We are renting a small apartment in Spain until next summer and have a space heating choice of electric oil filled convector heaters or Panasonic invertor AC units CS & CU RE12JKE-1
Anyone know whether the air con units are generally the cheapest way of heating and down to what outside temperature they are reasonably efficient?
We are near Malaga so we are not expecting sub zero temperatures.
TIA for any replies
Operating range, outdoor Heating, Min / Max (°c) -5 / +24
Thanks Mike. I am not a heating engineer but so far as I can make out using the AC units would be more efficient. I have however heard that they become less effective when there is a substantial temperature difference between outside and inside otherwise why are they not widespread in the UK?
Probably best when you go out there run each for an hour and take the meter readings. I know when I was in Turkey the AC units were expensive to run for heating and as the heat is dispersed into the room it just felt like the chill was taken away. We resorted to buying a cheap electric fire and put it in the smallest room which appeared to give a greater heat as you could sit nearer to it and it soon heated the room up. we didnt however log the cost as only there for 2 weeks.
There's a trade off between amount of noise / amount of heat and once you're more than a few feet away the heat is dispersed around the room anyway. With one of those oil filled heaters, you can always 'focus' the heat a bit more and perhaps move it to where you want it.
And the nice tiled floors just love slurping all your body heat out through your feet
Last winter wasn't bad but the three or so prior to that were cold, very wet and pretty miserable, (La Cala Mijas) so get stocked up on the tinto!
John
I use an aircon unit for heating my office-come-dining room at home when I'm working at home. I don't need the whole house heated during the working day when I'm in one room. It's running as I type this.
It consumes about 1.5kW running and pumps out 3.5kW it claims, which I can well believe. It doesn't need to run much to keep the room warm. One year, it consumed about £14 of electricity, which would have been 95% heating and 5% cooling.
From 5C down outside, the external unit will ice up and have to switch to defrost cycles, and at that point, it's probably no better than running an indoor electric heater. What I didn't realise for a couple for years after fitting it is that once the outside has dropped below 0C, icing up isn't a problem, and it works fine for heating again.
I would go with the Panasonic AC provided the humidity there isn't too high in winter. Otherwise you tend to get freezing up at 5C and less until it goes sub zero and the AC will work again.
You can warm the air in a room up much faster.
Combustion of gas or oil is probably cheaper but may not be permitted.
A 2kW fan heater in reserve is helpful if the mains will stand it.
A perpetual motion machine? Output greater than input?
No. Not at all. It is a heat pump by design.
It consumes 1.5kW of electricity to pump 2kW of heat from the external air source heat exchanger to the internal one generating warm air. All the heat generated by the motor and compressor ends up in the house as well.
Used for cooling it still takes 1.5kW of electricity to pump a less than
2kW to a higher temperature external waste heat sink. In this case the 1.5kW it consumes is unwanted and dumps as waste heat.
It's a heat pump. It uses 1.5kW of energy to pump 3.5kW from outside to inside.
Ok, gotcha.
There are reversible ones, that heat as well as cool. They work less well as it gets colder. Most provide virtually no heat when the outside temperaturefalls to minus 3 or 4.
There is new technology out (Sansui I think) using CO2 refrigerant works to much lower temperatures.
Found another,Mitsubishi.
They are not widespread in the UK because we rarely need cooling and gas is is/was cheaper to heat with.
There is no energy conversion so that is irrelevant. Think of it as pushing water uphill.
It is called the Coefficient Of Performance.
--Snip --
Units are so quiet you don't really hear them. Place is so small that diffuse heating is not a problem.
Socks and thick soled slippers
Vino is no problemo. We live above a Mercadona with balconies overlapping ground level by about 4M all the way round. Don't even get damp in torrential rain going from our secure entry to the supermercado entrance. Just have to remember when Sunday is because it is closed. Apart from getting old can definitely recommend being retired.
Indeed we have gas CH in the UK (and a portable AC unit for when it gets seriously hot (Essex)). Out here no mains gas. Space heating is by electricity and water heating is by bottled gas. Only space for one cylinder under the sink so it gets weighed to see when it is about to run out. (Got it wrong last time and the hot water ran out when my other half was in the shower ......)
So how is the joblessness and recession effecting you in Spain then? We see all these riots on the box here, I expect it's all exaggerated?
How is your Spanish? I have travelled in South America extensively and picked a bit up. Do you fraternise with the locals or is it a little ex-pat community.
More beggars than there used to be but they not intrusive. Street cleaning and maintenance doesn't seem any worse. All seems fairly laid back here. Probably a few more vacant business premises.
We live in an apartment block which seems to be part holiday lets, part Spanish and part Scandinavian. Not sure there are any Brits in the building. We pick ex-pats brains in a Brit run bar and use another for English football watching if it is not on TV. Eat out in Spanish or English places according to what we fancy. Use Spanish bars to watch Malaga CF on TV. My Spanish is far from brilliant but I do intend to carry on learning. I speak as much Spanish as they speak English in the letting agent's and a lot more than many others I deal with. Definitely not interested in being in a Brit ghetto! Here for the way of life as well as the weather. (Still watch English TV though)
Well. let's hope it arries on that way.
Just noticed we are nearly neighbours. We are at the Los Boliches end of Fuengirola
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