Portable Space Heaters - Why Use Them?

Typically during the week, you get up go to the bathroom, maybe back to the bedroom, get dressed, then down to the kitchen for breakfast (if you've got time) then off to work. Your central heating turns on half an hour before you get up and probably switches off half an hour after you leave home.

Why?

Unless you have young children at home all day, or are retired or stay in for other reasons, does it really make sense to fire up a central heating boiler in the morning, heating up the whole house, even if you turn off radiators in rooms you don't use you still waste money heating up the feed pipes to the radiators.

Do you need the bedroom heated when you've finished getting dressed and have moved into the kitchen?

Why are you wasting energy and money heating the bathroom for an hour or more when you've only used it for a 10 minute shower?

More and more people are using portable space heaters as a sensible and cheaper alternative, delivering heat when and where they need it, heating up the areas they are actually using.

The Home Heating Shop  looks at some of the alternatives to whole house central heating, examine the benefits and drawbacks and in doing so we can help you to choose if space heating is the right option for you, and if so which kind.

How do you heat your home?

If you have a modern, well insulated and energy efficient home and the benefit of a modern balanced flue boiler driving a gas or oil central heating system with thermostatic controls for each room / area, then it's probably more efficient and cheaper to use your central heating to heat most of your home, rather than just heating one room individually.

Even with the recent hikes in energy prices, a well designed and maintained modern mains gas central heating system combined with proper insulation is the cheapest and most efficient way to heat a home as long as you use the timer and thermostats wisely.

The majority of us are not fortunate enough to benefit from the latest heat saving technology and energy efficient home design, many of us still live in inadequately insulated homes with older inefficient boilers.

In the UK there are many homes without any gas supply which rely on Electric heating ( usually economy 7 storage heating ), whilst Oil and LPG ( Liquid Petroleum Gas ) fired central heating systems are used in mainly rural locations.

Some traditional alternatives such as wood burnering stoves are becoming increasingly popular. While some new build homes are looking to or modern high tech solutions using wood pellet furnaces, solar or geothermal methods.

There are still millions of UK homes with no central heating at all and the majority of their heating needs are met by a selection of space heaters placed in the various rooms.

What ever method you use to heat your home, you will at some stage need a space heater. Even with the most modern heating systems it is always advisable to have one or two space heaters as emergency back up in case of power cuts, system failure or other unexpected situation causing your main heating system to fail.

See our article on surviving  the winter for advice how to deal with power cuts and w heating failure in adverse weather conditions.

One such issue is the frequent 'mains water entering gas supply pipes' which means that whole areas lose the gas supply for many days, in these situations the authorities will hand out space heaters ( usually 1 to 2 kilowatt electric fan heaters ), which can be unsuitable and expensive.

It's far better to plan in advance by looking at the areas most in use in your home and purchase the correct space heater for your requirements.

Take a look through The Home Heating Shop Consumer Guide to Portable Domestic Heaters and Cooling Appliances to help you make choices that will keep you warm in winter, cool in summer and save you money.