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Despite having gas-powered central heating, my kitchen has no radiator and gets pretty chilly. It's not quite October and I'm starting to feel it. I can't cover the expense and potential hassle of getting pipes setup to add a radiator to our system, so am looking at an electric radiator (despite the higher running costs etc).
In the same vein of not wanting to take the house apart to run new cabling to the fuse box, I'm looking at plug-in radiators. Plus I'm struggling to get any electrician to reply to my queries about getting one hard wired in. Questions:
The room is roughly 15m². I'm thinking a radiator at 1500W would be ok. Maybe 1200W at a push. Does that sound feasible? Online calculators suggest so.
There seems to be a huge range of prices available for a radiator in that range (vertical orientation to fit). Anything from around £350 to £1000. Is there actually much difference between them all beyond the look of it?
Any advice and wisdom is, as always, much appreciated.
Depends how cold the room is, we had a 2KW one in a room roughly that size and i would say it was about right. The house is generally quite cold though.
I've never owned one but have seen that you can also get 'plinth heaters' which go under kitchen units. No idea if they are good or not but potentially could help if you have limited wall space.
Room for a portable plug-in oil-filled rad, that you could take away in the warmer months?
Is there anything else you can do to insulate and draft proof? When I moved into my house the kitchen was 10 years old - and hidden under the cupboards and new floor was a gap around three walls of the room around 2cm, direct to subfloor which was uninsulated and had air bricks all round...simply blocking that gap made the room significantly warmer through the winter...
What is the floor? Many years ago we had a tile on concrete floor. The best heater was a fan blown one which basically put some heat into the tiles as much as convected into the air.
How far away are your nearest central heating pipes? If there's any on the other side of the wall, or in the room above, then it's really not that much work to fit an extra radiator. If you're thinking about spending 350+ it's definitely worth getting a couple of quotes off some local plumbers. Central heating radiators are cheap to buy (check screwfix).
Son took out their storage heaters & fitted radiant panels instead which seems to do the trick but I'm guessing you wouldn't have the wall space in your kitchen?
I've never owned one but have seen that you can also get 'plinth heaters' which go under kitchen units. No idea if they are good or not but potentially could help if you have limited wall space.
We have plinth heaters. Ours still need a hot water feed.
Can you get purely electrical ones? If so they are just concealed fan heaters.
Ours work well at heating the room, but they are noisy.
Oil filled rad won't take up much room and can be had with timers etc. We've a 30 year old Delonghi we use in our conservatory - it's powerful enough to heat the conservatory in the middle of winter if needed - runs on a timer and thermostat. An IR panel might be a shot, but that doesn't really heat the air - it heats anyone in the room !
Thanks all. We have a plinth heater - it's crap. We're on our third (warranty replacements) - something must break in them and it gets unbearably noisy. If anyone has a recommendation for an actual good one, I'm all ears, but I've kind of been put off them.
There is a heating pipe maybe 4 metres away. But would it require taking part of the wall apart to extend? Likewise for hard-wired electric - can that be done without taking walls apart? There's a built-in fridge/freezer in the way.
The house is relatively new - 2008 - and seems reasonably well insulated. Though, I'm not sure how I'd find out otherwise!
Is the plinth heater wet? If so could you fit heated skirting boards connected to the pipes currently running to the plinth heater?
Another vote for oil filled, there are a couple of colder rooms in my place (face the oncoming weather) so from october to march i alternate between the two of them, it's a 2kW delonghi. Even on the comfort setting it can make the rooms too warm if i leave them for too long (both around 16sqm).
I'm quite well insulated, it just gets really cold, and the central heating is slightly undersized for the house.
During the summer, i just stick it in a corner.
I'd be getting a plumber in for a quote at least.
Last year I had a radiator fitted to my kitchen, it was about 3m from the nearest pipe. I bought the rad for about £80 and the plumber fitted it for around £200.
A decent electric radiator won't be cheap to buy and will cost a lot more to run than an additional radiator on your existing central heating.
Despite having gas-powered central heating, my kitchen has no radiator and gets pretty chilly.
Do you have an electric oven? turn it on and leave the door open for the heat to escape?!
If so could you fit heated skirting boards connected to the pipes currently running to the plinth heater?
We fitted heated skirting at our old place - it was okay, but not amazing. When we renovated our kitchen where we are now, we just went for traditional radiators.
For context assuming 2 kW output running 6 hours a day for half the year, gas would be around £175, electric running costs £610, that's very broad brush but you get the idea of how much more expensive electricity is per kWh compared to gas.
For context assuming 2 kW output running 6 hours a day for half the year, gas would be around £175, electric running costs £610, that's very broad brush but you get the idea of how much more expensive electricity is per kWh compared to gas.
Is that just a 2kW output comparison though?
I'm not disagreeing with you but the beauty of an electric heater is that you can just heat/boost a single room while with GCH you [probably] have to heat the whole house which costs more than just the 2kW figure you've quoted.
So there's a couple of things to consider.