Home Heating Strategy

steve_church

I work from home so I only need to heat one room. We have gas central heating. Two main questions -
(1) Is it best to keep all the doors shut and have the central heating off during working hours, heating the office with one small electric heater or should the central heating just be ticking over all day at a low level?
(2) What's the most energy efficient (therefore low cost) type of individual heater?

Thanks

Steve

pooch

steve_church wrote: »

I work from home so I only need to heat one room. We have gas central heating. Two main questions -
(1) Is it best to keep all the doors shut and have the central heating off during working hours, heating the office with one small electric heater or should the central heating just be ticking over all day at a low level?
(2) What's the most energy efficient (therefore low cost) type of individual heater?

Thanks

Steve

If you only need to heat one room, then keeping the door closed and just heating that room would be cheaper than heating the whole house.

Of course, should you ever open that door (e.g to obtain refreshments or for a comfort break) all the heat from that warm room will rapidly transfer to the cooler rooms, or possibly the whole house.

It doesn't really matter what the differential in temperatures is, any differential will result in heat transfer.

Electrical heating is the most efficient, being almost 100%.
But that's not necessarily the cheapest
e.g. 1kWh of electricity typically costs 10-15p whilst 1 kWh of gas only typically costs 3-6p

What kind of individual heater are you considering if not electric? Bottled gas is obviously a lot more expensive than mains supply (and such types of heaters have other drawbacks). Have you considered turning off the radiators in the house in the rooms you do not use?