Best way to heat a university rented room

Thick jumpers and heated arguments – that’s how we did it back in the day.

As others have said, don’t place her in a position where she heats her room at the expense of others. A very quick way to alienate her from housemates.
Would it not be cheaper for you to offer to just foot some of a heating bill for 6 months?
We did this with one of ours who also lived in a ‘2 hours heating a day’ upstairs, dormer in roof tenement with no insulation and single glazing….It worked well as the 6 of them just benefitted from a bit more heat all round, and no personal heaters needed. IMO it was cheaper for us to commit to £50 a month for gas than buy a big enough heater and pay a much bigger cost in electricity….

For heat when studying, an electric slanket is good as is a great pair of slippers and a rug under feet.

What about setting up a decent hydroponics system, it’d keep her warm, she’ll create new friendship groups and generate income.

The pub/clubs will be warm.

Your ‘buy the heater, make her housemates pay for heat they don’t get the benefit from’ stategy risks your daughter getting into a pretty unpleasant and lonely situation.

Unless they’re really good mates then ^ this is a distinct possibility.

One of my daughters had great housemates but they barely ran the heating and even limited the use of the lights despite my explaining that they effectively used no electricity!

An oil rad would be nice but quite obvious to other housemates.

Dehumidifier would be a good idea as it will be damp in there regardless, but again they use electricity!

Electric blanket for the bed would be a good move.

We lived in uni accomodation in our first year, in a village/estate of purpose built houses (PJM, IYKYK). The heating was controlled centrally by the uni, and they didnt put it on till much later than we would have liked. Thankfully, as our bill were all inclusive, we were able to run the oven with the door open for the first couple of weeks.

Whats her laundry situation, heated laundry airer/drier rack? Two birds with one stone then.

https://www.lakeland.co.uk/brands/drysoon

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The sane answer.

Charge battery packs when in Uni, use one of these when at home.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/heated-gilet/s?k=heated+gilet

Although offering money towards the heating bill, rather than buying a separate heater seems the best option all round

I believe the typical choice is Bumble not Tinder these days.

Hinge is where the action is now.

As others have said – oil-filled rad is best option but risks escalating the situation, dehumidifier will take the edge off and be more stealthy, some kind of on-body or bed heating is possibly the most diplomatic.

Never mind the cold, will her roof still be on

Aren’t student in bed all the time ??

Electric blanket

You might considerer a dehumidifier too.  If the room gets humid with being at the top of the house, and all the humidity-generating activities, then it might benefit from being dehumified.  Running a dehumidifier will also heat the room.  Think it heats the room more efficiently than a heater (I have the figure four times as much in my mind, but stand to be corrected…)

At least >1:1, 4 seems optimistic, that’s heat pump territory where you are taking the heat from an external source as well as the humidity in the room.

Also makes sense as it avoids accusations of “heating” the house.  A desiccant type will be less efficient (i.e. more heat).

You’ll need to figure out the drainage as even a small Meaco DD8L will max out it’s 8l/d in a student house, so the little 2l basket built in won’t be enough. Does she have a sink /ensuite in her room? Otherwise she’ll be emptying it constantly.

TBH we did similar in our student digs, the thermostat was set pretty low then the person on the ground floor “living room” bedroom put an oil rad in their room as it weas the coldest and the heat would rise anyway. Cheaper to run that and warm his room up above freezing in the morning than have the whole house heated for the ~30min we were up before leaving for lectures.

A room at the top of the house would in many cases be one of the warmest so whats going wrong if it’s not?

Heat rises by convection, but the loft has by far the most surface area so unless all the doors in the house are open letting the heat rise then it could well be freezing cold because it loses heat but nothing rises to replace it.

  A desiccant type will be less efficient (i.e. more heat)

And cost more to run.

Aren’t student in bed all the time ??

Depends how active Tinder / Bumble / Hinge are in Aberdeen, I suppose,

As someone who has expertise in this area it’s interesting to read the comments!

Reducing heat loss would be a good start. Perhaps using this on the dormer would make a difference.  Reduces black mould too which is a killer.

https://amzn.eu/d/eXcRr9d

draught stripping is also cheap and effective  sealing gaps around opening windows and filling in cracks around the dormer will be worth it   Sealing the bedroom door to prevent cold air from the hall coming in will also be useful

lining the inside of the dormer with some of this will also help as they are often the least insulated bit of the roof. You can pin it up and seal the edges with tape

https://amzn.eu/d/42opadr

In terms of adding heat, warming the person is probably the way to go. A blanket or electric blanket can make you feel warm with low electrical input.

dehumidifiers don’t really heat rooms, they are internal to the room so the only heat input is the power to the compressor which is relatively low.  In larger houses they don’t really dry anything out either as moisture quickly comes from elsewhere to replace the small amount you have removed.

as others have said, the best option on top of these is probably paying for a little more heating, rather than adding electrical heating which you have to pay for anyway. ( gas is at least 4 x cheaper per kWh)

And cost more to run.

