Poss unusual heating question

[WaterTight]

I've a customer who really wanted a certain type of electric heater he'd read about (don't ask me what type, didn't really consider it my business.) So when he moved house he asked me to remove a couple of rads as he wanted electric heaters put in those rooms instead. I did that and he has since had them put in (not by me, and i've not seen them, not that it's relevant to my question) and he likes them so much he now wants another rad removed, possibly more, to swap them for these electric heaters.

From memory I think he had 5 rads, I removed 2. So he's only got 3 left. It's a bungalow. His heating circuit is pressurised but his hot water is still vented with a cylinder in airing cupboard.

So I've not been in this situation before and the extent of my heating work is just changing rads and rad valves (nothing else, not heating controls, not boilers, no gas, no electrics) and so I'm not even sure what my question is but would removing more rads now be inefficient or costly or even shorten the life of the boiler or something else I'm not qualified to advise him about?

I know you can have a heating system with just, say, 3 rads, like in a small flat or something but at what point do you say there's no point having a boiler running a heating system if you're only going to have x amount of rads off it and the rest electric heaters?

Hopefully you know what I'm getting at. Should I advise him to speak to a dedicated heating company at this point? Just seems like he might want to consider doing away with all of them and just the use the boiler for hot water rather than run what might soon end up being just one rad off it. Or am I worrying about nothing and it's perfectly fine, albeit odd, to have 3 or 4 electric heaters and 1 or 2 normal rads.

Thanks

 

[SJB060685]

What's the remaining load of the 3 radiators? What size boiler is it? Is it a condensing boiler? Does it have good turndown ratio?
If the boiler and load output can be matched and the boiler has good turndown then I cant see it being a problem, however if this isn't the case then you're with certainty going to get a lot of cycling at the boiler. A lot of on off cycles at the boiler is not good for its life span and will almost certainly cause early failure of parts over time.

Why does he want a mixture of radiators and electric radiators? Electricity is more expensive than gas as an energy source.

 

[SimonG]

Cant understand people wanting to move to electricity when they have gas. I know theres the save the planet brigade and I know we are going to be taxed to the back teeth to get the country carbon neutral but we are on a hiding to nothing when you have China and other countries pumping out crap like no tomorrow.

There needs to be a significant step change in technology and a drastic reduction in population.

To quote Dads Army, we're doomed.

 

[SJB060685]

Problem is not all properties are ready for carbon neutral systems, therefore we will always have properties throughout the UK that aren't helping.
Yes Hydrogen gas boilers are being tested in certain parts of the country and they produce no carbon, yes heat pumps produce no carbon, yes oil boilers will soon be running on HVO hopefully but a very large chunk of the UK's houses do not have the money to make their systems compliant and even if they did unless electricity is produced without producing carbon emissions then we're not advancing to far.
I have quite bad asthma, I know the importance of breathing good quality air but it would take billions, maybe more to make every property throughout the British Isles ready.

 

[Ric2013]

Cant understand people wanting to move to electricity when they have gas. I know theres the save the planet brigade and I know we are going to be taxed to the back teeth to get the country carbon neutral but we are on a hiding to nothing when you have China and other countries pumping out crap like no tomorrow.

There needs to be a significant step change in technology and a drastic reduction in population.

To quote Dads Army, we're doomed.

Problem with UK and China's carbon calculations is a lot of our 'reductions' have been achieved by moving UK production to China and then importing goods from overseas (the manufacture emissions then are counted as emissions from the manufacturing country not the purchaser, and transport emissions aren't counted at all).

Electric heating obviously only makes sense when the National Grid itself is fed by low carbon sources. May make sense one day, but not now and not in older properties where a lot of heat input is required. Burn gas to run a turbine to make electricity and the send electricity to homes incurring transmission losses to heat home instead of gas = what?!

If you're interested in this sort of thing, the free online PDF of David MacKay's "Without Hot Air" would be a good place to start reading.

 

[ShaunCorbs]

Sinister story behind thick black smoke seen from space

A video of burning tyres has been viewed more than 2.6 million times. Find out why it's upsetting so many people online.

au.news.yahoo.com

 

[snowhead]

I'd guess the electric heaters may be Fischer Future heat, they're sold as high efficiency but appear to cost a lot to run, as you'd expect with daytime electricity use.
They're not cheap and can quite often be found on ebay having been removed.

 

[WaterTight]

What's the remaining load of the 3 radiators? What size boiler is it? Is it a condensing boiler? Does it have good turndown ratio?
If the boiler and load output can be matched and the boiler has good turndown then I cant see it being a problem, however if this isn't the case then you're with certainty going to get a lot of cycling at the boiler. A lot of on off cycles at the boiler is not good for its life span and will almost certainly cause early failure of parts over time.

Why does he want a mixture of radiators and electric radiators? Electricity is more expensive than gas as an energy source.

Thanks, I think I'll warn him it might be bad for boiler and recommend someone qualified to advise him