Heat room-by-room or whole house?

Cleopatra8989

Thanks for reading.

Has anyone ever calculated if it is more economical to heat one room at a time, or keep the whole house heated to a minimum level?

The house is a new-ish 3 bed semi with gas central heating.

For example if I am working from home, better to heat just my room, and turn rad on and off and the timer on and off, or just let the thermostat set to 20 degrees and heat the hall, and other rooms too?

I was thinking that heating room by room might result in heat being lost through the plasterboard walls to the colder, unheated areas.

Any help much appreciated!!!:D

ART6

Since there will always be some heat transfer from a warm area to a cooler one, then every room in the house will lose some heat through the ceiling, walls, and windows. How much depends on how good the insulation is. Therefore, if you only heat one room it will leak heat to the adjacent rooms, which will then leak it to the outside to some degree or other. Since the radiating surface area of the combined total of rooms unheated must be many times that of the one room you're using, heating all of them must lose more heat (and use more fuel) than just the single room will. That would be true even if the walls of the occupied room were not insulated, but generally they are, with Rockwool or similar. Even without that the air trapped between the plasterboard would be a fairly efficient insulator. The argument against that is that if during the day the other rooms become occupied and need heating, it might take more fuel to bring them up to temperature than simply keeping the heated would, but that is unanswerable as it again depends on how good the house insulation is.

Cleopatra8989

Thanks Art, that makes sense.