Cheapest way to heat one room

lee2k5

Hi All,


I live in a 3 storey 4 bedroom house. My fiance and I are looking to cut back on our heating bill as much as possible. As such, we are going to just use and heat one room whilst at home (evening and weekends as both work full time). Just wondered if it would be best to turn all but one radiator off and have the heating on or consider alternatives such as oil filled radiators or fan heaters?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

samasama

Oil filled radiators give off a great amount of heat compared to how much they cost. Got ours from Dunelm Mill, smaller of the two sizes they do was about £15 last winter. They're much better than convector heaters as they stay warm for ages after you switch them off.

I've no idea what the costs are vs central heating, but when belting out heat the oil filled rads cost about 6p an hour (got an electricity monitor), however they don't carry on for the full hour unless it's very cold out.

If you've got a bigger room, there is a large version, cost about £33 last year. I've got one downstairs and rarely leave it on for more than half hour as it heats the room quickly.

techno12

I've just got an 800w oil-filled radiator to put under my desk while I work.

On it's own it's pretty rubbish, as there's no way it can ever heat a room from cold, but if I put the central heating on for a few hours first then it's superb - it more or less maintains a nice comfortable working temperature for me (I tend to work overnight). Previously the room got a bit cold after 30mins once the CH is off..

As I've only just got it I don't know the cost, but it's clicking on and off half and half, so ought to cost 5p per hour. I'm certain that's a *lot* less than my central heating...

macman

samasama wrote: »

Oil filled radiators give off a great amount of heat compared to how much they cost. Got ours from Dunelm Mill, smaller of the two sizes they do was about £15 last winter. They're much better than convector heaters as they stay warm for ages after you switch them off.

I've no idea what the costs are vs central heating, but when belting out heat the oil filled rads cost about 6p an hour (got an electricity monitor), however they don't carry on for the full hour unless it's very cold out.

If you've got a bigger room, there is a large version, cost about £33 last year. I've got one downstairs and rarely leave it on for more than half hour as it heats the room quickly.

Sorry, but this is not correct. All electric heaters of the same rating give off the same amount of heat and are of the same efficiency (100%), be they oil filled, convectors, or anything else.
A 2kW oil filled rad running full on for one hour will produce 2kWh of heat, as will a convector or fan heater. The former may release the heat over a longer period, due to the the longer warm-up time and the heat soak effect of the oil, but the total heat output 9and therefore the running cost per kWh) will be exactly the same.
Your oil-filled rad (unless it is a 0.5kWh model-most are 2kWh and upwards) cannot possibly cost 6p per hour to run flat out. A 2kW heater running for one hour , assuming standard rate electricity at about 12p per kWh, will cost you 24p.
Gas, by contrast, is about 3.5p per kWh-less than a third of the cost of electricity.
The cheap electricity monitors are notoriously unreliable; if you want to know your real consumption then use the highly accurate meter already installed in your property.

Cardew

samasama wrote: »

Oil filled radiators give off a great amount of heat compared to how much they cost. Got ours from Dunelm Mill, smaller of the two sizes they do was about £15 last winter. They're much better than convector heaters as they stay warm for ages after you switch them off.

They are no better(cheaper) at giving out heat than a convector heater, or any other electrical heater. For the same running cost all electrical heaters give out EXACTLY the same amount of heat.

A fan heater gives out 'instant' heat, which is advantageous in some situations, but no residual heat.

An oil filled radiator is slower to produce heat(as it is warming the oil) but has residual heat.

victor2

Although, as pointed out, gas is much cheaper per kWh than electricity, still heating just one room using electricity can cost less than doing the same with a central heating system.
Even modern gas central heating boilers are nowhere near 100% efficient, say more like 75%. Even with all radiators off except the one you want on (and probably one in the system which has to be permanently on), you are paying to heat around the pipework within the house while on its way to the room you want to heat. And you're using a relatively small amount of electricity for the heating pump.
The best way to find out the cost is use your meter to see how much gas you use just heating the one room and cost that. Do it over a week or so to get an average in similar weather conditions, both with and without the heating on.
That gives you an idea of what it is costing you. Compare that to running a 2KW heater for a few hours. Worst case is that it will use 2kWh for every hour it is on, but in reality a thermostatically controlled one will use considerably less.

When I'm alone in a 4 bed house in the day, and it's particularly cold outside, I have a little £10 fan heater in the one small room I use most, to provide a bit of instant warmth. Of course, as soon as I switch it off, the warmth goes, but it does the job for me and lets me leave the central heating set to warm the entire house as and when needed, without messing about with turning certain radiators off etc.

Norman_Castle

The cheap electricity monitors are notoriously unreliable

I understand the cable connect, whole house monitors are not very accurate. The plug in monitors claim a high accuracy. If anyone has any accuracy tests on these I would be interested in them.

macman

The one that samsama is using is clearly inaccurate if it suggests that an oil filled rad costs 6p per hour.

grahamc2003

macman wrote: »

The one that samsama is using is clearly inaccurate if it suggests that an oil filled rad costs 6p per hour.

I want one of those! Blasts out heat for 6p per hour!

As to the question about whether it's cheaper to heat just one room with electricity or a whole house with gas - well with that limited information, I'd say it's down to probabilities. I'd say for a normal 4 bed, then it would be cheaper to heat one room (out of eight) with electricity. If it's a bedsit, then it's almost certainly cheaper to heat the whole home, since it's only one room. Probably marginal if the house is a two up two down.

Whether heating one room with electricity (assuming non-e7) is cheaper than heating one room with gas CH is again down to probabilities with many factors, Victor2 illustrated some of them. One perhaps not so obvious is the extra electric heating required due to extra heat loss to the neighbouring un heated rooms, and the possibly change in behaviour due to the rest of the house being cold (i.e. you may end up heating 2 rooms with electricity instead of one!).

I'd do a test trying the two methods (on days with similar ambient temperatures and weather) and simply work out the cost of each. One things for sure though - you'll always get around 3 times the amount of heat from gas than from the same cost in electricity.

toolmaker54

macman wrote: »

The one that samsama is using is clearly inaccurate if it suggests that an oil filled rad costs 6p per hour.

Perhaps samsama having posted

"I've no idea what the costs are vs central heating, but when belting out heat the oil filled rads cost about 6p an hour (got an electricity monitor), however they don't carry on for the full hour unless it's very cold out."

Means on this particular day, with the heater reaching the set temperature the thermostat was kicking in and out, and it was only costing him 6p an hour.

grahamc2003

toolmaker54 wrote: »

Perhaps samsama having posted

"I've no idea what the costs are vs central heating, but when belting out heat the oil filled rads cost about 6p an hour (got an electricity monitor), however they don't carry on for the full hour unless it's very cold out."

Means on this particular day, with the heater reaching the set temperature the thermostat was kicking in and out, and it was only costing him 6p an hour.

It may well only cost 6p/h, but if it does, it won't be 'belting out heat' as he/she wrote - it will be heating at an average of about 500W, which is a very low rate of heating.