Thinking of replacing from oil to electric rafs/heaters

demello

Hi. My oil boiler is very old and will need replacing soon.

I would like to get rid of oil altogether. The house is old and not fit for a heat pump. So I was looking at electric rads or the Aeno electric heater or similar.

How do I calculate the likely cost of running electric rads or electric heaters? It us a 4 bed semi-d house, so would need electric rads or electric heater in 4 bedrooms, hall, and 3 downstairs rooms.

Thanks in advance for any help.

DM

cute geoge

keep an eye on donedeal and pick up newer type s/h oil boiler similar to what you have already and bob is your uncle ,a plumber will fit it in half a day ..A lady who recently bought a 2 up 2 down town house told me she spent 130 euro in electric for 9 days during cold spell in december granted these were older type electric heaters .Oil at 1.50 litre is still better value then electric any day

MicktheMan

An example:

If you currently spend €1000 per year on oil, your current heating system is 75% efficient, you pay €1.20 for oil per litre and €0.30 per unit for electricity then a very rough method to give a ballpark idea of cost using electricity is as follows:

€1000 x 0.75 / 0.12 x 0.3 = €1875

You can insert your own figures into the above formula to get an idea. Bottom line, all things being equal, it is going to cost you more to heat with electricity.

Wearb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058281313/thinking-of-replacing-from-oil-to-electric-rafs-heaters

It'll be about double or more than what its costing you with oil.

DC999

@demello, another option is move to some electric rads to try prolong the life of the oil boiler. I'd doing that with out 15yr old gas boiler and my thinking is it runs less houses per day, it might last longer.

I've heating downstairs in a smaller house than yours from mostly electric rads. Gas heating comes on for max of 3 hours a day on lowest boiler setting and lowest TRV setting on rads. Then 2 small electric rads keep the downstairs room at the temp for the rest of the time. More info here but my numbers won't be correct now as it's colder than when I posted it: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058272200/heating-with-electric-rads-and-no-gas-boiler-for-now/p1?new=1

And another good one here: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058272663/electric-heater-for-one-room/p1

Summary is supplementing electric heat with your existing heating works well for me.

But going fully electric for heating would be a very large cost, unless...you get storage heaters and a cheaper night rate to fill them up. They are the modern version of the big ugly unit that were in bedsits years ago. You'd want to get specialist advise on how to do it and how to link them in so could measure the usage and control them.