What should we use..? Oil radiators or electric underfloor

ludoctro79

Hello we have just bought a detached 5 bed house built in 2011, it has a oil tank in garden which runs hot water and radiators throughout the house.

There is also electric underfloor heating down stairs.

What will be the cheapest option to keep house warm..?

Just use the electric underfloor down stairs or don't use it at all and use the oil radiators ..?

Upstairs we will only have radiators on in master bedroom as no other bedroom will be used , so we planning on just keeping the doors shut and radiators off in the spare rooms.

So what would you suggest to keep heating costs down oil or electric downstairs..??

reeac

ludoctro79 wrote: »

Hello we have just bought a detached 5 bed house built in 2011, it has a oil tank in garden which runs hot water and radiators throughout the house.

There is also electric underfloor heating down stairs.

What will be the cheapest option to keep house warm..?

Just use the electric underfloor down stairs or don't use it at all and use the oil radiators ..?

Upstairs we will only have radiators on in master bedroom as no other bedroom will be used , so we planning on just keeping the doors shut and radiators off in the spare rooms.

So what would you suggest to keep heating costs down oil or electric downstairs..??

Currently oil costs about 55p./litre VAT incl . One litre gives 10 kWh of heat overall which is about 9 kWh. input to the house+HW. i.e. 6.1 p./kWh. We pay around 11p/kWh for electricity so that makes oil a cheaper source of energy. Your house may be on an off-peak elec. tariff - if so compare it with the above oil figure. Remember that oil prices change all the time but they've been on a downward trend for many months now.


Your tactics re. house heating sound sensible but the bottom line is whether you are happy with the comfort levels.

ludoctro79

Ok so looks like leaving the underfloor heating is best option then,

The other question we have is that does underfloor heating , heat a room better than radiators , so yes oil is cheaper but would we need to use more to heat the room than say we would if using electric..??

Or do they work the same so all we need to do is go with cheapest ..?

Hope that makes sense.

macman

Major misunderstanding here. It takes a fixed amount of energy, in the form of heat, to raise the room temp from xC to yC, everything else being equal. So you won't use 'more heat' (i.e more kWh) to get the same effect from different fuels.
True, electric heating is 100% efficient and an oil boiler is not. But that differential does not begin to cancel out the huge kWh price difference of nearly 100%, as outlined above. To do that, the boiler would need to be barely 50% efficient.
If it did, everyone would use electric boilers and not oil, if mains gas was unavailable.

reeac

There is a slight effect due to the human body's sensing of warmth - a source of radiant heat e.g. a fire or hot radiator gives a greater impression of warmth than does warm air heating with its accompanying air flows. A warm air c.h. system needs ro be set to a slightly higher temperature in order to give the same sensation of warmth. This is all irrelevant to the O.P. who doesn't have such a system.

Smiley_Dan

You may also have to factor in the losses from pipe runs. You have a large house that may be significant. What did the space heating requirement say on the EPC? Also, you might not be able to turn all rads off, e.g. bathroom towel warmers.

You're deffo sure the UFH is electric? Just checking...

ludoctro79

Smiley_Dan wrote: »

You may also have to factor in the losses from pipe runs. You have a large house that may be significant. What did the space heating requirement say on the EPC? Also, you might not be able to turn all rads off, e.g. bathroom towel warmers.

You're deffo sure the UFH is electric? Just checking...

Defo electric underfloor heating downstairs, where do I find that on EPC..? I have it here but I'm unsure what you mean by space heating.?? I don't see anywhere that mentions thst.

Cardew

ludoctro79 wrote: »

Defo electric underfloor heating downstairs, where do I find that on EPC..? I have it here but I'm unsure what you mean by space heating.?? I don't see anywhere that mentions thst.

Space heating simply means heating rooms - as opposed to heating hot water for baths/showers/taps etc.


I cannot think why a house built in 2011 would have oil fired CH AND electric under-floor heating?? It makes no sense.


As explained above, for the same amount of heat, electric heating costs roughly double oil CH - especially as a 3 year old boiler will be pretty efficient.


Are you really sure that the under-floor heating isn't a separate pump to circulate oil CH water.


P.S.
Don't make the mistake of thinking the EPC is the bible. Some of the assessors have done the 1 day course and become so called experts.

Smiley_Dan

ludoctro79 wrote: »

Defo electric underfloor heating downstairs, where do I find that on EPC..? I have it here but I'm unsure what you mean by space heating.?? I don't see anywhere that mentions thst.

Should be the last item under "Your home's heat demand". If you don't have this section, check the EPC is ~5 pages long. If it's shorter you may have the estate agent's summary. You can find your full EPC here: https://www.epcregister.com/reportSearchAddressTerms.html?redirect=reportSearchAddressByPostcode

But yeah, it's not necessarily very accurate. I don't think air changes are considered (think level of draughts etc).

ludoctro79

Ok says space heating - 14007 kWh year and water heating 2600 kWh

100% it has electric underfloor heating down stairs and all bathrooms (4). And there is a oil tank in garden that does hot water and radiators that are throughout the house.

I've zero clue about house building etc, so no idea why it has that type of heating but it does and it was defo built in 2011.


Ok so it looks like we should pretty much never ever use the electric underfloor heating then..??

Just stick with the oil radiators ..??

Thanks a lot everyone for your help, it's really appreciated.

Smiley_Dan

It's not that unusual to have electric underfloor heating in bathrooms, especially when the floor is tiled. Normally such rooms aren't too large and so the cost isn't so horrendous.

The one upside is that UFH is broadly more efficient than rads in the sense that you have it at a lower temperature, so less energy needs to be generated, there are lower losses and therefore less fuel is used. Just depends on how many kWh are required and what you are paying for the different sources of energy.

You could get a whole-house energy meter to see if you could measure usage.