Some older Belling three bar fires used a dimmer idea. I still have one, but
I cannot say it was that successful as the thermostatic bit was inside the
heater and hence not really seeing the real room temp. You really need a
remote sensor. I was not convinced either of the efficiency of dimmed
elements of the type seen in bathroom fires when quite dim, indeed, it was
all to easy to forget it was on as they were too dim to see some of the
time. I saw it as a bit of a gimmick.
Brian

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"Caecilius" wrote in message
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I've got a large house with gas central heating which I use during the
day. It gets cold overnight in the bedroom though, so I use a 2KW
electric convection heater with the thermostat set to about 18 C on a
timeclock which switches on between midnight and six am (boiler comes
on again at six).

This was a great improvement last winter, and it only uses one or two
KWh overnight which must be cheaper than heating the whole house with
gas.

This year I want to improve the solution to keep the temperature more
constant (there's a big hysteresis on the convection heater
thermostat) and remove the bimetallic thermostat clicking noise.

I think I want electronic switching to remove the clicking noise and
allow a lower hysteresis plus an external temperature sensor. Maybe
something that's closer to a temperature controlled dimmer switch
instead of a standard bimetallic thermostat.

My plan is to put this temperature controller between the timeclock
and the heater, and set the heater thermostat to something like 25C as
a fail-safe.

Has anyone found or built something like this? I'm sure I can't be
the only person who want a constant overnight bedroom temperature
without running the main house heating.