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Oil-filled electric radiators rely on the fact that oil stays hotter much longer than water and therefore they use less electic than a water-filled electric radiator would.
So, wouldn't it be better to drain out our central heating system and re-fill with oil. And oil will be quieter and less corrosive than water.
Right....let's here the objections....
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If the oil stays hotter longer, then it can't be releasing it's heat to the radiator skin or atmosphere. Therefore the radiator does'nt feel as hot, the ammount of heat released must be the same, only the time can be different. Remember the BTU? You don't get out for nowt.[no that's not the definition].
Yes, there would be less corrosion, but that is'nt really a problem, it takes many years to rust through a radiator. On the other hand, oil is more viscous than water and would take more power to pump, therefore it would cost more.
I once thought of pumping heating water through double glazing panels to use solar energy, but that won't work either. Clear water does'nt heat up, only the particles or impurities in it, which then shed their heat to the water.
John
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"If the oil stays hotter longer, then it can't be releasing it's heat to the radiator skin or atmosphere. Therefore the radiator does'nt feel as hot, the ammount of heat released must be the same, only the time can be different."
John, I must take issue with you over this.
"only the time can be different".....
Surely that's my point, isn't it? If one can prolong the time a rad is hot then it will cost less to run, isn't this why they make oil-filled electic heaters?
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1000 BTU's are 1000 BTU's whether we like it or not. Only 1000 BTU's can be released and no more. Be it over 1 minute or 5, the total amount of heat is the same.
Oil is used instead of water in static radiators because it has a much higher boiling point, if it was water filled and boiled it would explode. So an oil filled one can be safely heated to a much higher temperature, more BTU's, more heat released, convenient but more expensive it would seem. To get the same amount of total heat out of a water job at a lower temperature would require more radiators which would certainly cost more than a hotter oil filled one. So, 1 oil filled radiator putting out 10,000 BTU's would be the same as 10 water filled ones at 1,000 BTU's each [I'm making up the numbers]. But the cost of the extra 9 would be impractical.
John
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Thanks for that John, I bow to your superior knowledge.
.....another idea bites the dust...( but I do have more )
Roy.
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Roy, keep the ideas coming, you may hit the jackpot. I thought the double glazing /solar panel was a winner, but I missed the obvious.
Which reminds me, I always see a lot of solar panels in England but never around here, which is odd considering the sunshine we get.
Does anyone remember the brick filled heaters that charged overnight on cheap electricity, and then vented in the daytime or whenever reqd. Great idea but took up a lot of room and never seemed to work properly.
John
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In the US, there's a type of heater called a "baseboard heater" which is an electric resistance element with a series of heat-disspating fins, inside a steel case with air passages.
With the cost of electricity in the UK, nobody in their right mind would ever consider such a device as a way of heating a house. The attraction in this country is that they're very cheap to install, and you can have a thermostat for each room.
The big negative is that the temperature of the elements inside the case is hot enough to ignite things. There are thousands of occurrences where curtains, blankets, pillows, cushions and other fabrics get onto the heating elements and catch fire.
If you have to have baseboard heaters, the oil-filled are a mnajor advantage. The surface temperature of the radiator isn't hot enough to ignite anything that touches it.
For the portable panel raditaors that are popular in the UK, oil has the advantage that it circulates the heat from the electric element fairly efficiently and it doesn't boil at the temperatures that can develop inside those panels. Water-filled, eletrically powered panels can get to a point where the water boils, when all the safety features are by-pssed by the fact that you have steam in the panel instead of a liquid.
Bottom line - if it's electrically heated, it's better if the heat transfer fluid is oil.
The "off-peak", brick-filled heaters were OK if you could guess how cold the next day would be. By modern standards they were pretty crude.
I think, John, that solar and other technologies only work economically if other sources of energy are much more expensive than we enjoy in the US. There are a lot of folks in this area who have small hydro-electric systems running off a stream in the back garden. We have a lot more flowing water than sunshine!
In my enthusiastic description of the Northwest, I forgot to mention the wetness. Seattle has just had a stretch of 27 days where it rained every day. The 28th day was fine, but on the 29th day the rain started again, and we may get close to an earlier record of 94 days out of 120 when it rained. As they say "What follows two days of rain in Seattle?" Answer "Monday".
Mind you, a day of "heavy" rain is 1.5" in 24 hours. In Virginia, I remember 13" overnight on one occasion!
In Anacortes, our average annual rainfall is about 24" (two-thirds what Seattle gets). A typical daily total is about 0.3", so we get 80 rainy days a year. The other 285 are pretty good!
Frank
Frank Damp (wife Eileen, nee Nixon)
Leyland resident 1941-1965, emigrated to the US in 1968,
retired to Anacortes, Washington State, USA in 1999.
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The simple brick filled storabe heaters that were popular in the uk ( I wonder if they are still), were quite good for basic heating, a nominal temperature could be achieved and maintained and should one require a local higher temperature one would use other supplimentary appliances ( radiant electric or preferably a gas fire appliance ). The range of outside temperature in the uk is not so wide as most areas in North America, so using storage heaters to reach a minimum household temperature and using supplimentary heaters for occasional areas makes sense,particularly in some of the larger older victorian type properties where the physical size of a storage heater is acceptable, and providing adequate home insulation is used .
The fact that the system was cheap to install, the electricity consumed by the storage heaters was only during limited overnight hours and on a seperate circuit at approx 50% of the normal daytime rate, made the system financially worthwhile.
I would have thought such a system would be useful in most areas ,could it be that the idea hasn't been considered in North America, but the fact that the electricity utility is consumed only at other than peak times must be advantageous in achieving a more uniform generation rate therbye reducing overnight turbine shut down.
I note that the large skyscraper office building in most cities are empty overnight ( appart from cleaning staff) yet they remain fully lit, this could well be to spread the utilities loading.
Utilising overnight storage heaters to do that job could be a better way !
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