Oil radiator or Central Heating

thelordharry

Hi All,

I've been pondering a situation recently regarding heating. I ask my question and then explain my situation so it might make a bit of sense.

It's 10pm, my family has gone to bed and the CH has gone off. I'm going to be up until probably mid-night. What would be the cheaper thing to do

1) Turn the CH back on again and heat the whole house
2) Switch on my 750w thermostat oil radiator for the duration

I know, the cheapest thing would be to wrap up like an eskimo but I'm kind of asking 'in theory'.

Mine is a 4 bedroom house with a newish combi-boiler (installed 2008) but it has to be said, the piping is probably terribly inefficient and even when the CH is on full blast, on the coldest of winters days it can get quite cold in the house. Please also assume standard gas and electric prices and frankly, the house could be much better insulated than it is (I'm on that too).

To my mind, with me only occupying one room and therefore only needing to heat only one corner of the house, it would be significantly (?) cheaper to use the electric radiator? Does that sound right? Have I missed any glaringly obvious points?

Thanks in advance and as I'm fairly sure this is my first post, pleased to meet you all

benjus

It may be overkill, but one of my colleagues was recommending these: http://www.saveonheatingbills.co.uk/ - programmable thermostats for each radiator, allowing each room to have its own automatic heating programme. So it should be possible to set the upstairs radiators to shut off at 10pm, but let others stay on late.

The electric radiator will cost you about 10p per hour to run; running the central heating with just one radiator should cost less, but then you have the cost of the initial investment. You might want to experiment a little to see how many units of gas it costs to run the full central heating for an hour and work out how much it is costing you.

thelordharry

Benjus, thank you for taking the time to reply. An interesting point about the programmable thermostats that I was not aware of that I'll look into.

Like you say, seeing how many units fly by with the CH on and multiply them by the unit price would also be a good guide. I get the impression that although utility bills have skyrocketed in recent years, electricity is more expensive than gas.

Maybe I'll just plug it into the neighbour's extension lead that's outside for his Christmas decorations :rotfl:

macman

thelordharry wrote: »

Benjus, thank you for taking the time to reply. An interesting point about the programmable thermostats that I was not aware of that I'll look into.

Like you say, seeing how many units fly by with the CH on and multiply them by the unit price would also be a good guide. I get the impression that although utility bills have skyrocketed in recent years, electricity is more expensive than gas.

Maybe I'll just plug it into the neighbour's extension lead that's outside for his Christmas decorations :rotfl:

It's not an impression, A kWH of gas is about 3.5p, a kWh of standard rate electricity is about 10.5p-about 3 times as much.

Equaliser123

macman wrote: »

It's not an impression, A kWH of gas is about 3.5p, a kWh of standard rate electricity is about 10.5p-about 3 times as much.

True. But if only one room needs to be heated and the OP can't be faffed running around switching all the other rads off (and then back on before the morning), an oil filled rad would make more sense.

thelordharry

Well there you go. Food for thought, certainly. Time to rip out the electric oven and hobs eh!

Makes me glad I've signed up to Southern Electric's plan that sends you a dalek looking thing that clamps onto the meter and tells you how much you're using/how much you've used etc. I think it's the only way I'm going to get the message across to the Mrs who likes to have all the lights/TVs/Computers etc on whether she's using them or not.

macman

These power meters are not accurate, especially at low readings. You already have a device that accurately tells you how much you are using-it's called an electricity meter.

thelordharry

Because of the said ineffecient piping etc, the rads are all balanced as best they can be. It wouldn't bother me so much to turn them all off but it would be a PITA trying to balance them all again!

Equaliser123 wrote: »

True. But if only one room needs to be heated and the OP can't be faffed running around switching all the other rads off (and then back on before the morning), an oil filled rad would make more sense.

pothole50

If the heating goes off at 10pm then the 750kw oilf filled should be ok to tick over the heating, to quickly heat up a room I always use a convector heater.

thelordharry

That was my line of thinking as well. The CH has done the hard work and all the 750W is doing is keeping that little corner of the house at the same temp...

pothole50 wrote: »

If the heating goes off at 10pm then the 750kw oilf filled should be ok to tick over the heating, to quickly heat up a room I always use a convector heater.