Anyone installed electric radiators instead of gas (especially just in the odd room?)

[mummabubs]

We've been in our house for a year, it's built into the hillside and the ground floor (front entrance and two rooms currently used as a study and guest room, about 1/3 of our overall living space) are technically underground so are prone to being very cold. In the winter there's no issue as the central heating does a good job of heating the space, but in the summer it's absolutely freezing down there. Obviously we don't want to be putting the heating on just to heat downstairs (especially with gas prices being what they are), but it's really unpleasant to try and work down there or for guests/ the kids when they play down there.

DH has done some Google research and thinks our best bet is to replace the three radiators downstairs with wall-mounted electric radiators as then we can have those on a thermostat in the summer and just have them on at the same time as the central heating in the winter. I honestly can't decide whether this sounds like a good idea or not. Half of me thinks it makes sense to treat downstairs as a separate space in terms of heating, however my worries are that it will end up costing us more to run and I'm not sure how effective electric radiators are at heating rooms in comparison. The good electric radiators easily cost as much as a traditional radiator to purchase so no savings there.

Any lived experiences would be much appreciated if you're happy to share! Thanks :)

Electric will be three to four times the cost of gas. Why not just turn the upstairs radiators off?

This is my fear but apparently the new ones aren't as ineffective as older styles?

All electric heaters are equally efficient. They all turn 1kWh of electrical energy into 1kWh of heat energy.

Some deceitful marketing spin encourages you to think that paying £1,000 for a heater will get you more heat per pound then a £10 one.

It isn't true.

Energy from electricity costs four or five times as much per kWh as energy from gas.

if your subterranean room is constantly cold it probably has a problem with damp.

You can heat just about any space with electric heaters if they're powerful enough, but the energy will cost more than the gas would. A better approach would be to have zoned controls fitted for the main central heating system, with a separate thermostat controlling the cold basement area of the house. I doubt this would cost much more than removing the redundant radiators of you went electric, as presumably you'd need a plumber to sort that for you anyway.

Of coursehe best option would be to sort out the insulation in the cold part of the house so it no longer gets too cold outside the normal "heating season". That would likely be much more disruptive though!

I would ask on this group: <a class="break-all" href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1511971082517633/?ref=sharewww.facebook.com/groups/1511971082517633/?ref=share&exp=7ffb" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Green Heating for Older Properties - lots of very knowledgable people who should be able to give you some good advice. I agree that you need to be very wary of electric heating though unless the property is extremely well insulated with a breathable material (insulated lime, hemp, sheepswool, aerogel etc etc) and also therefore dry, as the humidity will also make a huge difference to the overall feel and warmth.

Well that was an epic link fail: www.facebook.com/groups/1511971082517633/?ref=sharewww.facebook.com/groups/1511971082517633/?ref=share&exp=7ffb try this!

Agree with insulation for the cold rooms, much better if you're going to be there long term, then it will require less heating (if any).

Yes our old flat that was rented out had storage heating totally crap
tenants asked about a better heating system
so we changed the whole flat to electric radiators
each one as it’s own thermostat so they can control it

Just fit thermostatic radiator valves (trv) to each radiator upstairs and turn them off in the summer. This leaves your central heating to heat downstairs when needed.

Look into insulation for downstairs, insulating the walls and underfloor if able, will make a difference.

Electric heating is expensive, only well insulated homes with solar can make them more affordable and using low electricity products like halogen/infra red heating panels.

Standard electric radiators are very expensive to run per hour, usually cost between 22p up to around 60p per hour per radiator.

Thanks @PigletJohn, really useful to know. There is high humidity in the rooms so we were running a dehumidifier in there. It used to be the owner's workshop and he then converted it into living space before the sale, as far as we're aware it's been properly damp-proofed and insulated but we'll look into this further. There's also no windows at all so it doesn't benefit from heating via sunlight or good ventilation unless we keep the door open.

I said to my DH I thought getting the hive thermostats would be smart as we've already got the hive system but he seemed to think this would cost a lot more overall as we'd have to fit them on all the radiators. I'll look into it. We wouldn't need a plumber to remove the existing radiators (buying a fixer upper during the pandemic means we've had to learn to do a lot of DIY including plumbing ourselves!)

Thanks for the link, will have a look. We did think that the insulation was adequate but will see if we can look into this further. I know we live in an area of high humidity and the levels downstairs are high. We were using a dehumidifier every day but I said to DH that doesn't feel like a sensible long term solution to this.

@flirtygirl I agree. Not sure if he's right or not but DH seemed to think that it would still cost nearly as much to have the central heating on just to heat downstairs even with the other radiators turned off as you're still having to heat water and push it through the system.

It doesn’t cost a lot to fit TRvs on your existing radiators.

you could also have the plumbing of the CH altered so that the basement pipes are on a different zone, and are pumped are different times. This is commonly done in larger houses, as occupation times of working, living and bedrooms are different.

it is a straightforward plumbing job if the pipes are accessible.

but turning the upstairs radiators down would be cheap and easy.

the cost of running a gas boiler is proportional to the amount of heat it delivers. It does not deliver heat to radiators that are turned off.