Electric oil heater or single room gas heater?

TunaTwist

I have a gas pipe to my living room, I had the fireplace removed because it was a disgusting joke but I've taken to heating the room with an oil based electric heater. It does the job but it's really quite expensive. I can't afford to go the whole hog and get central heating but I was wondering if it would be worth getting a mains supplied gas heater for one room. And if so which would be the cheapest / most efficient / most beautiful (I'm not looking for some fake fire stuff). Thanks

LyndaS

TunaTwist wrote: »

I have a gas pipe to my living room, I had the fireplace removed because it was a disgusting joke but I've taken to heating the room with an oil based electric heater. It does the job but it's really quite expensive. I can't afford to go the whole hog and get central heating but I was wondering if it would be worth getting a mains supplied gas heater for one room. And if so which would be the cheapest / most efficient / most beautiful (I'm not looking for some fake fire stuff). Thanks

The cheapest to buy & install would almost certainly be the oil based electric heater

The cheapest to maintain would be the oil based electric heater.

The cheapest to run (on a similar heat output basis) would most probably be the gas fire. (Check the efficiency rating)

The most efficient will be the oil based electric heater.

The most beautiful depends on what you consider beautiful, but a gas fire imho can certainly look a lot better than an oil based electric heater ever could.

TunaTwist

The cheapest to run (on a similar heat output basis) would most probably be the gas fire.

How might I go about finding out how much cheaper/more expensive one is than the other? I might just stick with the oil based electric heater unless there are other money saving things I could do for cheap.

footyguy

TunaTwist wrote: »

How might I go about finding out how much cheaper/more expensive one is than the other? I might just stick with the oil based electric heater unless there are other money saving things I could do for cheap.

Depending on supplier & tariff, a kWh of gas is roughly 3-5p whilst a kWh of electricity is about 10-15p

You can consider the electric heater as 100% efficient, and as LyndaS advised, the gas fire should state an efficiency.

So if the gas fire was only 50% efficient, you would need to burn 2kW of gas to produce 1kW of heat.

macman

So even with the lower efficiency, a gas fire will still be much cheaper to run.