Cheapest way to heat one room

Cardew

samasama wrote: »

Actually the one I have is a 600watt and yes I think it gives out a lot of heat, if you're used to central heating perhaps it wouldn't. I suppose "belting out heat" is relative - I don't put the heating on until it drops below 15º and at that point the heat is noticeable. The heater warms a 10'x12' room to about 18º in about 40mins. My old convector heater was a 2kw and I had to use it far more and yet the rooms were never warm.

Without question your old 2 kW heater(provided it wasn't faulty) would have produced 3.33 times more heat output than your 600watt heater.

It would have raised the temperature from 15C to 18C in a shorter time. However once up to temperature it would cost exactly the same to maintain the room temperature as the 600watt heater would cost. The 600w heater would run for 3.33 times longer.

macman

If the heater is 600W then 6p-7p an hour is not far off. But a heater that is rated at 2kW is putting out about 350% more heat than one rated at 600W, whatever it might feel like.

steve-L

macman wrote: »

A halogen heater is no more and no less efficient than any other electric heater-they are all 100% efficient. Some people say that halogen heating is more 'directional', so it feels warmer, but that doesn't make it any cheaper. So just buy the cheapest you can find.
The running cost per hour will be your unit kWh electricity rate x the kW rating of the heater. So for example a 2kW heater will cost 24p per hour (running full on) if you pay 12p per kWh.

Its not actually true....
Heat generated from electricity is only a part of the energy generated. A old fashioned incandescent light bulb produced mainly heat and some light.... a halogen heater is till producing light in the visible not ALL in the IR spectrum.

Heating elements are just resistors and MOST of the energy is converted to 'heat' however this heat has then got to get from the element into your room. If you could see the element in use it would glow red, hence it is producing visible light ..hence not 100% efficient.
Each phase change from conduction to convection to radiation loses energy.


In terms of heating a single room:
You probably want to keep some heat in the whole house.... if only to prevent pipes freezing however you can set this quite low depending how your central heating is configured.

there are two basic types of central heating.....
1) The heating is all in series... this means the hot water goes from one radiator to the next to the next and gets cooler away from the boiler.
This is old fashioned yet still seen.
2) The heating has a double loop allowing any radiator to be fed independent of the others.

Most modern ones will be type 2 with sometimes 'branches' of type 1 off. (especially if there are extensions)

In the 1st case you can't adjust the radiators, if you close off the ones nearest the boiler no water gets into the ones after!

In the second case you can turn off radiators without affecting others.

1st job is to find out which type you have..... if you don't know easiest way to find out is turn off the radiator closest to the boiler.... (the one gets warm fastest when the heating comes on)
and if the other radiators still warm up you are a happy type 2.

If your type 1 your only hope is to make your cosy room the one where the pipes go 1st!

Next question is where is the thermostat?
If its in the room you want to heat then it may be better moved elsewhere?
If you heat the remaining rooms to 10-15 degrees it doesn't take much heat and you can top this up with electric if required for short periods of time. Its far easier to heat from 15 degrees to a 'on the cold side of pleasant' 18 then from 2 degress to 18.....
It will also prevent the house getting overly damp

Back to electric..... you can heat the room hopefully by having that radiator fully open and the others closed down just enough to keep the rooms aired and dry.
If you find that you need a brief 10 mins top up then fan heaters do this quite quickly then can be turned off.... if you find it needs a more constant top-up the oil filled provide a longer term heat.....
Halogen is directional so you can heat the sofa only.... but the rest of the room will be cooler.....

Finally... you need to cut out drafts from under doors/windows or your just wasting the cosy heat.

steve-L

samasama wrote: »

Free fuel would be great, but it's as rare as hen's teeth! In an area with no mains gas, you're lucky if you see a branch on the ground more than 5 mins after it falls!!! Plus anything falling on farm land belongs to the farmer, all of whom use it for their own fires anyway! Plenty of small bits to use for kindling though. (one local guy bought a small chainsaw and when the wind's up he sets off on the hunt for fallen branches! he beat me to a big branch that was 2mins from my front door a couple of weeks back ... probably just as well as I'd have been there for hours with my handsaw LOL)


I've got a stove with a back boiler that heats upstairs, plus another open fire.

Coal is almost £10 for a 25kg bag - that lasts about a week when it's really cold

Seasoned hardwood is about £150 for 1.5m³ - that probably lasts me about 6 weeks

I recycle old wooden furniture if I can get any, plus I'm one of a lucky few to have handshake deals with a couple of local carpenters so I get the odd dumpy bag of offcuts for £15.

(sorry OP - a bit off-topic!)

If you live on or close to 'a common' you will probably find you have the right to graze sheep and collect dead wood.

I used to live right on one and numerous people (including the golf club that had rights to use the common) tried to prevent me, they used to log the wood up (to sell) and I would just go and collect it (in front of them) and they said I was stealing it..... :mad:

I pointed out they were being allowed to use common ground and that I had a right as a commoner to graze sheep and collect fallen wood and the nice stacks of wood they had cit up and stacked were 'fallen wood'!

