Thinking of replacing some rads, advice needed first

[Rollerball]

Some of the rooms in my house have the old single panel, single convector radiators. These don't give off much heat and certainly aren't large enough to warm up the rooms sufficiently.

If I was to replace them with double panelled rads (either single or doubt convectors) they would obviously heat up the rooms more, but would they also cause my oil fired boiler to use up a lot more oil, or would the extra used be fairly negligible?

 

[Doggit]

This is a difficult one to judge, but as the boiler is working harder to produce more heat to heat the rooms, you're going to use more fuel, but I don't think it'll be that much. If you can do a quick calculation on the size of the existing rads, and then the size of the new ones, I doubt if it'll be more than about 10%, but that might not translate to an extra 10% worth of fuel needed.

On the other hand, do you want to be warmer or not.

 

[Rollerball]

Thanks very much, I'll look into it.

 

[Terrywookfit]

You don't get owt for nowt.
If you are heating the house to a higher temperature, then you will use more fuel.

 

[Aquaheat]

As @Terrywookfit has mentioned but...

Look into the actual insulation properties of your home or rooms. A bit spent here may be all that is needed. Heat loss calculations can be done online for a rough guide to help you out with an idea of your heat input to heat losses. You may be better spending your money on insulating your property better or a combination of the two.

A bit (lot) more info would be needed but start with room sizes, wall construction, windows, floor type, house type and age, radiators existing (size and type), system controls and type to give you but a few.

Jon

 

[Aquaheat]

You don't get owt for nowt.
If you are heating the house to a higher temperature, then you will use more fuel.

Could be owt for nowt (admittedly paid in bills anyway but you still pay)

Insulation could be provided for free under a few schemes which would not need the house to be actually heated to a higher temperature but stop it disappearing as quick which would not need an increase in fuel, possibly a decrease!

Pedantic I know but it may well be possible to increase the heat of the property without spending anymore on fuel, possibly less, with no actual outlay.

Jon

 

[Rollerball]

As for insulation, the property has good, thick insulation in the loft. The walls of the place are thick and the flooring is all concrete.

 

[Aquaheat]

Thick what? How thick? How old is the property? Floor coverings? How big are these rooms/property? You have missed out a lot of what I mentioned above and all (and others) need to be taken into account.

Help us to help you, give as much detail as possible or do as I suggested and Google heat loss calculators and start from there.

You could always pay someone like ourselves to come out. Probably an hour or two to come out and do it for you, take what's needed and then advise you on the best course of action to improve the situation if you struggle with it yourself.

Benefits of this would be that you have many years of experience to call on to know what would actually be effective in your property for a minim cost overall.

Downside is you "could" end up with someone who wants to sell you the world for a minimal gain. Best way to avoid this would be to use a recommended heating engineer from friends and family. Not all will be able to provide this service but most of the good ones will.

It won't be free though.

Jon

 

[durhamplumber]

put a jumper on