Central heating question / Cost of Living

Would it be cheaper to run 2Kw oil filled radiator in my home office during the day, compared to turning on the central heating which will warm up my office along with a few bedrooms in our house.

I don’t really want to go around the house each morning and turn off the TRVs and then remember to turn them back on, but that’s the alternative I guess.

Our house is over 3 floors and so in effect we have two separate thermostat systems, with the middle and top floor controlled by a themostat in my office (on the top floor), and then the ground floor has it’s own thermostat and timer programme. During the day it’s only my office that I want to warm up really. Happy with the ground floor being pretty cold during the day.

Tagging @marckee

It’s really hard to say without knowing the size of the rooms, the hours of operation etc etc, but the usual rule of thumb is that a single oil-filled radiator costs the same as three central heating radiators, so if you can keep four or more radiators off as a result of using a single oil-filled one, it will cost less.

This assumes that you keep your office door pushed to, and that the electric radiator has a thermostat and a timer on it (remember to turn it off an hour before you finish, as it will continue to pump out heat even when not plugged in).

Have you looked into the cost of adding a third heating zone to your system? It could easily be cheaper than the cost of buying and running a new electric radiator.

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Re. the last point:

If you already have a wireless smart system in your house, it’s very easy to add individual smart TRVs, so you can pre-programme each room TRV if you want.

Ultimately I think this is what I want to do. But the rule of thumb is helpful, thanks!

Worth bearing in mind that this will mean the heating has to work harder to heat up the cold for the evening, so it may cost more to do that. I don’t know specifics because I’m an idiot about this stuff but we had a plumber looking at our bathroom and he said something along the lines that it can work out more efficient to keep a constant temperature than continual spikes and falls.

This is only really true if you have underfloor heating and a house with very high thermal mass (so it operates on a much slower turnaround).

It’s not true of houses with radiators really.

Glad someone knows specifics then :smile: