One Electric/Oil Heater or Central Heating?

jamiebrown_2

Hi,

We live in a 3 bedroom rented semi and spend almost all of our time at home in one bedroom. We heat this at the moment using our gas central heating, and its the only radiator in the house that's on.

This is pretty expensive for us - would it be cheaper to get an electric/oil-based heater, run it in that one room, and turn off the central heating? Obviously, we'd still use the gas central heating for hot water, but we don't use too much of that.

Thanks very much!

Jamie.

gordonstights

Don't know if running one of the electric/oil filled radiators would be cheaper. We have one that we used to use but don't now because over winter 2006 we used it to heat a small room to dry our washing. Our bill in early 2007 was really sky high. We got hold of a tumble dryer for this winter just gone and our electric bill was far less for the same period. Other people then said to us "those oil filled ones are terrible on electricity!".....

great how you find these things out afterwards :rolleyes:

mute_posting

gordonstights wrote: »

Other people then said to us "those oil filled ones are terrible on electricity!"

Strange, being electric, if you put 1 Kwh of electricity in, you get 1 Kwh of heat out, so from an efficiency point of view you can't get much better.

As to using a tumble dryer instead of the oil rad to dry washing, I would imagine because you are only drying the washing and not heating the whole room that would (perhaps) explain the difference.

MP

jamiebrown_2

Thanks for your replies. By the way, I don't know if it matters, but our central heating is fairly old and naff - we only have one central thermostat in the house, downstairs, and the radiators just have plain old valves, not thermostatic ones.
Cheers in advance, :beer:

Jamie.

Cardew

Gas CH will always be cheaper.

Gas is typically 3p for a kWh and Electricity typically 10p.

Even if your boiler was really old and had an efficiency of only 50% you are still paying 6p for a kWh and you won't get electricity for that price.

You also say: "Obviously, we'd still use the gas central heating for hot water"
Well if gas is cheaper for HW it will be cheaper for CH