Electric heating?

snowscreamer

Hi all,

Hoping somebody will be able to help me with this. The electricity usage in my current house is pretty high and I need to figure out the most economical way forward.

We've just completed a year in the house (moved in April 2014) and with regular meter readings I have seen the electricity usage doubled during the winter. So I think we can blame it on heating of some form. Here are the figures (kWh/day):

May-Aug 12
Sept 13
Oct-Nov 19
Dec-Jan 23
Feb 24
Mar-Apr 19

Now, as far as I am aware the house was using electric heating in three forms:

• Convector heater in living room
• Electric underfloor heating in bathroom
• Electric towel rails in bathroom

We are planning on solving the problem of the convector heater by getting a new radiator plumbed in in the living room. We needed the heater as a stop-gap this winter as there is only one radiator right at the end of a 22ft long room, and the main part of the room got really cold. The convector heater only really took the edge off and it was still a bit nippy so a new appropriately-sized radiator is definitely the way forward in this case.

The electric underfloor heating I believe is controlled on a little LCD screen in our understairs cupboard. It was set on 30deg all day; 5 deg at night when we moved in. I changed this to 22deg morning and evening and 5deg otherwise as I was concerned about how much this was going to cost! However it's still pretty ineffective and the bathroom is not as warm as we would prefer during the winter.

The electric towel rails I have no clue how to control. They warm our towels adequately but not sure how well they warm the bathroom: how much is the towel rails and how much the underfloor heating. Either way as I said, bathroom heating is poor. I have no clue how to control these; they seem to be on 24/7 and quite hot too. In fact I remember it being uncomfortably hot in there during the summer but honestly can't work out where they are controlled. If I can find where they are isolated it might even be worth for the money saving and keeping upstairs cool to switch them off entirely for the summer.

Now what are my options? If we had bought the house with the old bathroom (the bathroom was installed by the previous owners and is probably 2-3 years old) then I think I would have replaced the bathroom and plumbed in some heating - maybe with a single large towel rail? Or possibly with underfloor pipes in addition. Going with electric seems crazy. Ineffective and expensive. But now we have this relatively new bathroom I don't know how we fix the problem. Plumbing in any heating would involve breaking up the tiles and I'm not sure how to find matching ones...

Any advice?!

Smiley_Dan

Start by experimenting with turning off the individual suspects and measuring the usage. That might give you some idea of what exactly is causing the problem, and therefore what to do about it.

You imply you have a wet heating system as well... what is this?

Can you fix the problem the other (better, imo) way by reducing heat loss?

snowscreamer

Thanks Smiley Dan,

As everything seems to be thermostatically controlled, I fear it is going to be a bit harder to identify culprits in the summer... I probably should have caught up with the problem much earlier in the year and done experimentation there.

I seem to recall the LCD screen which I believe controls the underfloor heating has a usage display so that may confirm how much is being used there.

The convector heater we have turned off and do not plan to use again. If it turns out this was the main culprit then that will make me a happy bunny. Although the bathroom is too cold as it is and turning any electric heating up in there is obviously going to increase costs to some degree.

I don't believe there is any heat loss issue. We have an oil-fired wet central heating system and we have used 900 litres in 12 months. Seems OK to me? Three bedroom semi-detached house; 1200 sq ft. Had plenty of hot water and the house was nice and toasty where radiators are adequately sized ie. everywhere except one end of living room and bathroom!

Cardew

Any form of electrical heating is 100% efficient, but the most expensive way of heating a property.

Considering your electrical heating load of:

•Convector heater in living room
•Electric underfloor heating in bathroom
•Electric towel rails in bathroom

IMO your annual consumption of approx. 5,700kWh is not in any way excessive.

Nada666

[STRIKE]12 kWh over a day for heating is quite low, not 'pretty high'. That's about £50. Of course, if it isn't keeping you as warm as you want for as long as you like then that is irrelevant.

