Heating costs - rant to Which?

[David WE Roberts]

Just fired off a rant to Which? about what I see as a particularly lightweight article on fan heaters. It does, however, raise some interesting questions about heating strategies,

*** start *** "Portable Electric Heaters - Page 50 Nov 2011"

""A best buy portable heater will keep you warm for less this winter." Less than what?

I was very disappointed to see that you had only measured the cost to initially heat a room and not the running cost to maintain the temperature which to me is the real measure of the cost effectiveness of a heating appliance.

I see no evidence in the article to indicate how much (if any) energy saving there is in using portable electric heaters as opposed to using for example gas fired central heating with individual room thermostats and/or zone valves to allow you to heat single rooms or parts of the house without heating the whole house.

I assume that you are not advocating fan heaters as an alternative to central heating? There is at least a hint of this when you say that people are limiting, turning down or turning off their heating systems and saying that this is where fan heaters can really help.

I can see that the initial set up costs for a 3 bedroom semi would be cheap - 7 rooms (including kitchen and bathroom) at say £60 per room would cost £420 - around 10% of the cost of a new gas fired combi system. However I would like some idea of how long it would take to burn the £3,780 saving in higher fuel charges.

More importantly, I would like some idea of how much I might save against using normal gas fired central heating.

Further, the method of using these fan heaters is particularly vague. Are you proposing to turn on the heating an hour later, and boost a room using a fan heater to speed up heating then maintain the temperature with background heating? Are you proposing to use the fan heater instead of turning on the central heating? Or what?

One common problem, especially amongst the aged and confused, is a lack of a balanced vierw over heating. A friend used to constantly find his mother had turned off her central heating because she was worried about the expense, but then couldn't stand the cold so was sitting in front of an electric fire with her coat on. She couldn't seem to grasp that this was not saving her money. Unless of coure it was, in which case we should be told about this alternative cost effective heating strategy.

Fan heaters can, of course, be used as fans in the summer but I would be interested to know how effective they are compared to the free standing oscillating fan with much larger fan blades which we usually see in offices and shops in hot weather.

All in all a potentially good review seems to have been spoiled by a vagueness over how these fan heaters are to be used, and how effective they are compared to common alternatives.

The big questions, surely, are "Should we buy a fan heater? What are the alternatives? Which is most cost effective and energy efficient solution?" "

****end****

So can you save money by using fan heaters?

Cheers

Dave R

[Hugh - Was Invisible]

I cancelled my subscription recently. Which? just seem to be headline hunting with more and more shallow tests and more and more pretty pictures and individuals stories. In my view they have completely lost their way which is a great shame.

[charles]

[Snip]

just got my quarterly bill from my energy supplier.

Per kWh, electricty is 317% more expensive than gas.

[Phil Everett]

WTF's a "reduced instruction set computer operating system computer running v5.16"?

[charles]

an Iyonix PC made by Castle.

[Andy Champ]

I don't normally do this, but just for once it's the only possible answer.

[NT]

I dont think there is a more expensive approach. Individual cases vary, but generally speaking replacing gas CH with a plug in fan heater is a way to spend about as much for far less heat.

There's energy saving compared to whole house heating, but thats of little real relevance, its money that counts.

Generally speaking they dont help at all in that situation.

Thermostatic fan heaters dont cost anywhere near that

there is no saving

typically zero

not much effect. Slightly better than nothing though.

not normally.

NT

[robert]

Which have , following my rant

pointed me to this:

whole topic does raise the question of what is the question to be answered or what needs measuring, as of course all types of electric heaters are 100% efficient.

An article on the different types of electric heaters and what their pros and cons are would be better, combined with measurements of noise, stability, surface temperatures, thermostat functionality... would have been more helpful.

[Brian Gaff]

Well, also fan heaters are pretty noisy things. They have their uses of course, portable so an unheated room can be brought up to a reasonable temp quite quickly, but as the only heatin? I think not.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Not for very long the way gas is going up. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Which are a waste of space. tThey are now just a commercial company trading on the past. Incidentally I do not have gas here, its all electric via storage heaters. Scoff if you will, but my bills do compare favourably. The slight drawbacks come in the following scenrios. Workers etc leave doors open in cold weather,, you cannot get the heating to compensate. Cold follows warm, same as above if in day time. Then I guess you waste heat if it gets warm after cold. However I don't have noisy pumps and pipes all over the place with gas flames going up and down and making strange noises. Brian

[Tony Bryer]

I remember reading (as a child) their 1960s reports - the one for fan heaters had a diagram of the room with symbols in each square showing the temperature after a certain time. The reports for cars had handling graphs which showed at what speed the car spun (didn't take too much for some

1960s cars on cross ply tyres).

[Tony Bryer]

Fixed heating in my high rise here is an electric element behind the high level aircon grille. Does a great job of warming the ceiling! In the winter (SE facing flat with floor to ceiling glass is like a fridge) I work with a small electric oil filled radiator under my desk - one bit of me thinks that this is back to the 1950s, the other makes me wonder: if I were in my old home in the UK, even with zoned heating I was heating 40m2 or so, mostly unnecessarily.

[polygonum]

Probably not quite such a good job of warming the ceiling as a flat I once spent a while in. Had heating elements in the plasterboard.

Very expensive to run. And very unpleasant to have an overheated head and freezing toes.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You *really* should upgrade to Adjust. ;-)

[HarpingOn]

I sometimes have the need to heat my conservatory in the winter. We have no central heating or under floor heater in there.

I do have an oil filled radiator with timer and stat, which heats it very well, but needs to be pre-planned as it takes about an hour to get the room up to temperature.

Instead then, I use my Glass Fire (bio fireplace) with liquid fuel. This heats the conservatory to a nice temperature in only 10 minutes, and burns for just over an hour on one fill. One fill costs about £1. I haven't worked out if this is more/less expensive than using the oil filled electric, or than using a fan heater would be.

I think perhaps, I should work it out.

Of course, the other advantage of the glass fire, is it looks amazing. I use the conservatory for my harp practice, and practicing in there in the winter with the lights dimmed and the glass fire on is sublime. That's got to be worth something :)

[Mark]

Decent review sites can be very useful but I would not write off the only independent review organisation that easily.

I disagree. Which? is no where near a good as it used to be but it is still useful.

[dennis]

Well a 3kW heater uses 3 units of electricity in an hour, about 30p. I doubt if your oil filled heater uses more than 1kW, maybe 2 kW.

Burning hydrocarbons produces lots of water vapour, things may be warm but they are also wet. You need more ventilation to reduce the wetness and this wastes heat.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I don't subscribe anymore due to the cost and not making much use of the reviews these days.

Knocking Which has been around from the start. Usually by those who don't subscribe. And simply read headlines anyway.

[David WE Roberts]

Although in this case I am a long term subscriber and my parents were subscribers from the very early years. Which? built a strong reputation on good reviews (what ever happened to Good Housekeeping reviews?) and campaigning, and are now a 'super complainer' with special status. So it is sad to see them becoming trivial, illogical and generally not up to their previous illustrious standard.