Which is cheaper?

VTez

Hi guys. I'm new to this forum and I'm living for the first time in a house away from my parents, so bear with me here.

Me and my flatmates are trying to work out which is the cheapest method of heating the house. We have two halogen heaters, which would cost a base of 11p an hour at 1200 watts. Alternatively, we have a radiator which uses 78200 BTU (or so it says on the box), I presume at maximum power (it's currently set to 4/6).

At that maximum BTU consumption, it would cost 1.78 per hour, which seems incredibly high when compared to the 11p an hour of the 1200W halogen heaters, which take about two hours to heat a room. Even if we turned off all the other radiators and just heated one room, which might take half an hour, that's still 4 times the amount of money we'd spend with the halogen heaters.

Am I missing something here? I was under the impression that gas heating is the most efficient.

Thanks and I hope I was not too confusing!

good_advice

Gas radiators are the cheapest heat unless you have a wood burner and can get free wood.
With the gas radiators I would suggest 1 hour in the morning to heat as you get up and hot water, then 2 hours at night for heating and showers.
Plug in electric heaters of any type will cost more to run.

Take care..

grahamc2003

VTez wrote: »

Hi guys. I'm new to this forum and I'm living for the first time in a house away from my parents, so bear with me here.

Me and my flatmates are trying to work out which is the cheapest method of heating the house. We have two halogen heaters, which would cost a base of 11p an hour at 1200 watts. Alternatively, we have a radiator which uses 78200 BTU (or so it says on the box), I presume at maximum power (it's currently set to 4/6).

At that maximum BTU consumption, it would cost 1.78 per hour, which seems incredibly high when compared to the 11p an hour of the 1200W halogen heaters, which take about two hours to heat a room. Even if we turned off all the other radiators and just heated one room, which might take half an hour, that's still 4 times the amount of money we'd spend with the halogen heaters.

Am I missing something here? I was under the impression that gas heating is the most efficient.

Thanks and I hope I was not too confusing!

Your maths is wrong because you are comparing apples and pears (or rather power with energy).

You've measured your halogens as power, or rate of use of energy, which is 1.2kW, therefore using 1.2Kwh of energy in one hour (and costing as you say 11p, assuming your unit cost is about 9p/kWh (seems low)).

Btu is a measure of energy, and 78k of them is about 23kWh or about 20 times the amount your halogens use in one hour. If your gas boiler uses that in one hour, then its power is about 23kW. That should cost about 90p/h if it's a gas boiler (you didn't say), or, if you're unfortunate enough to have an electric boiler, at least £2/h.

macman

Your hunch is correct. Electricity is about 12p per kWH, gas is about 3.5p per kWh. So even with it's lower efficiency, gas is much cheaper per kWh.

rogerblack

macman wrote: »

Your hunch is correct. Electricity is about 12p per kWH, gas is about 3.5p per kWh. So even with it's lower efficiency, gas is much cheaper per kWh.

The inefficiency of the boiler comes into it slightly, it may boost the gas price to 4.5p. But still, vastly cheaper than electric.

There are times it may be less efficient - for some configurations of central heating, it can be really hard or impossible to heat only certain rooms.

(for example, underfloor heating may have large zones, if not done right).

But this is simply due to the heat being in the wrong place.