storage heaters/electric central heating or gas?

Speaking from my own experience, E7 (night storage0 radiators are a complete waste of money. I replaced both of the ones in my flat with oil filled Delonghi Dragons (1x 1/2/3Kw, 1x 1/2Kw), I saved the £100 cost in less than 6 months.
If you want a really cheap heat system, why not install a Solar panel array ?, I know that technically you are not supposed to use them to provide hot water for your central heating, but if you have a hot water tank as part of your central heating system, fitting a bypass coil with a simple winter/summer valve system wouldn't do any harm.
If you have an immersion heater, then you would need to adapt it to take a coil as part of the system install (you DON'T pump water round the circuit, but anti-freeze instead). There are plenty of sites that will show you how to create a home brew solar system, and when I finally save enough to move into a house, I fully intend to build one.


BTW, If you paint an old (or new) radiator matt black & mount it on your roof it works every bit as well as an expensive Evaporated Tube system (according to a freind who had the ETS installed at his house, then 2 weeks later, helped another friend install a homebrew 'radiator' system on his roof)

FrozenScot wrote: »

From current debate it would appear that heating a three bedroom bungalow with electricity would cost approximately £800. Can anyone give the operational cost of gas central heating to allow a cost comparison to be made. . . Regards

This system you are interested in is not storage heating.

It is simply a water filled radiator you plug into a 13 amp socket.

They recommend you use it on Economy 10(which is not available in most homes) but even then that will only provide ‘cheapish’ heat for 3 hours at a time when you need it.

For a 3 bed bungalow(in frozen Scotland) using this system you will never approach running costs of £800 for heating/hot water.

Even with proper Storage heating you will be very lucky to get close to £800 running costs.

The average home uses 20,500kWh gas per year for heating and hot water. A bungalow in Scotland probably a lot more.(say 25,000kWh)

Take a gas price as 2.5p/kWh and you are looking at £625(for 25,000kWh)

The efficiency of a newish gas boiler is approx 90%. So to produce the same amount of heat with electricity you are looking at 22,500kWh.

The difficulty is knowing how much electricity you will be able to use at Economy 7 rates(or Economy10 if available) but I would think on full storage heating £1,200 would be a reasonable assumption.

Using the system you seem to be interested in, IMO you would be talking of £2,000pa.

A financial advantage of Electrical heating is you avoid the servicing/safety costs of gas(£150pa?) and there is virtually nothing to go wrong with electrical heating. This is not the case with modern condensing gas boilers stuffed full of electronics.

I accept that my figures above for consumption can be open to debate. However the ratio of costs will be approx correct.

Above all, don’t believe any of this advertising hype put forward about special electrical heating systems being super efficient – they ain’t!!

All electrical heating(other than hugely expensive heat pump systems) have the same heat output in terms of cost, be it a 50 year old 3 bar electrical fire, or the most modern form of electrical heating on the market.

suze0303 wrote: »

It was a housing association house and there was so much pressure form the tenants that the association eventually caved in and put gas in them all.

Which is fine if the HA pay for the installation of mains gas and GCH.

I've got a quote for nigh on £10K just to get connected to mains gas.

suze0303 wrote: »

I have a 3 bedroomed house and my gas bill and electricity direct debits are around £65 per month.

Yes but are you in debt or credit?

I have a 4/5 room house (3 bedrooms) and paid Scottish Power ~£900 for E7 in the last billing year.

If you have E7:

1. You need to know how to operate it properly.
2. You need to pay attention to the temperature the following day - the PITA of not having on-demand heating.
3. You need a well insulated house - a drafty house will decimate the stored heating.

I enquired about gas primarily so that I could increase my supplier choice. Scottish Power have not reduced the cost of E7

FrozenScot wrote: »

Thanks Cardew for your input. My original concept was to use electric panel radiators to avoid the disturbance of installing central heating lifting floorboards etc. After the discussion in this forum I am moving away from this idea and moving towards a mains pressure vented cylinder with either a gas boiler or an electric Fifas boiler which would avoid the annual test certificate required by gas. Has anyone got any comment. . . . Regards

The Fifas boiler again uses daytime electricity - it is NOT a storage heating system.

It cannot be repeated often enough - any form of heat output costs the same if you use electricity. There is no 'magic' electrical system that somehow produces more heat per buck.(other than a heat pump)

A £15 fan heater in each room will produce exactly the same amount of heat per pound(£) spent as the Fifas system. In fact you could argue that fan heaters are more efficient as you get instant heat and when you switch them off you don't have residual heat - which could be wasted if you were leaving the room.

The website for Fifas is totally misleading IMO. Firstly they price their electricity for comparison purposes at 6.05p/kWh(+£52pa standing charge) - compare that with any available tariff now.

Then they calculate they can heat a house and provide domestic hot water for a total consumption of 7,631kWh a year. As said in an earlier post you would be lucky to get away with 3 times that amount for a 3 bed bungalow in Scotland.

If you are going down the electrical heating route; then the only sensible system must be storage heating of some kind.

However if you have gas it is a 'no brainer' to have this over any system that runs on daytime electricity.

Yes but are you in debt or credit?

Irnbru, I am always in credit!! Gas heating is just much cheaper than electricity. Sympathise with the plight of all who aren't connected to gas though. It's a long payback if you have to pay for the connection. Don;t know if I'd do it either if it were me.