Most cost effective way to heat...one room

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What are your DIY skills and knowledge like? 

There is a craze at the moment for Diesel fuelled heaters from China. You tubers have costed them at 7 times cheaper than electricity.  Can be run on Red Diesel £1.30 litre provides about 4 hours running

These are only for the most competant of DIYers for safe installation and use.  They are also noisy. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRCf-OlbVaA  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyiUpFjwtlU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUNZX76yddI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIQwHjNpYn4

FaceHead

xxxxxxxx said:

What are your DIY skills and knowledge like? 

There is a craze at the moment for Diesel fuelled heaters from China. You tubers have costed them at 7 times cheaper than mains gas.  Can be run on Red Deisel £1.30 litre provides about 6 - 7 hours running

These are only for the most competant of DIYers for safe installation and use.  They are also noisy. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRCf-OlbVaA  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyiUpFjwtlU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUNZX76yddI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIQwHjNpYn4

This just won't work. It's basically clickbait. 

The gas price cap is 14.76p/kWh. That gets you a bit over 24MJ for a £. 

At £1.30, a litre of diesel providing about 35MJ/l is a very similar 27MJ for your £. 

But the cheap heat exchanger is nowhere near as good as your boiler, and critically it is non condensing - so it's ejecting the water produced in combustion outside as vapour, rather than liquid as your boiler does.

So whilst the energy output of the fuel is a similar price, it's a far less efficient way to burn it and will be significantly (say 1.5 or 2x more expensive) than running a modern gas boiler. 

Factor in all the equipment, and this is just nonsense to sell dodgy products/get YouTube likes. 

Edit: the shown products are not heatpumps, which I thought for a moment they might be. A diesel driven heatpump (if such a thing exists) has potential to compete with a gas boiler, but again if you already had a gas boiler, you wouldn't go out and buy a diesel heatpump which may or may not be marginally cheaper to run. 

xxxxxxxx

I said gas when I should have said electricity. 

These are designed as workshop garage heaters, and would be cheaper than an electric heater.   because gas does not heat your garage workshop.  Or if you live off grid or off gas mains.

Also if you are only wanting to heat 1 or 2 rooms in a house it could be a better option than turning on your central heating. But the interesting thing about it is using waste oil as a free source of energy.

casper_gutman

A diesel heater would inevitably produce hazardous exhaust fumes containing carbon monoxide and other nasties. I fully understand that it uses a heat exchanger to heat the circulated air, with all combustion products vented externally as long as the heater is installed and operating correctly, but there are risks and this definitely isn't something people should consider as a DIY project.

Using something like this in a well ventilated area like a garage in the motor trade with the door opening frequently (if it ever closes) is one thing, but the risks in a home with far fewer air changes would surely be much, much greater.