Electrical heating is my ONLY option - help!

tugrin

PLease help - I know they are all the same in terms of power in and heat out - I know this, I really do BUT surely there are variations and speeds in the way the various appliances and systems deliver the heat? At the moment I am relying on fan heaters alone for a 2 bedroom terraced cottage with good loft insulation and double glazing. However it is single brick construction and I do not have any space outside the property for even larger prpane cylinders let alone any other form of tank.
Halogen? Skirting board heaters? Convectors? Panels? PLEASE SOMEONE HELP......

albyota

Is there any way the two external walls can be insulated internally?.
A small, say, 5 kW air source heat pump wouldn't require too much room outside, but this would need the house to have pipework installed to be connected to 5 or 6 radiators, however you are looking at spending £6k for that, but there is a RHPP grant of £850, running costs would be a lot lower than the direct electric heaters.

toolmaker54

I like your self rely on electric for my heating, like you say they all deliver the same amount of heat just in different ways. I had a fancy dimplex glow fan heater, but found a cheap ceramic heater seemed to throw out more heat quicker. If you are looking to heat a room quickly then it has to be a fan or a convector heater. If you can leave your coat on a while longer or if the oil filled radiator has a timer then you use these. I don't think there is a quick fix it just depends on your preference slow or quick heat. In our kitchen which is about 4m x4m we have an expensive Dimplex Cadiz oil free 3kw heater that is the quickest heater we have ever owned for throwing heat into a room.

Or you could get a combined fan heater/oil filled radiator you then have the best of both worlds quick and slow combined, Lidl used to sell a good one.

zaax

Economy 10 might cheaper

chris1973

At the moment I am relying on fan heaters alone for a 2 bedroom terraced cottage with good loft insulation and double glazing.

You are already using the fastest form of Electric Heating, as Fan Heaters and Fan assisted convectors are about as fast as it gets.

If you are finding that even Fan Heaters are taking ages to warm the room then you may not be inputting enough heat for the room size. Many people make the mistake of thinking that larger rooms will be magically heated with one single heater, when in fact it may take 4kw+ to heat it, which may mean using more than one heater to warm it from cold, especially if the room is poorly insulated.

Calculate the heat required for any given room, by using a room size heat calculator http://www.qvsdirect.com/kW-Heating-Calculator-p-50.html

Given the lack of wall insulation or if a room has more than 2 external walls, you will need to select 'exposed' on the calculator to give a figure which takes in account the lower than average level of insulation.

A small, say, 5 kW air source heat pump wouldn't require too much room outside, but this would need the house to have pipework installed to be connected to 5 or 6 radiators,

Air or Ground Source heat pumps aren't really suitable as a sole form of heating, in a property such as the OP's which doesn't have an extremely good level of insulation. Once the outside temperature drops below 3c their efficiency drops dramatically, and when it is -5 or lower outside the basic domestic models become largely useless. Thus it requires an extremely good, modern level of insulation in order to maximise the limited heat output from the system when its freezing outside.

You've already been told that there is no quick fix, however making sure that you input the correct amount of heat for the size of room / level of insulation in question is a good start, because if you are only inputting 2kw into a room which requires 4kw to heat it, then there is your main problem, and probably explains why it isn't warming quickly.

If you visit friends with central heating you'll probably find that the main living areas are heated with at least 2 radiators, each of at least 2kw - 3kw capacity, and sometimes one of them will be a double, this is done for the reason that large / open rooms require more than a token 2 or 3kw of heat, and it generally also follows that an Electrically heated property will also need two sources of heat in the larger areas too, ideally at opposite sides of the room.

muckybutt

Have you considered looking at electric wet boilers ? such as the Amptec range ? http://www.heatraesadia.com/docs/Amptec_-_Issue_9.pdf
Ive installed them in a few houses where there has been no room for gas or oil tanks, they work as efficently as any other form of electric heating with the advantage of it being more controllable and it being a wet system means you can heat all the house or individual rooms via the rad stats.

Ectophile

If you're looking for the cheapest to run, then storage heaters on Economy 7 would be best. But they are big, and deliver the most heat when you least want it.