Yes, but the goal was to heat the room, so efficiency is the enemy.

Going out on a limb but when i was a student I was upto more interesting things than reading the Which guide to dehumidifiers ?

dehumidifiers don’t really heat rooms, they are internal to the room so the only heat input is the power to the compressor which is relatively low.  In larger houses they don’t really dry anything out either as moisture quickly comes from elsewhere to replace the small amount you have removed.

Not the case.

If a dehumidifier takes 8l of water out of the air, then in terms of energy that’s the inverse of boiling dry an 8L saucepan.

You’ll always get more heat out of it than you put electricity in.

Running mine flat out it uses ~660W (Meaco DBB8L), but the heat output is nearer 900W.  About the same as a decent sized oil filled radiator, but with the added bonus of nice dry air.

A condenser type would be more efficient, You could probably find a model that did 15-20l/day for the same energy usage,  But it’d be more expensive to buy. And the criteria was to heat the room without pissing off the other housemates.  If the heating isn’t on, then the loft/dormer is going to get pretty damp if she’s up there studying  / drinking tea / breathing.

Isn’t uni all about figuring this stuff out by yourself? lettem get on with it

A compressor-type dehumidifier will add more heat than just the electrical input because it’s behaving as a mini heat pump – the act of condensing water releases energy (latent heat of condensation), so this is likely to be the most efficient way of electrically heating the room and could be justified on health grounds. Agreed though that the best way is just to have the central heating on for a bit longer, possibly at a reduced thermostat setting. Also check that the CH boiler is running at the lowest possible temperature in order to maximise its condensing efficiency (latent heat of condensation again).

Isn’t uni all about figuring this stuff out by yourself? lettem get on with it

There do seem to be loads of helicopter parenting students threads at present don’t there….

As above. Had the same with idiot flatmates. Oil filled radiator is the solution. I had 2 one for display that I could demonstrate was off (stopping arguments) and a flat panel type tucked behind my desk that cranked it out.

figuring stuff out just costs money. Used air blowers, bar heaters, gas cylinder fires, loads of options but oil filled was the solution for a damp cold flat

IR panel heater for stealth heat to avoid her being the villain

They can even be pictures or mirrors. Zero noise, on only when needed.

Yes, but the goal was to heat the room, so efficiency is the enemy.

Then just use a heater 😉

The goal is to create heat [or the illusion of it – i.e. drier air] without using too much power that would piss off the other housemates!  The main issue is that [non-halls] student accommodation is truly shocking.

It’s cheaper to run the heating on the whole of a 5 bed semi than a fan heater is what I found out one winter when one of my house mates did this.

Massive jumpers, duvets and a hat for a win. Down gilets make a huge difference

A big jacket. Or an oil filled radiator – we had some building work done last winter which meant the back of the house was missing for the coldest 2 months of the year. I work from home so borrowed a little oil filled rad from a friend and used it in my home office – was nice and toasty, warmed up quick and didn’t make a noticeable different to the leccy bill.

It’s cheaper to run the heating on the whole of a 5 bed semi than a fan heater is what I found out one winter when one of my house mates did this.

Very much so. My energy billing is monthly, and for February’s bill last year (i.e. the coldest month) our entire 1950s 4-bed semi used 2.2kW of gas on average, i.e. about the same as a single fan heater on constantly.

Last winter, turning three of our flat’s storage heaters on ~2300-0700 (so just outside Economy 7 time range) most nights to ~75% “input” added ~£75 to our electric bill, so ~£175 total pcm. No gas, so electric immersion heater on year-round for ~60mins at the end of each Economy 7 rate nights.

Not had gas in years, but I’d guess 8 hours of central heating, which will sort out your hot water too, won’t cost much more than ~33% of that.

These are quite good infra red patio heater.  We use our camping and in the house to help boost heat an “office” room in the day and not have the central heating on full blast all day.

https://www.herschel-infrared.co.uk/product/havana-800w-infrared-patio-heater/

Infra-red, for sure, but the panel heater types (can be disguised, as BearBack says) NOT the halogen type.

It was mentioned earlier but get them to work out how much running the heating will be compared to not running it (standing charges) they will be surprised.

One of the most strident no heater voices will have it cranked to max when the others have gone home for the weekend.

Let your daughter sort it out for her self, it’s part of growing up.

Heated throw to wrap around would be my suggestion