Working from home: LPG central heating vs single-room 2kw electric heater

Lum

I live in a 100 year old 4 bedroom bungalow with LPG central heating from Calor, I currently pay 47.5ppl for LPG and have a fancy thermostat that is set to 18 degrees during the day, I then sit in my little office with the computer on and half the time my coat on.

Our 10 year old boiler died on Saturday and nobody can come out until Monday, so three 2kw electric heaters have made an appearance.

This has got me thinking. During the day I'm holed up in a single room yet I am heating the whole damn house. Electric heaters are less cost-efficient but if I just use it to heat a single room it might be cheaper. However note that I can't completely close the door otherwise the cat will constantly want to be on the opposite side of the door which will distract me from work. Instead I'd close it to a cat-sized gap.

For electricity, I think I pay 11.8p per kw/h. I'm on Scottish Power's Online Fixed Price Energy Jan2014 tarrif but can't actually find any info as to what the rate is for that tarrif.

I'm sure you probably need more information to give a definite answer, but would it be cheaper to set the house to 7 degrees during the day and just use the electric heater to heat my office?

We're also not averse to getting one of those wall-mounted thermostats intended for central heating and wiring it up to an extension lead and a 240V relay for better control of the heater, if need be.

Cardew

This question comes up quite often.

Why do you need to 'heat the whole damn house'? Surely all the rooms have radiator thermostats(TRV) that can be turned down when the room is not occupied?.

The biggest factor apart from the price of LPG will be the efficiency of your LPG boiler.

However it would certainly be cheaper to use electricity for the study rather than heat the whole house.

Lum

Well for one the thermostat is at the opposite end of the house in quite a large room, so if the radiators aren't on in that room then the thermostat will be constantly calling for heat that isn't needed.

But mainly the problem is I know I'll forget to turn them off/on at the start of a day, but if I set the whole house to 7 degrees then I can put the heater on its own timer, set and forget.

macman

Zone valves with their appropriate localised room 'stats? All depends if you want to make the long term investment.

Lum

macman wrote: »

Zone valves with their appropriate localised room 'stats? All depends if you want to make the long term investment.

It's a rented place, which limits options like that. Currently the thermostat is on the end of a wire run from the boiler cupboard and screwed to the side of a set of free standing shelves.

macman

Disconnect the wired room 'stat and fit a wireless 'stat (with the LL's permission). You can then move the sender around from room to room as you wish.

Lum

macman wrote: »

Disconnect the wired room 'stat and fit a wireless 'stat (with the LL's permission). You can then move the sender around from room to room as you wish.

We did consider that, but stone walls are not really compatible with wireless, we have to run wired ethernet for the computers to anywhere other than the room where the thermostat currently is. Since we already owned a £50 wired thermostat which we've used in the last 3 rented places, it didn't seem worth buying a different one.