Moving house to Economy7

DAFFY_DAVEY

Hi everyone.
We're about to move house and have found a house we really like. However, there is no gas at the house we are interested in and the only form of heating, other than an open fire, is using Economy 7 storage heaters. It also uses an immersion heater for the hot water.
In the house we are living in at the moment we are on gas and elec and using a combi boiler. We are on E.On's standard tarrif and currently paying £115 per month on fixed dd for both g+e.
Both houses are virtually the same size etc.

As i have never used Economy 7 or storage heaters before, does anyone know if i am likeley to be better or worse off. Also, how the hell do you dry your clothes after washing?!!

Any helpful comments would be great!

Dave

Ken68

You will be worse off, Daffy, unless your new house is ever so well insulated.
Factor in the cost of installing gas and central heating you should be OK.
The line is for drying clothes, tumble dryers cost the earth.

Magentasue

Our last house was storage heaters and immersion heater - cost a fortune even though we ran dishwasher/washing mahine and tumble drier at night.

Winter, you'll need a tumble drier if there are more than four or five of you IMO unless you're super-organised with airers. A small family can get by with hanging the washing over the airer in the morning, moving it around at night and then putting it in the airing cupboard or away.

Personally, I wouldn't move into a house with storage heaters unless it was priced so that I could afford to put gas CH in quickly.

KimYeovil

If you're wasting your money on storage heaters then you have no need for a tumble drier - the ambient heat from the heaters overnight and during the day will mean that clothes dry quickly enough.

Trouble is, you have to rely on the weather forecast being local enough for you to know 18 hours in advance whether to turn the heaters on. More often than not you'll waste your money charging up the heat unnecessarily.

Magentasue

KimYeovil wrote: »

If you're wasting your money on storage heaters then you have no need for a tumble drier - the ambient heat from the heaters overnight and during the day will mean that clothes dry quickly enough.

Trouble is, you have to rely on the weather forecast being local enough for you to know 18 hours in advance whether to turn the heaters on. More often than not you'll waste your money charging up the heat unnecessarily.

You've reminded me of another bugbear - with six of us, there's washing every day but, knowing how much it cost to have the heaters on, I avoided having them on JUST for washing. Then we'd get an unexpected lovely sunny day where the heaters had been charging all night but we were opening all the windows and the washing was on the line!

amtrakuk

I spoke to my father yesterday and asked him how he got on with his.

Hes renting a house down Crawley way and its the first house hes lived in with storage heaters.

He said once he learnt how to control them they worked alright. The automatic ones (as opposed to the manual ones you have to set the day before) measure the ambient temperature of the room and the bricks inside the heaters when the charging cycle stats and worked out how much charge is needed so I guess it is down to how you set them.

Basically he left them open a small bit, enough to air the room during he day, when he came home from work opened them up, they still pumped out heat when he closed them before going to bed.

With a bit of planning and timers on his washing machine, fridge/freezer etc he was paying about 50-60 a month for his lecky including a tank of hot water in a 3 bed 60s semi with his wife and kid.

DAFFY_DAVEY

Thanks for your help everyone. I should have pointed out in my original post that we will be renting the new property - not that it makes any difference.

Bit of a tricky one really because even though we are really set on moving to this house, the fact it has storage heaters and with what you've all said so far, it seems like i'm probably going to regret it if i move there.
I should have also written earlier that it's me, my wife and 2 young girls so our washing machine is on the go nearly every day.
Oh well, i'll keep pondering!
Dave

Magentasue

If there's only four of you, you'll manage OK with airers and airing cupboard. Having damp washing hanging around takes a bit of getting used to but it'll dry fine with storage heaters. You could use a tumble drier at night but I reckon your bill is going to be high enough without adding to it.

Post 6 is very different from our experience. We were quite frugal because we could see the meters going up alarmingly every week but we still spent a fortune on electricity AND had to buy coal for the evenings at weekends and school holidays when it was really cold.

amtrakuk

i found it quite hard to believe and have no experience of storage heaters, At the moment I use convector heaters. Having Single Tariff electricity I am using about 10 units of electric a day. In winter with the heaters on I use about 40 units a day.

Magentasue

Yes, if there is a choice between storage heaters and freestanding electric heaters, it may be cheaper to go for the latter on a single tarriff. But I'm not sure this would be true for a family - I believe you are a one or two person household, amtakuk? Depends on size of house, how well insulated, how you like to live etc. You'd certainly need to do some careful costing and storage heaters would be more help with drying washing in the winter.

Unless it's an exceptional house in a stunning location, I'd look for one with gas central heating if you don't want to pay more than you already do.

Dannii_B

I don't understand why people think Economy 7 is more expensive? I'm on about £40 a month with a 2 bedroomed terrace with 2 people living here. I use approximately 50% of my usage at night and currently don't have the heaters on and I think that's loads cheaper than having gas installed.

If you use economy 7 to your advantage you can make some savings, but you've got to make sure the heaters etc. are all programmed properly for the right time and have the correct input/output settings on the heaters when you do turn them on.