The underfloor heating, you can probably afford to put it on longer - start earlier rather than finish later. But it's difficult to imagine that being necessary. A towel or bathmat or washable bathroom slippers might be all that is needed. Or wait fifteen seconds to acclimatise - unless there is zero insulation a towel rail only should be more than enough.[/STRIKE]

Okay, never mind. Just read post 3 and realised the electrical heating is supplementary to your central heating. But still £50 on top of 900L oil (say £4 or £500) is not an outrageous sum.

snowscreamer

Cardew and Nada666 -

I do agree that it's not an outrageous cost for electric heating and understand that electric heating is 100% efficient.

I guess what I'm trying to get out of this is what is the best way to get it off electric, being that the fact it is electric which is the problem...

It's really frustrating that we couldn't have bought the house with its old bathroom, saved a few £k on the house price and installed our own new bathroom, with central heating not electric heating... but we are where we are and I want to fix it somehow. Without breaking the bank if possible!

footyguy

snowscreamer wrote: »

...I guess what I'm trying to get out of this is what is the best way to get it off electric, being that the fact it is electric which is the problem...

Get an expert in to survey your property and it's central heating system so that they can then advise you how to modify/update your heating system (or add better insulation to the home) so that the heating system is correctly 'sized' for your home.

Note that in regards your electric towel heater, that is it's primary purpose - to heat the towels. Of course it will also provide some space heating, particularly if you don't cover it in towels, but warming towels is what it is primarily designed to do.
A central heating system will not usually provide such a facility (although you can get towel radiators for a central heating system). I guess it depends how much you love warm towels, rather than room temperature ones, and how much you are prepared to pay for that luxury.

Smiley_Dan

I don't believe there is any heat loss issue. We have an oil-fired wet central heating system and we have used 900 litres in 12 months. Seems OK to me? Three bedroom semi-detached house; 1200 sq ft. Had plenty of hot water and the house was nice and toasty where radiators are adequately sized ie. everywhere except one end of living room and bathroom!

Actually seems quite high to me. But I'm an energy efficiency nerd.

snowscreamer

Smiley_Dan wrote: »

Actually seems quite high to me. But I'm an energy efficiency nerd.

OK - well let's just say that is of a lower priority than sorting out the situation in the bathroom then!

modsandmockers

snowscreamer wrote: »

OK - well let's just say that is of a lower priority than sorting out the situation in the bathroom then!

The combination of oil-fired radiator heating and a range of electric top-ups sounds to me like a recipe for disaster, and I would guess that your system was ‘designed’ when oil heating had nothing at all in its favour except its availability. I may be wrong, but I would guess that oil heating is now reasonably affordable.

When I was responsible for heating a family home (using an old-fashioned gas CH system), I was continually frustrated by the inability to programme each part of the house separately, and I think you have the same problem. I think the first thing you need to do is to switch off the inadequate bathroom heating completely, and replace it with as many electric panel heaters as necessary but only switch them on an hour or so before they are needed (this might also require you to impose an old-fashioned family timetable of bathroom availability, which will not make you popular). It’s an old-fashioned idea, but if your bathroom basin is located under the bathroom window, then the best way to eliminate the cold spot is to place some kind of heater on the bathroom window sill. The theory is that the descending cold air from the window glass will sit on top of the warm air from the window sill heater and pass it across your naked body. If the heat source is situated behind you, then the descending cold window air will simply prevent the warm air from coming in your direction.

It’s several years now since I last had to worry about these things, but I think that the 1960s idea of central heating is still the norm - that is to say that it should not be unreasonable to expect to heat an entire house over extended periods of time from a single unattended source (it’s definitely better than coal fires tho’...).

snowscreamer

modsandmockers - I do wish to move everything onto my oil-fired central heating, somehow. That heats most of the house and all the hot water and has only cost me £450 for the year in oil (prices currently lower too - in today's prices 900l of oil is around £324) whereas my 'extra' electric heating for one section of the living room (~100 sq ft) and the bathroom (~70 sq ft) appears to have cost me £215. That's a hell of a lot of extra cost for a miserly amount of floorspace. Not to mention the electric heating is inadequate at current levels.

The bathroom window is actually the other side of the room from the sink and the shower so not too concerned about that and it is double glazed. I don't wish to use panel heaters - I would rather join the bathroom to my central heating if I can and move away from electricity. Any additional heat in the bathroom coming electrically will only increase my costs.

The trouble is - without smashing tiles I really don't know how to move forward... anyone have any experience with this?!