The most efficient heaters

MrOrchard

With jack Frost nipping at the heels of summer my attention has turned to heating the home during the deepest parts of winter.

We live in a ground floor maisonette with another property above us, and one each side, leaving the North and South sides exposed.
Double glazed throughout
Heavy set insulating curtains

The problem:

Storage heaters on an economy 7 circuit, meaning that they can NOT be turned on manually at other times, the house is toasty warm in the morning, but by the time we return from work it's cold again (and yes the output is turned right down)

Our only option is electricity, but I'm worried that if we plug in a heater during the peak price hours that our bills will rocket (right now we pay £18 a month all year to give us enough surplus to heat during the winter, it used to be over £50 a month, but we just started to turn things off at sockets and it plummeted).

In essence my question is this: what's the most efficient way of getting some extra evening warmth into the house whilst we snuggle under our slankets?

Penelope_Penguin

I'll move this to the Utilities Board where the experts will be ab;e to give you more advice

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere (please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]!!!!!![/EMAIL].

MrOrchard

Hmm, questionable thread move, this isn't about utilities, it's about the most frugal way to heat the space using the sole choice of utility - also (and no offence) I was after the opinions of a particular group of board users.

Andy_WSM

This will be said more than once, so I may as well be the first...

All electric heaters are 100% efficient. What goes in, comes out. It doesn't matter how much you spend on an electric heater, they all give out the same amount of heat for the amount of energy consumed.

Anyway...£ 18 a MONTH?! Seriously? That's less per month than most electric households would spend in a week!

Cardew

The average gas and electricity bill is over £1200 a year - so over £100 a month. and gas is much cheaper than electricity.

Even £50 a month is well under a half what you would expect to pay.

£18 a month. To heat water, normal electrical consumption and heating?????

Turning things off at the sockets TV's etc save a few pennies a month!

Owain_Moneysaver

Any daytime electricity will be more expensive than off-peak. Options:

- replace the main storage heater with fan assisted storage heater. They're bulkier than ordinary heaters, and quite expensive, but they store the heat for longer

- change tariff to an Economy 10 or similar which gives you an afternoon or evening boost and set some top-up heaters on timers to come on only at the off-peak boost times.

If you are up for redecorating, then lining the ceilings and possibly the north wall with something like Marmox board should help.

Flibertigibit

Well, I'm another who finds it hard to believe your monthly payment has gone down from "over £50 a month" to £18 by just "turning things off at sockets"!! I reckon you should be giving us all some tips on how you achieve that, especially bearing in mind that you obviously use your storage heaters but just find they don't give enough evening warmth. That aside, what you must remember is that the daily tariff if you are on Economy 7 is even higher than it would be on a normal tariff which would make any additional electrical heating very expensive. I think it's a good job you've got slankets as you call them, so cuddle into them for TV watching or go to bed early or maybe get an exercise bike to ride in the evening and get fit as well as saving money!

MrOrchard

£18 a month tips (we're not eco-bandits or particularly conscientious, we just have a pretty good set-up)

The storage heaters are only on for about 3 months a year, the house is extraordinarily well insulted
Hot water is on for 15 mins a day during eco 7, which heats the small hot water tank to scolding pretty effectively - I also turned this down to 60oC (it's put on ad-hoc for the evening washing up), the hot water is off altogether when we go away, even if just for one night.
We're in and using electrical things such as TV and lights for 3-4 hours a night generally (and of course, we don't have everything on, just what we're using), the rest of the time only the fridges are turned on.
Washing machine is AA rated and has a timer so is only used overnight during eco 7. no Sky plus or anything else that needs to be on 24/7
There's two of us out between 7 and 7 each day, no kids and we're probably away 2 or 3 weekends a month.

MrOrchard

I should mention that the £50 to £18 a month was also a change of houses, from dual Gas and Electrickery with ill fitting sash windows to a self contained uber-insulated maisonette with Eco 7 tariff.

We initially reduced the £50 to £21 (still a plummet) by turning unused things (many, many things) off in the first place, then it went down further when we moved again.

ANYWAY, I suppose my question is this - what's the cheapest additional source of heating (given that insulation, snuggling, exercise, slankets and slippers are already covered)?

Cardew

MrOrchard wrote: »

ANYWAY, I suppose my question is this - what's the cheapest additional source of heating (given that insulation, snuggling, exercise, slankets and slippers are already covered)?

As said above!

This will be said more than once, so I may as well be the first...

All electric heaters are 100% efficient. What goes in, comes out. It doesn't matter how much you spend on an electric heater, they all give out the same amount of heat for the amount of energy consumed.

£10 fan heater will suffice.

MrOrchard

Great stuff - thanks for the feedback.