Is A Two Kw Fan Heater Cheaper To Run For An Hour...

[sandyRoe]

Than turning the oil-fired central heating on for the same time?

[Zacs-Master]

How much are you paying per Kw for your electricity, Sandy?

[Atheist]

If the oil-fired central hating is used to heat up a whole house, then I would expect it to be more expensive than a 2Kw electric fan heater, but the latter would only be enough to heat up a single room.

[Atheist]

Sorry about the typo! I must have been influenced by the AB environment! :-)

[gingejbee]

It's not comparing like-with-like. A fan heater if fine for taking the chill off one room for a short time - the CH is better for warming a place through over much longer period.

[Gizmonster]

I don't know about oil-fired, but just in case anyone is wondering, here's my calculations for a gas-fired central heating:

Depending on the the boiler, ours is 29.6 kwh and the current price cap for gas is 10.3p per kwh, so running the boiler continuously for an hour would cost approx £3.00.
The price cap for electric is 34.0p per kwh, so running this for an hour would cost 68p.
Running the heater is quite a lot less, but you'll only be heating one room.
Bear in mind I haven't taken standing charges and VAT into consideration and it also depends on how many kwh the boiler is.

[sandyRoe]

Zacs-Master, I pay by direct debit. I'm not sure what I'm charged now

[ZebuSanctuary]

In the event your oil fired boiler does not have a kW rating. There should be a label displaying its BTU rating.

The rule of thumb recommendation for boiler installations is 50 BTU per one square foot.

Thus a 10ft x 10ft room equates to an area of 100 square feet.
So the thermal output of a boiler to heat that room would
be 100 x 50 = 5000 BTU.

Let's say a house has a total of eight 10ft x 10ft rooms
then the boiler required to warm the house would be
calculated by 8 x 5000 = 40 000 BTU.

The conversion factor used to convert BTU to kW is
1 BTU = 0.00029307108333333 kW.
Thus a boiler with a rating of 40,000 BTU corresponds
to an equivalent boiler with a rating of approx 11.7 kW.
(round up to 12 kW). Hopefully you can glean either the
BTU or kW rating from the boiler. Hope this helps.

Now refer to monsters post for working out running costs.

The good news is. Neither the boiler or the electric fan heater should run continuously for the full one hour, since you can set
the thermostat to say 22 °C. Therefore either appliance should
keep cutting in and then cut off at periodic intervals.