cheap heating

[Tinker]

We want to heat our cold flat this winter as cheaply as possible. We have storage heaters, but we are at work 9-5 monday-friday and it seems silly to have them on all day every day when we're not in. Would it be more cost effective to run convector heaters, oil filled electric radiators or the storage heaters. We'll probably be using them for about three hours a day in the evening. Cheers guys.

[paulz]

Tinker - what about the portable gas heaters. You can usually get these around �80. click here. Try to get a deal where the cylinder is part of the package � local hardware shops are quite good for these. A refill is around �20 mark. Wheel it from room to room [not while alight!!]. Downside with them is they do chuck out quite a bit of moisture. And the cylinders are quite heavy. From my rented days, I also invested in a dehumidifier. click here.The excess water that is drawn out of the air will make the flat feel warmer these again are around the �80 mark. They pretty cheap to run.

[Gandy]

We got a delonghi dragon oil heather a couple of years ago. It was about �100 but was so good. It went on ebay a year a go after we bought our first (centrally heated) house. Highly recommended and very cheap to run - a couple of pence for the whole night

[country_boy]

Fan heaters are cheaper to run than convector heaters and I reckon take the chill away far quicker. You can get them in Argos that are thermostatically controlled too.

[New Forester]

You are quite right that storage heaters are pointless when you are only there in the evening -- they are designed to shift cheap night-time electricity into daytime heat. For you, they've largely cooled down by the time you get home, and a lot of their heat has gone out through the windows and walls. As paulz says, oil, paraffin or gas heaters (without flues) produce a lot of water vapour and so you tend to get condensation, especially if you have no double glazing. You also need to be absolutely certain they are in perfect condition, or you may get carbon-monoxide poisoning and die... Personally I can't stand the smell of paraffin fumes at the best of times. I agree with country boy -- fan heaters are very efficient at heating large volumes of air quickly -- and you can point them at your cold tootsies when you get in. Thermostat ones can be left on very low when you're out, to keep the chill off or stop the pipes freezing when you're away. Oil-filled radiators are OK, especially as background warmth. However, because the warm air rises they tend to heat only the top half of the room -- you'll find you have a warm head but cold feet. If you have a fan heater as well, that stirs up the air and helps the oil-filled rad. Electric bar-fires, of course, are an invention of the devil -- all they do is scorch your legs and warm the walls slightly, at great expense. And set fire to things. If it's your own house, insulating the cavity walls makes a big difference, and only costs a few hundred quid. Then the inside leaf of the wall acts as a storage heater itself.