Heating one room only

GreenFairy

I have gas heating and it works out cheaper to turn that on than to have an electric heater.
I have it on a timer (max 4 hours a day, even in proper Winter weather, and it usually doesn't go on at all until November) and only have rads on in the bedroom and living room. Kitchen gets heated when I cook and if we're having overnight guests I'll turn on the rad in that room the night before to make sure there's no chill in there. Goes off again as soon as they depart!

Cardew

YORKSHIRELASS wrote: »

Hi

I have read lots of discussion on this and to me it has got to be cheaper to just heat one room rather than a whole house, although others may disagree. We use an oil filled radiator on a thermostat in our lounge which gives a good amount of heat and is safe enough to leave unattended. They do take a while to warm up though.

The way that I understand it is that our electric costs 8.5p per kw/h. So a 2kw heater left on full for one hour will cost 17p. I am no expert and someone may be along to correct me on this.

We have oil fired heating which is expensive anyway and I know that last winter we saved money by just heating one room at certain times of the day.

What tariff charges only 8.5p/kWh these days?

A 2 kW heater will use 2kWh an hour unless the thermostat switches off the heater. 17p would be correct if you can indeed get electricity for 8.5p/kWh.

For people with gas CH it would be cheaper than any form of electrical heating to switch off radiators in all the rooms not in use and use CH.

Obviously with oil CH it would be less of a saving and depend on the efficiency of your boiler, but for most people oil will still be cheaper.

To answer the OP's original point, it really is important to be aware that ALL forms of electrical heating cost EXACTLY the same to run, for the same heat output.

aelitaman

This depends on many factors and is off course specific to each individual house and heating installation. It depends on outside air temperature, how the boiler works, how large the central heating core loop is and how efficient the boiler is.

So being a sad person I measure my gas usage in different scenarios and one was the question that the OP asked, if I just want to heat one room what is the most efficient way GCH or 2KW electic fire.

So When I fire up my boiler the gas the boiler uses depends on the temp outside, if the temp is between 10C and 5C then it will use about 1.6 cubic meters if below zero it will use 2.1 cubic metres.

So taking the lower figure this is 1.6 x 11.1 = 17.76 Kwh (point here is are boilers really inefficient when starting up because this is a lot of energy?)

So cost is 17.76 x 4.2 = 74.5p

Equivalent elecy in Kwh is 74.5p / 14p = 5.13 Kw of elecy for the cost of the gas of turning the boiler on.

So for one hours usage of the GCH ican use the 2 kwh elecy heater for 5.13 / 2 = 2.56 hours (2hr 33mins)

This is one of my cutoff points to use the heater or the GCH, but obviously the radiators keep giving off heat after the coiler shuts down whereas the electric fire will not so the other decision criteria is will running the elecy heater for a short period of time mean that the room stays warm enough for the rest of time I spend in the room.

Also my situation is that I can not run only one radiator, I have tried, I have a large boiler 35Kw (twice the size of most boilers) and if I have just one radiator the boiler goes of full pelt and before any hot water has reached the radiator the return central heating water is at a temp where the boiler turns of the flame and stops heating the CH water. Consequence the one radiator on never gets hot. I have to have at least 4 large radiators on to get any heat to the radiators.

So I use the elecy fire to keep the chill of the air until it gets cold outside and then use the GCH.

To the OP you will only ever know the answer to your question if you measure your gas useage.

So when you want to heat one room for a period of time turn the GCH and measure the gas used. Do he calculation like I did above and you will know how long you can have the elecy fire on for the same money.

Forgot to add that when GCH is up to temp and just keeping the house at a constant temp the boiler uses less gas per house for the whole house than haveing a 2Kw electric heater on for an hour.

lisa701

Increasing bills meant we tried all manner of ways to heat the house but found the cheapest was to leave the heating on 24 hours a day but on the lowest setting (gas central heating & combi boiler).

We thought an oil filled radiator switched on for a couple of hours in the room we were mainly in was a good idea, but found the electric bill came to more than the gas bill for heating the whole house. It wasnt a particuarly powerful one either so not sure what went wrong there.

[Deleted User]

op you could have individual thermostats fitted to each radiotor and turn them up and down as required,would cost about £30 per rad to have fitted but cheaper long run than most alternatives

snowleopard61

We thought an oil filled radiator switched on for a couple of hours in the room we were mainly in was a good idea, but found the electric bill came to more than the gas bill for heating the whole house. It wasnt a particuarly powerful one either so not sure what went wrong there.

That is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to know, because this is the sort of option I was particularly considering - thank you very much.

Thank you to everyone who has posted. I think the general consensus is that central heating only, turning off/down any radiators that can be turned off/down (one small one, probably!), is the best bet. I shall probably do as I did last winter - turn it on only when unavoidable and rely on blankets and hot water bottles on the sofa as much as possible!