All electric heating

liziazizia

Hi Guys

A few questions if I may. My husband and I have just moved in to a new flat (1970's with good-ish insulation and double glazing)

1. The flat is on economy seven with a seperate meter and consumer unit for the Night rate. There was an old storage heater on this that was faulty and we have just removed. Is this circuit turned off during the day? ie if we were to put a heater in that was capable of storage and instant heat (eg Dimplex DuoHeat) on this would the instant heat work?

2. How many hours are people turning their night storage heater on for to charge?

3. What is the cheapest all electric heating solution (i know this will largely depend on the way people want to use the heating - but if its for instance low level heat through the day and topped up maybe at night?)

4. Has anyone tried the low wattage panel heaters? eg the Dimplex DXLWp range. Are they good? are they expensive to run? or perhaps the Beha Panel heaters?

Thanks for your reply

Eliza

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

Firstly as your are on economy 7, are you aware that the rate for the other 17 hours is considerably higher?

So if you stop using a storage heater, even though you presumably heat your water on E7, it may be cheaper to switch to a normal 24/7 tariff.

The point about any form of electrical heating*, is that all heaters give out exactly the same heat for the same running costs. so no one form of heating is cheaper than another - and all are very expensive to run.

Your storage heater is probably on a circuit that only switches on at night, but not all are - you need to turn it on during the day and see if it gets hot!

* except heat pumps which cost £thousands and may not be suitable for a flat.

Katie-Kat-Kins

liziazizia wrote: »

Hi Guys

A few questions if I may. My husband and I have just moved in to a new flat (1970's with good-ish insulation and double glazing)

1. The flat is on economy seven with a seperate meter and consumer unit for the Night rate. There was an old storage heater on this that was faulty and we have just removed. Is this circuit turned off during the day? ie if we were to put a heater in that was capable of storage and instant heat (eg Dimplex DuoHeat) on this would the instant heat work? Probably not, our storage heater circuit is only live during E7 times, don't know if all are the same though so might be worth getting an electrician to have a look.

2. How many hours are people turning their night storage heater on for to charge? What do you mean?? They charge for the full 7 hours of E7, there is no option to charge them for a set amount of time. Do you mean what input level are we selecting?? If so start low at one and if you are finding that the house isn't warm enough turn it up. I've just turned one of ours on as it is starting to get a bit chilly and have left it at 1, will increase this when we start getting properly cold weather.

3. What is the cheapest all electric heating solution (i know this will largely depend on the way people want to use the heating - but if its for instance low level heat through the day and topped up maybe at night?) Cheapest will be storage heaters as it utilises the cheap E7 rate. Managed well storage heaters are fine, we weren't cold last winter at all. It is worth having a portable fan heater for back up though in case of a sudden cold snap. Electric heat using the day rate is very expensive though.

4. Has anyone tried the low wattage panel heaters? eg the Dimplex DXLWp range. Are they good? are they expensive to run? or perhaps the Beha Panel heaters? We have two panel heaters installed as well as storage heaters. They are expensive as they use the more expensive day time rate electric but it is handy to have something that is instant heat. We use ours for drying the washing. Ours aren't very controllable though, they just have a crude thermostat, no timer or programe.

Thanks for your reply

Eliza

Hope that helps!