"Always On" Oil Heating

IsThisOneFree

My aunt currently lives in a council house with a solid fuel stove and back boiler for heating and water.

Due to mobility issues, the stove is on longer really suitable, and we've been speaking with the council about alternatives. They've offered two, although haven't really gone into any details on them:

1. They said that she could keep the stove (to heat the living room) and install electric heaters in each room. They haven't gone into detail, but they said that these heaters are very efficient, but are not storage heaters (the lady I spoke to didn't have much more detail than that unfortunately)

2. Remove the stove and install an oil boiler instead. This seems the better option of the two, but I do have a few concerns. She's home pretty much all day and all night, and is only out a few hours a week. So, she needs heat all the time. The Living Room, where she spends 95% of her waking hours, is north facing and so is naturally a bit cold. I know from experience of our own house that oil is best suited to environments where it's on for a few hours in the morning and evening.

So my question is, is it really possible to install an oil boiler in a configuration that it can be on all day (or most of it anyway) on low heat ? We have thermostatic valves on our rads and it seems to make very little difference if they're at 1 or 5. Can oil work with low temperature radiators for example ? Or is there any particular boiler that would suit this type of environment best ?

Thank in advance for any advice

Gooey Looey

IsThisOneFree wrote: »

My aunt currently lives in a council house with a solid fuel stove and back boiler for heating and water.

Due to mobility issues, the stove is on longer really suitable, and we've been speaking with the council about alternatives. They've offered two, although haven't really gone into any details on them:

1. They said that she could keep the stove (to heat the living room) and install electric heaters in each room. They haven't gone into detail, but they said that these heaters are very efficient, but are not storage heaters (the lady I spoke to didn't have much more detail than that unfortunately)

2. Remove the stove and install an oil boiler instead. This seems the better option of the two, but I do have a few concerns. She's home pretty much all day and all night, and is only out a few hours a week. So, she needs heat all the time. The Living Room, where she spends 95% of her waking hours, is north facing and so is naturally a bit cold. I know from experience of our own house that oil is best suited to environments where it's on for a few hours in the morning and evening.

So my question is, is it really possible to install an oil boiler in a configuration that it can be on all day (or most of it anyway) on low heat ? We have thermostatic valves on our rads and it seems to make very little difference if they're at 1 or 5. Can oil work with low temperature radiators for example ? Or is there any particular boiler that would suit this type of environment best ?

Thank in advance for any advice

Get a smart thermostat for the oil then the heating will cut in and out to keep the place at a temperature. Our house is 19.5 during the day, 20 in the evening and drops to 19 during the night.

colm_mcm

Non storage heaters will cost a fortune to run, heaters are all almost 100% efficient regardless, so no matter what these heaters claim, electricity goes in and heat comes out, it’s as simple as that.

cranefly

As its a council house, i doubt it has the best insulation, so i would ask the council to do as much insulating to the house before you decide on other forms of heating, oil is fine when it is turned on, but a house can get cold very fast once it is turned off, a stove is very good at keeping the heat in a house, even when it dies down. i do not know how old your aunt is, but a lot of older people will not turn the oil on when they should, trying to save money, so, insulation first, as much as she can afford.

The first option they offered, a dry stove for the living room, and electric heaters for all the others, with her mobility issues, she would have to light a dry stove the same as a boiler stove, she gets more of a benefit with the boiler stove, you could ask the council to add oil heating as well, a good few people have both a boiler stove and a oil burner complimenting each other, oil to get the rads good and hot, light the stove, and when the stove is up to temperature, turn the oil off, and let the stove take over. Although with mobility issues, lighting a stove of any kind could become more difficult going forward for her, so option 1 might not work.

Option 2 is a good option, but only if the house is fairly well insulated, if not, it could cost her quite a lot of money to heat the whole house, zoning the house into zones could work, zone 1 downstairs, Zone 2 upstairs so only heating part of the house for night and day. Either way the boiler stove was probably the most cost efficient way to heat the rads and water, any other way will probably cost your aunt more to run. Ask the council about insulating the house first.

TheBoyConor

colm_mcm wrote: »

Non storage heaters will cost a fortune to run, heaters are all almost 100% efficient regardless, so no matter what these heaters claim, electricity goes in and heat comes out, it’s as simple as that.

Spot on. Anyone who starts going on about a particular electric heater being efficient just shows up their technical ignorance. It is spoof and plumas of the highest order. An electric heater is always 100% efficient as all the energy is emitted into the room.

GreeBo

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Spot on. Anyone who starts going on about a particular electric heater being efficient just shows up their technical ignorance. It is spoof and plumas of the highest order. An electric heater is always 100% efficient as all the energy is emitted into the room.

I guess the more thermal mass that it heats up the more economical it is, rather than the more efficient it is.

TheBoyConor

not really. It is the same amount of energy being put in at the end of the regardless of whether it goes directly into the room or via the attenuating effect of a thermal mass, and the same cost. The only way it could be considered more economical is if they are storage heaters using night rate electricity, which is a rarity nowadays.

