Night storage heaters?

y2afuk

Hi folk just need a big of advice. I'm moving into a rented ground floor one bedroom flat with my girlfriend soon. It has night storage heaters? What are these and how do they work? I'll been reading horror stories online regarding how they only give out hot water during periods of the day & are massively expensive!!! Any help or advice would be welcome. Thanks in advance.

Magentasue

We moved into a house with storage heaters and they cost us a fortune. Might not be so bad in a well insulated ground floor flat. Put simply, you set the input (at maximum for cold days) and overnight the heater uses energy to heat up. You pay about 5p a unit for this instead of the normal 10p-12p day rate. Then you set the output to minimum so that the heater doesn't release the heat. You get some heat because it loses heat gradually through the day. Output set low, you may be lucky and the heat last all day (didn't for us, we had to light fires in the evening) or you can increase the output for more heat but then it won't last so long.

Advantage is that they're cheap and easy to install. Disadvantages are that they only provide background heat, they use a lot of units to store heat, you pay more for your daytime electricity and you have to put them on the night before you need them.

I hated them so am biased. However, lots of others have found them very expensive and inconvenient. You will probably have an immersion heater for hot water and this is set independently of the heaters. It should be wired into the off peak meter so you can use off peak electricity for heating your water.

dizziblonde

I hated mine with a passion - the house would be warm on a morning and lunchtime (you know - when I was AT work) and then freezing cold during the evening when I was at home... no amount of fiddling with the settings ever got it to a sensible level for the whole day.
As for cost - I never found them that bad... but still loathed them and moving somewhere with central heating again is bliss.

robsmum_2

We have the dreaded storage heaters through out our downstairs and as it HA house we can't change them. Best advice I can offer is make sure you are on Economy 7. Heaters will heat up at night and discharge heat during day. You have to play around with the boost and output to find what's best for you. They are expensive and not very flexible.
Water should be heated on Ecponomy 7 and suggest you invest in time switches and use cheap electric for as much as possible at night!