1200w halogen heater vs combi boiler heating

jacobsdaduk

Hi,

I work from home and my desk is in the lounge. It's a 3 bed semi, with recent cavity/loft insulation, double glazing and a fairly modern combi boiler.

On days like today the heating is on a lot and it seems a waste of money to be heating the entire house for just me. I close all the doors to the other rooms and turn down the thermostats on the radiators, but there are two radiator in the (average size) lounge which heat it.

I've seen 1200w halogen heaters on Ebay for £13 and I'm wondering it I would save money heating just where I sit during the day with the halogen heater, and then switching the heating on when the family comes home. Or would it just be cheaper to use the gas boiler, given that gas is cheaper per kw/h than electric?

A.Penny.Saved

Have you tried turning off all radiators in the other rooms except for the lounge? Where is your thermostat? If it's not in the lounge then the boiler is going to run for longer than is necessary. A wireless thermostat would do the trick. Just move the thermostat into the lounge during the day and move it back to another cooler room when the family gets home and turn on the radiators. You can get programmable TRV's but they do cost a fair bit for the convenience of having to turn the radiators on/off manually.

Electric heating does work out very expensive in my experience. I have had not working gas central heating for quite some time, several years, and it has cost me slightly more heating single rooms via electric to a much colder temperature than it cost me to heat the whole house using gas. However due to fuel price rises, maybe the comparison is unfair. I have felt far colder heating via electric based upon what it has cost me. Halogen makes no difference, it's no more efficient. I would say that a convector heater is about the most efficient form of electric heating. However I would still avoid electric if at all possible because in my experience it is far more costly to heat using it.

Do you have your central heating pipes insulated? If not then quite a bit of heat is lost as the water travels to the radiators. It can be difficult to insulate because heating engineers rarely pay any attention to insulation. The person who fitted mine, before I purchased my home, made a right lousy job of fitting pipework, making insulation extremely difficult without re-fitting pipes.

sonastin

A 1200W heater is going to be using about 10kWh of electric during the working day (9.6 if you had it on full time for 8 hours, bit less if you have periods with it off, bit more if the family are out for longer than 8 hours). Off the top of my head, I think electricity is somewhere around 15p per kWh so running your heater is going to add about £1.50 per day to your electric bill.

There are too many variables for me to estimate the effect on your gas bill but if you think you're bills are more than say £25/month because of putting the heating on while you're in all day, its worth considering the halogen heater. If you're not noticing the gas going up that much, probably best to keep doing what you're doing.