It only makes sense to talk about efficienct for boilers and stoves and such as a percentage of the energy inputted into the device is lost to the flue gasses. You just don't have that with electricity so it makes no sense to talk about efficiency.

GreeBo

TheBoyConor wrote: »

not really. It is the same amount of energy being put in at the end of the regardless of whether it goes directly into the room or via the attenuating effect of a thermal mass, and the same cost. The only way it could be considered more economical is if they are storage heaters using night rate electricity, which is a rarity nowadays.

Its the same amount of energy if both are on 24x7x365.

The point of heating up a thermal mass (versus just heating air) is that you dont need to have it on 24x7x365, hence its more economical.

If we are just comparing convectors or radiant heaters then yeah, they are all the same.

TheBoyConor

to heat the room to a desired temperature, you will need to give the same amount of energy, one way or another. If a storage heater is actively powered at 3kW for 16 hours, and a regular convection heater is on at 3kW for 24 hours they will not heat the room to the same temperature. The room with the storage heater will not be as warm as it was supplied with less energy.

You are spoofing now, man!

A thermal mass, attenuates the heat flow and evens out any peaks and toughs as the element goes on and off. A thermal mass cannot magic up energy out of nowhere. It defies physics. It only brings about a saving if it heats up the mass using cheap night electricity and relases that heat during the day. Unless you have a night rate meter, there is no benefit.

GreeBo

TheBoyConor wrote: »

to heat the room to a desired temperature, you will need to give the same amount of energy, one way or another. If a storage heater is on at 3kW for 16 hours, and a regular convection heater is on at 3kW for 24 hours they will not heat the room to the same temperature. The room with the storage heater will not be as warm as it was supplied with less energy.

You are spoofing now, man!

A thermal mass, attenuates the heat flow and evens out any peaks and toughs as the element goes on and off. A thermal mass cannot magic up energy out of nowhere. It defies physics. It only brings about a saving if it heats up the mass using cheap night electricity and relases that heat during the day. Unless you have a night rate meter, there is no benefit.

Unless you are in a perfectly sealed vacuum then the air you are heating is escaping, probably as soon as any door is opened.
If you are heating something with thermal mass then it doesnt escape as quickly so you dont need to keep the heat on all the time.


Your example comparing storage to convection is flawed by reality. The room with the convection heater will be cold as soon as the heater is turned off, the storage heater will continue to emit heat long after its turned off.
You can open the windows for 10 minutes with a storage heater and, once you close them, it will still be giving off heat. Try that with a convector and you are set back to the same temp as if you had no heater at all.

To heat object X by Y degrees takes the same amount of energy, but thats lab physics and has no real relevance to heating an old house.

TheBoyConor

The theory still applies in practice. Ventilation and air leakage losses will still be the same regardless of the type of heater used. That is a constant.
If you open the door in a convector heated room, the heat will go out. Of course.
Similarly, if you open a door in a storage heater heated room the heat will also go out. That lost energy will then be replenished by the heat contained in the thermal mass, which then loses that energy to the now cooler air in the room. That lost energy must be replenished by the heating element, at the same cost per unit used. The thermal mass does not and cannot magic up heat out of the ether or multiply energy previously supplied to it. If the thermal mass has x J of energy stored, that x J of energy was previously supplied by the heating element at the usual cost per unit of energy.

It is basic conservation of energy. I think you don't get it.

I would place a bet of money that an comparative experiment would show a near zero or negligible difference in the amount of energy used to heat a room with a convector vs a storage heater.

colm_mcm

Theboyconor is 100% correct here.

TheBoyConor

That "lab physics" is absolutely 100% applicable to a this real world scenario.

GreeBo

TheBoyConor wrote: »

The theory still applies in practice. Ventilation and air leakage losses will still be the same regardless of the type of heater used. That is a constant.
If you open the door in a convector heated room, the heat will go out. Of course.
Similarly, if you open a door in a storage heater heated room the heat will also go out. That lost energy will then be replenished by the heat contained in the thermal mass, which then loses that energy to the now cooler air in the room. That lost energy must be replenished by the heating element, at the same cost per unit used. The thermal mass does not and cannot magic up heat out of the ether or multiply energy previously supplied to it. If the thermal mass has x J of energy stored, that x J of energy was previously supplied by the heating element at the usual cost per unit of energy.

It is basic conservation of energy. I think you don't get it.

I would place a bet of money that an comparative experiment would show a near zero or negligible difference in the amount of energy used to heat a room with a convector vs a storage heater.

I'm clearly not explaining myself very well here!:o
I'm not trying to say that one heater will use more of less energy to heat a room by X degrees, that as you rightly said is a constant, regardless of the method used. Energy, joules, watts, all that lovely stuff.
I'm saying that you need to turn on a convector more frequently than a storage heater.

With a convector you are just heating the air in the room. If the convector is off and you lose the hot air then the room is basically at ambient temp.
With a storage heater, if you lose the hot air then the storage heater still has heat energy stored within it (its literally called a storage heater because it stored heat!) so you dont need to immediately turn it back on, it still hot and giving off heat.

