Storage Heaters - Good or Bad?

MORPH3US

We live in a converted old mill house. The walls are all about a 12" thick and solid stone which is great for noisey neighbours, but means the flat is always cold.

Our heating is storage heaters and they seem really rubbish. Not really sure how the work but I think that they heat up at night when electricity is cheaper and then slowly release the heat throughout the day.

Problem is, they heat up at night but by the time we get back from work the next day and whack them up full, they are a waste of time. If we put them on fulk in the mornings then I think they would let lots of heat out, but we have them on Output 1 until we get home each night and even then they seem to have released all their heat.

Does anyone else have this problem?

Anyone explain how they work and how much they cost to run?!?

Thanks

M

Magentasue

Bad.

We had them when we moved in. Horrendus elec bills, had to buy coal to light fire for the evening and it was still cold in the rest of the house! Like you we didn't turn them up until evening but were shivering by the time we were all sat down. House was lovely and warm when we got up and then it was downhill.

We have gas central heating now. Cheaper and efficient.

houseboatdream

Hi Morph

We live in a little semi cottage with storage heaters and they are great. we both work from home and the house is always warm and cosy all day and evening as well. I find it is much better than our old house where we had gas central heating and always wanted to put the boiler on at 2 pm because we were cold.

Are you sure you have got the heaters on the correct settings. There is usually one setting for input ( on ours - all different types - this is the right hand knob) and another one for output. At the moment we have got input on 4. The output can be changed according to when you want a boost of heat, this is in addition to the slow release of heat all day. 6 is an afternoon boost, 3 is an evening boost and 1 is no boost. It could be that you need to change the settings.

Hope this helps as its v cold outside today.

ManAtHome

Storage heaters are really just a pile of bricks with a heating element running round them (ok, so they aren't just house bricks...). Remeber them from a long time ago - as houseboatdream said, there should be an input and an output control. The input regulates the heating coil determining the amount of heat going into the bricks, and the output control just opens/closes a flap letting more or less heat out. They were intended for use with 'Econmy 7' type tariffs, using cheaper leccie overnight to charge up.

From what I remember, they were adequate in the morning but even with the outpur closed would leak enough heat to only really provide background heating. Biggest drawback is that you have to be a bit of a weather forecaster to use them anywhere near effectively.

BargainHunterCat

Get rid of them! They are horrible, awful, energy wasting things!

Unfortunately you will find them fitted in many new homes because they are cheap for the developers to buy and fit and no other reason. With the Gas regulations these days, it is usually too expensive (especially in blocks of flats) for developers to bother putting in gas central heating, which usually is the most efficient way to provide heating.

They are outdated and inefficient. If you aren't expecting a spell of hot weather then you may find yourself too hot and vice versa. As explained above they are just a pile of heavy bricks which get warmed up over night when the electric is cheaper and you cant get instant heat from them unless they have been "charged up", and you can't stop them churning out the heat on a hot day. Very frustrating!

I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole. :mad:

paul_h

BargainHunterCat wrote:

Get rid of them! They are horrible, awful, energy wasting things!

Don't write them off yet!

Storage heating has had a bad name over the years, especially with the cheap availability of alternative fossil fuels. Electric heating is actually the only form of heating which is 100% efficient - unfortunately electricity, even off peak electricity, is much more expensive than mains gas.

If you have mains gas then it is the only form of heating you should consider.

If, like me, you don't have access to mains gas, then your options are less appealing - storage heating, oil fired, solid fuel, or lpg.

The most popular choices are oil or storage heaters, but with oil well over 30p per litre now and no sign of it becoming cheaper (I remember an analyst on the telly a few months ago saying that 'the days of cheap oil are over') storage heaters are becoming more popular again, especially as modern storage heater systems are a much improved product.

Modern storage heaters with automatic charging are much better than the old fashioned lumps and do not run out of steam later in the day if they are set up correctly, and the latest systems with centralised controls such as the Credanet system are extremely energy efficient, controlling the output from each heater automatically during the day.

As to the running costs, surprisingly a modern system can be much cheaper to run than an equivalent oil fired system, though will never be as cheap as mains gas.

An average house will use around 15,000kWh per year to heat.

On mains gas, that's around £335 at 1.9p/kWh with a 85% efficient boiler.
On oil fired, that's around £520 at 30p/litre (1 litre oil=10.2kWh) with a 85% efficient boiler.
On economy7, that's around £420 at 2.8p/kWh, 100% efficiency.

85% is a realistic efficiency figure for a modern condensing boiler. Economy7 prices vary greatly by area, you need to check these first, but my rate is 2.8p/kWh. Whilst oil will undoubtedly be more convenient and easier to use than the old storage heaters, the newer systems are much better and the savings are there if you can make it work - and don't forget that there are no maintenance costs, installation costs are low and no oil storage problems.

If the current high oil prices are here to stay, then I may be going back to storage heaters myself. I'm still looking in to it, but what I've seen about these new systems is positive.

BargainHunterCat

paul_h wrote:

An average house will use around 15,000kWh per year to heat.

On mains gas, that's around £335 at 1.9p/kWh with a 85% efficient boiler.
On oil fired, that's around £520 at 30p/litre (1 litre oil=10.2kWh) and a 85% efficient boiler.
On economy7, that's around £420 at 2.8p/kWh, 100% efficiency.

Out of interest, how does bottled gas compare for those living in the Styx?

viktory

We had storage heaters, only 3 in a three bed house and I HATED them. The house was always cold and they cost us a fortune. Couldn't adjust them during the day to increase or decrease the heat output.

I now have GCH and love it.

paul_h

BargainHunterCat wrote:

Out of interest, how does bottled gas compare for those living in the Styx?

Folk tell me that LPG/Propane is working out comparable to oil at the moment, but I'm not sure of the current prices - the conversion is 7.1kWh per litre of LPG if you want to work it out...

For 47kg bottles, there's roughly 94 litres, so that's about 670kWh per bottle - divide the cost per bottle by 670 and you should have the cost per kWh (I think...)

Also, don't forget to include the boiler efficiency when comparing to the earlier examples, i.e. divide by 0.85 for 85% efficiency.

HTH

paul_h

viktory wrote:

We had storage heaters, only 3 in a three bed house and I HATED them. The house was always cold and they cost us a fortune. Couldn't adjust them during the day to increase or decrease the heat output.

I now have GCH and love it.

Gas CH is great and is undoubtedly the cheapest and best form of central heating, but there are a lot of people who don't have mains gas.

Not having enough storage heaters is a common mistake - they just don't work properly unless there are enough in the house. If only a few heaters are fitted to provide 'background heat' or to heat a selected part of a house, the rest of the house is cold and this draws the heat from the warmer part of the house. The storage heaters respond by discharging all their heat during the daytime to try to keep temperatures up (the output on them is thermostatically controlled) and there is nothing left for the evening.

In answer to the OP, if you are finding that you have no heat left when you get home, then I would guess that the heaters are simply not big enough. A more modern system would also be better retaining the heat for later as they are better insulated. This undersizing is also a common mistake when installing, often due to the perceived running costs...

Turning the output to '1' during the day often has little effect as the damper controlling the output is usually shut during the day anyway - it should only start to open in the evening as the temperature drops and the radiated heat from the heater is not enough to maintain the room temperature.

ginger_nuts

many years ago I had storage heaters in my flat . I had neighbours above and below but not beside me .This meant I had 4 exposed outside walls . The flat was always hard to heat and I hated economy 7 . But I discovered a way off running the storage heaters during the day . It did help, but the hallway was always freezing .