gas warm air or electric fan heater

[Tricia]

Hi, some nights I am starting to feel cold up here in Scotland and mentioned to hubby about lighting the pilot light so that I could turn on the gas warm air heating for a couple of hours if I was feeling cold. That went down like a lead balloon. Tight Scottish git. :-) Tells me to put a cardigan on.

I have a 1kw fan heater that I could use, so the question is,

what would cost less to run for a couple of hours in the evening? Gas warm air heating or a fan heater.

Thanks Tricia (off to find the instructions on how to light the pilot light)

[<me9]

Both will become much more expensive over the next few years. Wars will be fought over fuel. Better get used to the cardy.

[Sylvain VAN DER WALDE]

I don't know how old you are; but as you get older, adequate warmth is important to your health. So, sod the cost, and use that 1 KW fan heater (hopefully, with built-in thermostat).

Sylvain.

[Tricia]

Well hubby works until 10pm most nights so he would not be at home to complain that he was melting with the heat. To get back to my original question would 3 hours of a thermostatically controlled 1kw heater heating just one room cost less or more than 3 hours of a gas powered warm air central heating system heating the whole house? Regardless of what hubby says, I will have my heat. Just trying to find out which is the cheapest option. This is just until it gets cold enough to have the heating on permanently as I only feel cold at night. Tricia

[Owain]

I was going to suggest that you tell hubby to keep you warm ;-)

The electric for one room is almost certainly cheaper than heating the whole house, but if the one room isn't very well insulated you'll end up trying to heat the whole house anyway, so putting the heating on for half an hour might be more effective.

It would be cheaper to put the heating on now and make sure it works before waiting for the cold weather and finding it doesn't, then having to pay emergency heating engineers' rates.

It would certainly be cheaper to put the heating on that you spending the evening and hubby's money in the pub/bingo because the house is too cold.

Owain

[Ed Sirett]

Although the gas is around 4 times cheaper, give or take, the warm air unit will likely be many times more powerful. Typically they would be 10kW or more. So the answer is likely to be that the electric is cheaper especially if the fan heater has some sort of thermostat on it.

[Sylvain VAN DER WALDE]

As you may have noted, I ignored your question about warm air heating. Why? I know nothing about warm air heating, or central heating. Sorry. :) P.S. Someone earlier suggested that there might not be any great difference between the cost of gas and electricity. So be prepared to make your own choice. P.P.S. Just a thought: As your central heating is designed to heat _all_ your rooms at optimum efficiency and economy for a long time, it might not be as efficient and economical to heat _one_ room only for a short time (I hope that I don't get protests from the central heating experts).

Sylvain.

[Doctor Drivel]

So, you can heat 4 rooms for the same price as one.

Irrelevant as the room only takes what it needs to reach temperature setpoint. Big? faster warm up, that's all.

Strange conclusion.

If the air registers have on-off controls then turning these off and heating one or two rooms is still cheaper than using the electric fan heater.