Economy 7 Storage Heaters

rankinc

Hi,

I have two Dimplex storage heaters in my flat; the one in my living room is a 24kwh heater and the smaller one (18kwh) is located in the hall. These have been on since October, the other week I received my quartely bill which was £350.

Do you think it would it be more cost effective to switch both storage heaters off and purchase an oil filled radiator and just have this on while I am in the flat. The problem with the heaters is that, although they are very hot to touch, they do not fill the room with any heat.

Thanks in advance

Chris

Fire_Fox

An oil filled radiator will be using dayrate electricity if you have E7, so will be more expensive per KW of heat. I don't understand your storage heater power - they are usually measured in KW not KWH I think? Then should be more like 1 or 2KW.

You need to set the input on high and the output on low most of the time, turn the output to high in the evening and back down to low before you go to bed. Not sure why you are wasting energy heating your hall, how much time do you spend in the hall?? Heat your living area and keep the door closed. Buy a heated underblanket for your bed - only costs as much as a lightbulb to run.

Greenr

rankinc wrote: »

Hi,

I have two Dimplex storage heaters in my flat; the one in my living room is a 24kwh heater and the smaller one (18kwh) is located in the hall. These have been on since October, the other week I received my quartely bill which was £350.

Do you think it would it be more cost effective to switch both storage heaters off and purchase an oil filled radiator and just have this on while I am in the flat. The problem with the heaters is that, although they are very hot to touch, they do not fill the room with any heat.

Thanks in advance

Chris

I have two storage heaters in my flat too, one large and one small in the same rooms as yours. i was thinking the same thing i.e. switching to a normal tarrif, turning the storage heaters off and just plugging oil filled radiators in while where home... my last quarterly bill was pretty much the same as yours. think we're just going to leave them as they are though as I don't think it would save us any money.. plus our storage heaters do make the place warm when we keep them on input-max output-min. It's boiling in here up until about lunchtime then it starts cooling down.

what time do your nsheaters turn on/off? I've just found out that my elec provider has told me incorrect info and my storage heaters have been coming on an hour too early (while still on on peak charge) and i've been putting the washing machine on whilst thinking it is off peak when it wasn't. i'm going to reduce the time my nsheaters turn on slightly and put washing machine on during off peak to see if that helps!

out of interest, how do you heat your other rooms without night storage heaters?

Garz

Depends how effective your insulation is together with details like how old the place is and double glazed etc.

If you have well insulated flat then storage heaters are probably overkill having them on full whack all the time. Other end of the scale is a drafty shed, the heaters are struggling to build up any heat therefore by midday your property is cooling down fast with no way of generating more heat until E7 is back in play.

I hear they take a bit of tweaking, if you balls it up then it may not be working at optimum levels.