Best for Heating Efficiency?

Zakkaroo

I have a couple of questions about the most efficient way to heat our house. I'll describe the setup we have right now.

2 Bed Terraced house. Combi boiler.
Main Bedroom is used for sleeping in! 2nd bedroom is only used for storage.
Other rooms: Landing / Stairs / small Hallway - Radiator in the hallway
Bathroom w/ radiator
Large kitchen w/ radiator
Small Living room w/ Gas Fireplace (no radiator)

At the moment we have the radiator in the kitchen and spare room turned off.

Questions:

1) With no radiator in the living room, putting the heating on is only useful when we're going to bed, so we use the gas fire. But we're under the impression it's not very efficient / cost effective. Are there any better ways to heat the living room? Electric plug-in heater for example?

2) Does it save much money turning off radiators in the rooms where we don't use them, like the spare room?

davecampbell

It depends on the efficiency of your fire.
Electricity costs 3 times as much as gas so, unless you have a very old, inefficient fire, gas should be best.
Modern gas fires can be 90% efficient, although some modern, hang on the wall designs, are more for show and to compement CH.
I have CH and fire and find that I don't need the room as warm when using the fire - the radiant heat warms me up directly.
But I am on my own and it may be different with a family spread around the room.

Dave

tr8

you say you have a combi boiler.
Best would be to have a radiator added to the lounge.
Beware if you have some rooms hot and another much colder it will end up getting damp as the air will cool.
You may get away with it in the spare room if the door is rarely opened.