Oil filled radiator question.

anotherquestion

Hi folks,

Due to the rocketing cost of oil (have oil central heating) I am going to give my existing oil filled rad a go, in other words leave it on for a good part of the day.

As it's 1500w, I expect  it to use about two units an hour (which was kindly pointed out to me in another thread)

I will try it for a day taking a meter read both in morning before it goes on and at night as we, will buy a similar model for another room, but will probably not have both  on together for long. I don't want to be carting one rad just form one room to another.

When looking at the Argos website at rads it says at bottom of each, 

This product is only suitable for well insulated spaces or occasional use.

What do they mean by occasional use here, is it dangerous or what to use they for a good number  of hours a day or what? Probably want to buy another 1500w  for £40 or less, if trial with first one seems to be working out ok.

Many thanks for any advice on this.

Bendy_House

I suspect all that means is that you'd be nuts to use it as a primary source of heating due to electricity costs, that's all.
Oil-filled rad's should last a long time, as their ultimate temps don't get that high - surely well under 100oC. Most other electric heaters have elements that glow, so a few hundred degrees, and therefore ultimately burn out.
I'd try one rad in one room first, and check that it's enough. I can imagine that it could be cheaper than oil, but only if you don't heat the rest of the house ..

ashe

The insulation thing will be because otherwise the heat that it generates will escape to nearby rooms that are not heated , so unless you're going to put a 1500w oil rad in each room, you'll probably have limited success 

Ebe_Scrooge

As above - it'll cost a heck of a lot to run in comparison to other forms of heating, that'll be the reason they say only use it occasionally.  There won't be any safety issues.  Yes, oil has rocketed in price recently (got a shock myself when I filled up a few weeks ago).  But it's still way cheaper than electricity.

If you're going to leave your central heating switched off and use the electric rad to heat only one room then it may make sense - though even then, you could turn the central heating rads in every other room down to minimum if you've got TRVs and let the CH heat just the room you're in.

But if you're contemplating using electricity to heat the whole house when you've got the option of oil, I think you'll be in for a nasty shock when the bill arrives.

anotherquestion

Thanks for all replies. No I just intend to put the rad in living room.
As regards the cost, surely a 1500w will use two units an hour (20p or less a unit) that is under 40p, say used for 10 hours a day=£4.

500l litres of oil cost £400, lasts me about six weeks, or around £9-£10 a day.
Ok all rooms in house won't be heated with one rad, but a cost of £4 versus a cost of £9-10.

Or am I missing something here??

Bendy_House

I don't know the unit costs, AQ, but if you only intend to heat one room for most of the time, how would your one leccy heater compare with only one oil-boiler radiator being on? The oil boiler would just be ticking over once it's got that rad up to heat.

How would THAT compare?

Ebe_Scrooge

anotherquestion said:

Thanks for all replies. No I just intend to put the rad in living room.
As regards the cost, surely a 1500w will use two units an hour (20p or less a unit) that is under 40p, say used for 10 hours a day=£4.

500l litres of oil cost £400, lasts me about six weeks, or around £9-£10 a day.
Ok all rooms in house won't be heated with one rad, but a cost of £4 versus a cost of £9-10.

Or am I missing something here??

You're not comparing like with like.  When you say you're burning £10 of oil per day, presumably that's heating the whole house.  Plus hot water.  So to compare that with using £4 of electricity to just heat one room is not a valid comparison.

As Bendy says, to get a true comparison you'd need to run the central heating will all radiators turned off except the one room, and turn the water heating off as well (assuming your boiler also heats the hot water).

Mutton_Geoff

Two units an hour? A "unit" is a kilowatt hour, so it will use exactly 1.5 of those. At c 20p an hour, that is £4.80 a day or about £150 a month. Depending on the room it's in, you could lose more than that out of a poorly insulated room, so you'd never feel any benefit.

GDB2222

Mutton_Geoff said:

Two units an hour? A "unit" is a kilowatt hour, so it will use exactly 1.5 of those. At c 20p an hour, that is £4.80 a day or about £150 a month. Depending on the room it's in, you could lose more than that out of a poorly insulated room, so you'd never feel any benefit.

This is the point, really. There's nothing to say that a 1.5 kw heater will actually be capable of heating the room at all. What about if it actually takes two of them to heat it?

Mutton_Geoff

There is a useful fuel per kwh equivalent table on the Nottingham Energy Partnership website. I appreciate oil cost may have risen since the last table was generated (Dec 2021) but all energy costs are rising, inc electricity.

Heating oil (assuming you use kerosene) is around a quarter of the price of electricity even taking into account boiler efficiency.

Put the Argos money towards another tank of oil!

https://nottenergy.com/resources/energy-cost-comparison/
 

anotherquestion

Ok folks Thanks a lot for replies.

As regards oil heating v heating a room with an oil filled radiator 1500w,  we are going between using both, using the rad when we are mainly all in living room, and switching to the oil when we want to heat up rest of house (rad is off then)

Another little question here, as its a 1500w rad, with two switches on it, how does that all work as regards  unit cost per hour (my current cost per hour for a unit is 19P inc vat)
Does putting on second switch mean it will use twice the electricity?

Thanks.