How to heat one room

RonSwanson

Hello. I'm trying to heat one room of my house during the day as I work from home. At the moment I turn my central heating on in the morning and turn off all the radiators except for the one in my office. Then, in the evening, I turn all the radiators back on. This has become quite a nuisance.

What is a more useful way of heating one room without having to fiddle with my radiator valves everyday and without heating my whole house?

GunJack

Stand-alone plug-in electric heater?

Ballymoney

You can buy TRV valves with timers on. They're not cheap though so they'd take quite a while to pay for themselves.


https://www.screwfix.com/p/cassellie-eq-3-smart-thermostat/886gv

RonSwanson

Ballymoney wrote: »

You can buy TRV valves with timers on. They're not cheap though so they'd take quite a while to pay for themselves.


https://www.screwfix.com/p/cassellie-eq-3-smart-thermostat/886gv

This sounds like what I'm after. How do they work with my current thermostat? Do I just leave my central heating on permanently and let the timer do the work?

Ballymoney

RonSwanson wrote: »

This sounds like what I'm after. How do they work with my current thermostat? Do I just leave my central heating on permanently and let the timer do the work?

I don't own any personally but I've been looking in to them recently for the bedrooms. I'm guessing you leave the central heating on it's existing timer settings and then set the timers on each individual TRV.



We're at work from 08:00 to 17:30 so our heating is set to the following:


06:00 to 07:30 -- 20 degrees
07:30 to 16:00 -- 18.5 degrees
16:00 to 22:30 -- 21 degrees



I'd leave our thermostat on the same timer settings so the downstairs never drops below 18.5 but set the timer on the upstairs radiators (which are all massive type 21 double panel radiators) to come on only in the morning and evening. I've experimented by turning the rads off manually and it saves a considerable amount of gas daily.

Ebe_Scrooge

GunJack wrote: »

Stand-alone plug-in electric heater?

I'm going to agree with this one. Yes, electricity is not the cheapest form of heating. But I'm guessing you're talking about a fairly small room ? If it's just the one room, and you've got the door closed, a little fan heater for a tenner or so will do the trick, and it's not going to cost an awful lot to run in the grand scheme of things - especially as you'll not need it to be running constantly.

Yes, the timed TRVs would be very convenient, but is it really worth the outlay compared with the fairly trivial cost of running a small electric heater for a few hours a day ? It's fairly easy to do the sums once you know what your cost per KWH is for electricity. And bear in mind that an electric heater won't be running - and burning electricity - for the whole time you're in the office. If it's a small room you might only need it on for 15 minutes per hour or something like that.

RebTech

RonSwanson wrote: »

What is a more useful way of heating one room without having to fiddle with my radiator valves everyday and without heating my whole house?

If your house is not too large and quite well insulated then you might consider not using central heating at all. Put one portable heater in the room you use most, another in the bathroom for baths and showers, get a 15 tog duvet and leave bedroom unheated. It might sound drastic but depending what your house is like it could be perfectly workable. I've lived that way even in a draughty single-glazed house, though it had a great wood burner in the living room. (To be honest, some winters I moved the bed in there...)