Electric Fan heaters

Scruff

How (in)efficient are small electrical fan heaters like this one or these? Thinking of getting one to use to heat the small box room instead of having the gas central heating running and wasting energy and money having it heat the rest of the house when it isnt needed. Idealy it would only be ran for a few mins at a time, over a period of a few hours to heat the room.

lucernarian

Scruff wrote:

How (in)efficient are small electrical fan heaters like this one or these? Thinking of getting one to use to heat the small box room instead of having the gas central heating running and wasting energy and money having it heat the rest of the house when it isnt needed. Idealy it would only be ran for a few mins at a time, over a period of a few hours to heat the room.

Most inefficiencies in electrical appliances take the form of heat energy, which would mean they are all nearly fully efficient in a way. The only waste would be the noise the fan makes. I'd say this is why electrical heating appliances don't have efficiency stickers/ratings.

Gwynston

From a personal preference point of view, I would avoid one of those fan heaters. I don't like the stuffy, dry-air they produce, and over time as they get dusty they don't smell good when in use.

I'd rather use a convection heater, which is much the same, but without the fan (kind of like an oversized toaster!) They work a bit more gently like a radiator.

For a few quid more, you could get a convection heater with a fan option, if you really want it for a quick blast.

GreeBo

for about €20 (€40 fitted) you should get thermostatic radiator valves put on all except one of your radiators.
Now each rad has its own temperature control.
This automatically makes your boiler work more efficently as its only heating the rooms as necessary.

Gwynston

That's €20 per radiator, right? Not very cheap...

I've also heard that it's not simply a job of switching over the existing valves on your radiatiors, but in fact the whole connection needs to be redone, which would involve draining the entire system first. The subsequent refilling and balancing job, not to mention having to make proper compression joints for the new connections really calls for a proper plumber.

Someone please tell me I'm wrong and that there's actually something you can buy which is a quick DIY screw-on swap for the existing valve!

GreeBo

yep you have to do as you described, but apparently it pays for itsself pretty quickly (dont have facts/figures to hand)

The other option of course is to just turn down the radiators that you dont need...

Gwynston

Disappointed

The trouble with our rads is that I've found that they don't "turn down" very well. For all the number of turns in the valve, it's only the first half turn that makes any difference. After that it's fully on. And even in that half turn, there's very little scope, it seems either off or on.

We have some big rooms which are colder, so I'd like to have those rads on full blast, but other rooms then get overly warm while the heating stays on. I want to be able to have those rads on "low", but can't seem to find just the right valve position.

the thermostatic valves would be great, but seem like far too big a deal (and expense) to consider.

GreeBo

your system sounds like it might be un balanced..perhaps someone has been moving the lock shield valves?
You should be able to get some sort of adjustment from "normal" valves...