Electric heater advice/recommendations please

Jakava

My gas radiators seem to be using a lot of units. They don't even warm my house up as it's so badly insulated and drafty despite my best efforts to block everywhere up. It's rented and the landlord doesn't give a !!!!. As far as she is concerned we have radiators and a working boiler so she isn't breaking any laws or regulations. If we are freezing it isn't her problem.

I can have the radiators on for 5 hours and we are still shivering. I would be better off actually burning money to keep us warm! They make the house only slightly warmer than if we didn't have them on at all.

In 5 hours they use about 12 units on a metric metre. I can watch the dial spinning around as I'm stood there. Not sure if this is normal as in my old house I had the heating on night and day and my bills were not that much. I used to pay £50-£70 a month for both gas and electricity and now they have gone up to £140 because of the gas usage.

Current house is a 2 bed end of terrace with crap wooden windows and external doors. Old house was 2 bed, all upvc and really well insulated.

I can't afford to use the gas at the rate it is going. I have a toddler and we both have asthma which is worse in the cold so I need to buy some sort of heater to use instead.

I know they are expensive to run but I do think it will be cheaper for me to use a plug in heater than have radiators on that aren't working at all and are gobbling up units.

Any advice or suggestions?

Alter_ego

Gas is cheaper than electricity Kw for Kw. Improve the insulation is the answer.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum

12 units on a metric meter is approx 135kWh and costs around £4 at 3p/kWh.

135kWh electricity costs around £16 at 12p/kWh.

Now your boiler might be very inefficient, but it is hardly likely to drop below 50% efficiency. So to produce the same amount of heat from 135kWh used by the electric heater it might need to use gas costing £8(at 50% efficiency)

Still a no contest!

molerat

12 metric units in 5 hours - are you sure, that would be a 27 kW boiler going flat out all the time. I keep my 3 bed detached in N Scotland at 18 - 21 deg 24/7 over winter using my 35 year old super inefficient boiler and the most gas I have ever used is 13 units in a day and that was when the temps did not go above 0 for 10 days ! I can run my gas boiler for 24 hours keeping the house warm and as much hot water as I can use for the same price as one 1.5Kw electric fire.

quiet_advisor

It might be worth checking if you can get help with improved insulation/boiler - you would need to meet certain criteria and have landlords agreement. Some suppliers are more relaxed about the rules than others.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/free-cavity-loft-insulation

QA

macman

Do the rads warm up properly? If cold at the top, then just bleed them. If cold at the bottom, then the system is sludged up and needs flushing.
When was the boiler last serviced, and do you have a valid gas safety certificate? If not, then you have considerable leverage to get your landlord to sort this out.

Anthorn

Your landlord should have provided you with an Energy Performance Certificate and landlords are obligated to provide that by law. Come April 2018 it will be illegal to rent property which has a EPC below E.

The EPC will tell you whether the heating system is bad or better than it is operating at this time in which case you need to arrange for it to be adjusted.

In my personal experience the efficiency of radiators run from a gas boiler varies. In my current property the radiators work perfectly. But in my previous property I had to continually fill the radiators while bleeding them almost daily.

That latter point is vital. You don't just bleed radiators you also fill them at the same time to maintain the pressure. There should be a means to do that in the heating system. If you just bleed them the radiators will eventually run out of water and fill with air. Look for a flexible pipe with a connector at each end.

matelodave

An EPC doesn't tell you how well the heating system is performing. It doesn't even tell you if it's working at all.

It informs you what the energy requirements are for the place and whether the insulation etc is up to a certain standard and what sort of heating and hot water system is fitted and how efficient that might be.

It also gives you lots of useless info about what you can do to improve, like changing lightbulbs, installing solar panesl and other expensive stuff.

It is usually carried out by someone who doesn't have a clue and is just filling in tick boxes on a laptop, tablet or even mobile phone which does all the calculations and produces a document which gets filed away on a database somewhere.

Cardew

Anthorn wrote: »

The EPC will tell you whether the heating system is bad or better than it is operating at this time in which case you need to arrange for it to be adjusted.

.

How does the EPC assessor tell you how the well the heating system is performing? My understanding is they simply look up a boiler's efficiency rating. For around £50 it would be an absolute bargain if the assessor carried out diagnostic tests;)

What adjustments are made to a gas/oil boiler to improve performance?

Doesn't the EPC certificate last for 10 years?

badmemory

EPC certs are a waste of time. I had to have one done for my mother's house & the tick box merchant put that it had solid floors, it didn't. He refused to correct it! It certainly wouldn't serve any purpose here.

You can get DIY "stuff" to put on the insides of windows which can help. Anything in fact which can seal the drafts.