So - what is the best recommendation for the bathroom in the end? The light/heater thing?

Trouble is, now I think of it, is that we only have wall lights throughout the house as all of our ceilings are sloping so I don't imagine of those would be easy to fit!

Have you looked at those small heater/blowers that most stores stock which are ideal for a bathroom, they look like a small air-con unit that you plug into a socket & either blow cold/blow using 1K/blow using 2K and will heat a bathroom airspace quite quickly.

I still think the panel heater is the answer - put it on a timer if you need heating (to prevent damp) even when the room is not in use.

For those that say it is expensive - the small panel heater is about 500W whilst the light/heater that everyone is raving about (I personally stopped using those about 30 years ago!) is about 750W so far more expensive.

Correct and it will output proportionately more heat.

One of these will do the same job as a 500 watt panel and cost the same to run. It also has a thermostat which I don't think panels have and it is portable.



There's nothing actually wrong with panels, in some situations I'm sure they are ideal, it's just that claims of "more efficient" and "cheaper to run" should be treated with caution.

I would think if you have a problem with a really cold bathroom, a 500 watt heater would struggle to get up to required temperature, not sure the thermostat would ever be needed. I sometimes think people's expectations of these things are too high, the equivalent of five 100 watt light bulbs is never going to provide a huge amount of heat. Economical, certainly, but you get what you pay for. Someone mentions damp, I think fresh air, good air circulation is as important as heat. Although we never have any problems, even through the depths of winter, our bathroom window is never fully closed, plus an extractor fan is on whenever the light is used.

I have started giving thought to some form of heating and been told by Spanish lady that the best thing to get (she reckons most Spanish do) is an oil filled radiator, she said to go to carrefour. Do people on here agree? I have never had one, do you think it is the best idea and is Carrefour the cheapest? looked the other day and for 250w oil filled with about 10 'fins' don't know correct word, it was €40ish

... but that was what jimenato recommended back in post #19

IMO they are only any good in very small rooms, we bought one originally which did not seem to have any effect at all in our living room. It now lives in one of the spare bedrooms and is used only if we have guests staying in winter, on a timer so that it comes on automatically to warm the room before they go to bed. Couldn't really tell you how much they cost to run as ours isn't used for long enough periods to tell.

Ooops! that's what you get for not reading every post. Lynn (post 24) is not very enthusiastic about them yet this lady says many Spanish people have them. I wonder if the size matters cough cough excuse me :-)

250w is the same power as 4 lightbulbs, it's not surprising it doesn't do much!

To even begin to heat a decent sized room you need at least 1000w - preferably more.

That's why I suggested a fan assisted convector heater with a thermostat - they are typically 1 - 2 kw.

For our tiny shower room we have one of the wallmounted fan heaters recommended by playamonte, it heats it up really quickly -we put it on ten minuted before having a shower in the winter and leave it on ten minutes after to help dry the room.

No heating the rest of the time.

My oil filled radiator is 1500w, with 2 heat settings. Even on full, it made hardly any difference in my living room - if I sat about a foot away from it, I could feel the warmth on my legs, but that's all!

well I don't know what this woman is on about then, the ones I was looking at in carrefour were 2500w. Anybody got experience of this size? I personally love calor gas heaters but someone is staying here at xmas whos breathing is affected by them.

Those in your photo are ok and have the advantage of being portable, though naturally have their limitations in big rooms.

I find they are great to use Spanish style by sticking them underneath a table where ppl.are gathered around, thereby utilising the power used and heat created to maximum effect.

We split our lounge in winter as it is 8m long, use a 2kw fan heater to up the temperature to mid twenties switch that off and use a 2kw oil filled radiator to keep the temperature at that point. With the double glazed windows we had fitted it works a treat. Bathroom we just use a 2kw fan heater when we are in there.
Considering having aircon fitted in the lounge, how effective is the heating side for a large area? We use the aircon heat for the bedroom and it works a treat, that is an area of 18sq. metres but not sure about a larger area. Also like the cheap cost.

Graham