Central Heating or Portable Heater?

temin

With the cold spell on, I'm trying to think of ways to reduce my energy bill and wanted to know, given that only the living room is in use all day in a 3 bed end of terrace house, is it cheaper to:

- keep the central heating on all day at the required temperature ie 20C or
- keep the central heating on at a much lower temeperature, say 16-17C and then top up the heating of the room being used with an oil filled radiator

whowants2brich

NOTE TO ALL - ASSUMPTIONS AND ROUNDING MADE, but I hope they're not too inaccurate...!

When you have 10 minutes, time how long it takes your gas meter to go round 0.1 units, ie 1kwh. One mine, it's just over 3.5 minutes. This means that I'm using 1 unit (11.3kwh) in just over half an hour, or approx 20kwh an hour. @ 4p/kwh (averaged between tiers 1 and 2), that makes 80p/hour.

If the boiler fires up for half the time, and cuts out due to the thermostat controls for the other half, then that's 40p/hour for the central heating. With a 2kwh portable heater (or two smaller portable heaters, @ 15p/kwh for electric, that works out at 30p/hour to heat the one room you're in, and you can turn it on/off/up/down as and when you need to to regulate the heat as necessary.

If you heat the one room you're in, then there are two points to note:

a) your property won't lose as much heat, since only one room is losing heat to the outside. with some of the walls losing heat internally, it'll be heating up your house a bit, too.

b) crucially, the rest of the property will feel much cooler than the lounge, so be careful about going between rooms. you'll find that the rest of the property will be unbearably cold, unless you maintain the lounge temperatuere to be warm and bearable instead of comfortably toasty. (we go for 18-19c so as to not feel the temp change in the rest of the house quite as much). And we have a gas fire in our lounge, so we only actually pay 10p/hour to heat our lounge, since it only uses 2.5kwh!

40-50p/hour for gas central heating for the whole house, inc heat loss and inefficiency, vs 30p/hour for electric portable heaters to heat the one room you need at 100% efficiency...

McKneff

I remember many years ago we only had a coal fire in one room. The rest of the house felt absolutely freezing. I remember it only too well.
We had a dormer bedroom window and it used to freeze on the inside, often we couldnt see out of it for months cos it never thawed out.
When it did the window sills used to be swimming in water.

Central heating for me every time. brrrr

Nobody, surely stays in one room all day. What about cooking, cleaning other rooms, toilet.

Over 3 months or so, it surely cant make that much monetary difference.

temin

I'll try monitoring the gas meter for both scenarios and see if it really makes a big difference to not keep the whole house well heated.
I must say the thought of a cold loo just made me think twice lol!!

YORKSHIRELASS

Hi, we have just been forced to live without central heating for 5 days after running out of heating oil. We were able to maintain the heat in our main room using the open fire and an electric heater as back up but it was pretty miserable.

If you are sitting in one room watching telly on an evening then its fine but when you are moving about during the day, eating meals in the kitchen, having a bath or a shower, getting into bed at night then you really do need to have the heating on.

Its surprising just how cold the house gets in the current temperatures without central heating. I think a combination of using the heating sparingly and having a second source of heat for your main room is ideal.

Bear in mind your type of house as well. Ours is old and draughty so that makes a difference!

temin

It must have been awful not having any central heating at all - I've stocked up on blankets, hot water bottles and and the portable heater just in case!
It's sooo cold at the moment that I'm throwing all caution to the wind and have the central heating on all the time!! I just lower the temp at night - I'll try and save money in other ways...