They threatened me with all manner of things then presumably thought to check with a solicitor.... after that they went VERY VERY QUIET..... I would just walk up and take the wood from under their eyes.

grahamc2003

steve-L wrote: »

Its not actually true....
Heat generated from electricity is only a part of the energy generated. A old fashioned incandescent light bulb produced mainly heat and some light.... a halogen heater is till producing light in the visible not ALL in the IR spectrum.

Heating elements are just resistors and MOST of the energy is converted to 'heat' however this heat has then got to get from the element into your room. If you could see the element in use it would glow red, hence it is producing visible light ..hence not 100% efficient.
Each phase change from conduction to convection to radiation loses energy.

.

Any light/sound or any other conversion of the electrical energy still ends up as heat. It's very basic physics, been stated correctly thousands of times on here and is indisputable - all resistive heaters are 100% (not more and not less and exactly) efficient.

Your final sentence is meaningless and incorrect. Phase change is when a solid/liquid/gas changes into another form of solid/liquid/gas (like ice melting, or water boiling) when there is latent heat involved. There are no losses of energy by heat being transfered by conduction (say the from hot water in a radiator moving to the radiator surface) and then by convection (from the radiator surface into a moving airflow).

chris1973

I found that using a heated throw, or having my feet in a heated foot warmer was the cheapest way of heating me (not the room)

Its amazing, when having your feet heated, how comfortable the rest of the body feels, even in a cold room.

The foot warmer consumes around 80w and the heated throw around 110w, both are amazingly good at warming YOU, as a form of personal heating, and the foot warmer consumes less than 1 unit of Electricity for 10 hours of continuous use.

When it gets really cold, I heat the room i'm in using a paraffin inverter heater, running on Kerosene heating oil - cost about 6p per KW/h

HappyMJ

chris1973 wrote: »

I found that using a heated throw, or having my feet in a heated foot warmer was the cheapest way of heating me (not the room)

Its amazing, when having your feet heated, how comfortable the rest of the body feels, even in a cold room.

The foot warmer consumes around 80w and the heated throw around 110w, both are amazingly good at warming YOU, as a form of personal heating, and the foot warmer consumes less than 1 unit of Electricity for 10 hours of continuous use.

When it gets really cold, I heat the room i'm in using a paraffin inverter heater, running on Kerosene heating oil - cost about 6p per KW/h

Where do you get paraffin for 6p/kWh?

[Deleted User]

Personally of all the electric heaters, I prefer the speed and flexibility of the halogen heaters, fan heaters are too noisy. Halogens come in 800watt bars and can have 3 or 4. they are cheap £8 or so but very unreliable. The bars dont seem to last too long
Also for real economy and will keep you as warm as toast, a duck or goose down mummy style sleeping bag, I reckon i will be giving that a go due to having 10 weeks off work from door knocking, cataract surgery rehab. with fuel poverty, pensions up 1% and energy costs up 10% I think the sleeping bag option may well be a life saver

chris1973

Where do you get paraffin for 6p/kWh?

Go back, and read the post but this time do it CAREFULLY

When you have done that small thing, you will find that I run it on Heating Oil Kerosene, domestic 28 second stuff bought from a local fuel brokers (JET) forecourt pump, with some exocet additive and dewatered / filtered through a 'Mr Funnel'

18 months later - no adverse effects so far, apart from turning off the storage heaters last winter and in doing so, it reduced my leccy bill from £100 a month to less than £30. Npower are dirtying their pampers, checking my meter, readings etc as they cannot believe the change in what I spend - sucks to be them.

If you search these (and other) internet forums, you'll find lots of users of these heaters (and other similar ones) happily running them on all types of kero-based fuel ranging from heating oil to Jet A1. In Japan (where these heaters have their biggest market) they are routinely run on Kero

I've also posted a link on another thread as to where you can get these heaters for around £150, as opposed to the rip off £220+ in the UK. I recommend that anybody living in all Electric properties or who find that their E7 heaters need to be supplemented with convector heaters on expensive daytime rates during the winter months, consider buying at least one of these portable heaters.

Its also worth bearing in mind that although Heating Oil suffers similar price rises every year, it rarely increases by the 20% which we see Electricity rise as a result from the inevitable two or three annual increases, neither does it subsidise 'green energy' increases which are also affecting Gas and Electricity prices. Besides, I buy Kero in bulk during the summer when its dirt cheap - enough to see me through the winter, something which you cannot do with Electric Heating.

But the biggest savings are to the wallet - do the math.

Running a single 3kw convector heater at 20p / kwh on Npowers daytime peak rate would cost an eye watering 60p hour

Running a 3kw Inverter Heater on 28 second Kerosene at 6p / kwh costs 18p per hour

In addition I have never yet seen heating oil cost more than 75p per litre, which still equates to less than 8p per KW/H in these heaters even if you didn't believe the manufacturers 99% efficiency rating!