efficiency is the same: 100%.
What are your other options? how is your hot water heated-immersion heater?
If the loft is not insulated, that is the very first ting to sort out, but surely that is your landlord's responsibility?

not quite true though - all electrical heaters are 100% energy efficient - at the point of energy useage - so what this means is that no electricity goes to waste whereas a gas boiler system wastes a lot of the generated heat energy through the flu and also the associated pipework etc.

All electrical heating does not cost the same to run though. A bar heater, convector heater, or other cheap panel or bulb heater may often consume it's full output capacity all of the time that it's used, other more sophisticated electric radiators can maintain the same level of heat but only use about a third of the electricity.

This is largely down to the accuracy of the controls, the thermostat, the programmability, and the heat-up times as well as the partial storage capability of the material used inside the heater if any.

There is also then the physical design of the heat exchange surface - how the equipment actually transfers the heat energy - whether it's radiant, convected, combined, fan convected or even infrared - and furthermore the surface area of the equipment. Electrical heating is defintitely more complex than a simple case of 100% energy efficient. This is the reason that some 2kw heaters cost four or five times as much as others. As an ex heating engineer i fitted lots of systems which gave very diferent results. Hope this makes sense.

downshifter

Thank you so much for explaining all that - I'm really fed up with people saying all electric heaters are the same every time someone asks about which heater they should get! While it may be true, there are all the other variables that you have described, and I would hate it if people ran a 2kw fan heater all day thinking it cost the same as a 2kw oil-filled heater having read one of those 'all electric heaters are the same' - type answers.

What people really want to know is which is the most efficient and cheapest one for the kind of heat that best suits them, and you've explained that so well.

Every time I see the unhelpful message about all elec heaters being the same, I shall refer them to your answer, one of the most helpful on this forum!

DS