Broccers wrote: Fri Aug 26, 2022 10:34 am
jamcg wrote: Fri Aug 26, 2022 7:03 am
They work the same as an immersion heater in a water cylinder, just the medium they heat is oil.
In terms of electrical input to heat output and transfer to a room fan heaters are more efficient as they actually circulate the heat around. Oil filled rads have always seemed pretty rubbish to me
We had a couple years ago when the heating was borked. I never looked into how much they cost to run v gas heating so it would be interesting to find out hard data. An oil filled rad works the same a water filled rad so not any worse or better in moving heat into a room.
Once warm / hot they stay hotter for longer.
Broccers, any electrical heater is 100% efficient at changing electrical energy into heat energy in the room. There is a smoothing effect by heating up a volume of oil rather than having the elements in the air, but the amount of heat in kWh they put out is exactly the amount of kWh they consume in electricity.
Gas central heating is not 100% efficient; a modern combi boiler can be 90% efficient at turning the energy from the gas into heat but I doubt anyone is quite achieving that in reality. Take 70% as a more realistic estimate. So 10kWh of gas consumed produces 7kWh of heat into your house.
Look at the prices: electricity is now capped at 52p/kWh against gas at 15p/kWh. To heat your house up with 7kWh of heat energy would cost £3.64 using electricity and £1.50 using gas. Gas is much cheaper per unit of energy, less than 1/3 the price of electricity, so it's simply a more cost effective way to heat your home.