You said it yourself earlier "A thermal mass, attenuates the heat flow and evens out any peaks and toughs as the element goes on and off."

i.e. when the element is off (zero energy going in, zero cost) the storage heater is still emitting heat, the convector is not, so your room cools down faster with a convector, so you need to turn it on more frequently.

TheBoyConor

when the element is off (zero energy going in, zero cost) the storage heater is still emitting heat,

And where did that stored energy come from? In through the meter earlier on and was paid for.

You are assuming that a convector will just be on permanently and the convector will not - you are not comparing like with like here.

All but the shíttiest of heaters, whether convector or storage, will have a thermostat that will ensure that the element is only powered when it is necessary to provide heat.

To heat a room to a desired temperature with thermostatic control, both types of heater (with the same power output) will have the same average on/off time over a day. The storage heater will however, cycle on/off much less often that the convector, but the total time on and the total time off for both types should be identical. It has to be for the same amount of heat to be supplied to the room and thus for the same temperature to be maintained.
If the convector spent more time on than the storage heater, then the room would be heated to a hotter temperature, and would quite obviously cost more. But that is not what we are talking about here. We want to to heat the room to the same temperature regardless of the type of device used.

Your argument seems to be that the thermal mass of the storage heater is somehow scoring "free energy" in a manner that the convector cannot do. You don't seem to have a good understanding of the principle of energy conservation.

colm_mcm

It’s like driving down a hill. You had to get up the hill in the first place.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can be changed from one form to another.

MrMusician18

It might take 10kwh or units to heat a room to say 20C and keep it there all day. Whether this 10kwh is delivered all in one go to heat up a heater with a high thermal mass, or trickles out through a convector heater all day is irrelevant in terms of efficiency or cost (unless you have night rate)

The number of times a simple electric heater cycles on an off to maintain a temperature is not relevant to cost or efficiency.

GreeBo

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Your argument seems to be that the thermal mass of the storage heater is somehow scoring "free energy" in a manner that the convector cannot do. You don't seem to have a good understanding of the principle of energy conservation.

Nope, I'm not saying its free at all, I'm saying that the energy went into the storage aspect of the heater rather than directly into the air in the room.
In a convector the thermal storage is the air room, in a storage heater its the ceramic or clay blocks inside.

I get that its the same amount of energy being consumed to initially heat the room to X*C and that its the same amount of energy being lost by the room, but if one unit is releasing the thermal energy slower than the other, how is it that I won't have the convector on more frequently than the storage heater, in the old, drafty house in question?
The stat in the convector will kick in earlier than the stat in the storage heater as the storage heater is slowing down the temperature drop in the room.


(Full disclosure, I am overtired and might just be being dense! )

Unless your point is that the storage heater will have used up more energy initially to get to temperature and so it evens out over the course of its usage...but once the storage heater is up to temp surely its cheaper to keep it there....?

TheBoyConor

Read my earlier post again about how, with both devices under thermostatic control to maintain the room temp, the thermal mass in the storage heater will mean that the device will cycle on and off less times in a day, while the convector which will cycle on and off more frequently as you quite rightly point out due to the attenuating effect of the thermal blocks. However, assuming that both heaters have the same power rating, if you add up the length of all the "on" periods for each device, they will both sum up to the same amount of time. And if the total on time and the power outputs are the same, then the energy consumed is the same since Energy=PowerxTime.
And if the same energy is consumed, then it will cost the exact same. Unless there is a night rate meter, but that is rare nowadays and is certainly not the norm.

TheBoyConor

You're bate, lad.

Xertz

The problem isn’t the efficiency of the storage heaters, it’s the unit cost of electricity relative to basically any other heat source.

If you’re in an area with natural gas, fitting a modern gas boiler and radiators might be a good option. Check if there are any Warmer Home grants that might be able to ease the costs.

The Better Energy Warmer Homes programme : https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/housing_grants_and_schemes/warmer_homes_scheme.html

Also contact your local authority and see if they’ve any advice as it’s a council home but also they would have solid advice on what’s available.

Just call them up and explain the situation and ask if they’ve any suggestions. In my experience, they are usually fairly helpful, but you will need to actually ring them as their websites can be hit and miss.

An Ri rua

I doubt the OP posted in the wrong forum. But on first glance at the replies he could be forgiven for thinking he'd posted to Energy users Anonymous or some such self-help group for fetish freaks.
MOD NOTE: LEAVE THE MODERATION TO THOSE CHARGED WITH IT.

Op, lots of oil burner technicians will have good things to say about a gravity-fed oil stove such as an Efel or Nestor Martin. Easily picked up secondhand, very reliable and literally sip oil. No comparison between them and oil fired central heating.
My elderly mother has 2 in a large bungalow and they are bullet proof, cheap to run and visually replace an open fire or solid fuel stove without too much fuss.
Check them out.

Wearb

TheBoyConor wrote: »

You're bate, lad.

MOD NOTE. WHAT'S THAT COMMENT ABOUT. Maybe you should delete it.