Help: our electric panel heaters are rubbish!

bonbongirl

My boyfriend and I live in rented accommodation, and have been stuck with really quite rubbish Atlantic electric heaters for two years. Having to face another winter here, I am now getting pretty desperate! The heaters work badly (i.e. they don't heat our fairly humid bedroom and very large living room very well at all), and together with our electric boiler are costing us a lot of money. In fact in our two years here we have accumulated a fairly large debt (a few hundred quid) with our electricity provider, despite paying £90 a month on direct debit already.

I am now thinking that it may actually be a lot cheaper for us to run standalone electric heaters, which may be more efficient. Any advice?

I saw a few posts on similar subjects suggesting cheap oil filled radiators from Argos or B&Q, set on plug timers. Any idea whether this would actually cost less than our horrible panel heaters?

Cardew

No they won't cost less to run.

All electric heating is 100% efficient i.e. for any given amount of electricity used, you get the same amount of heat produced.

You might with timers be able to use the heat produced more efficiently. Have the heaters coming on for a short period before you get up and then switch off until you return from work.

lozzaman

True, although I rented an apartment in London that had panel heaters and when turned on during a very cold day (such as last winter) they would invariably make the wall behind them very warm to the touch.
I think the place was fairly well insulated but it still took two 2KW panels all day to heat the main living area (working from home) The bedrooms upstairs could then be warmed from the rising heat (or doors left open and then they would be OK)

An oil filled radiator closer to me would have invariably cost less to run.

Andy_WSM

lozzaman wrote: »

True, although I rented an apartment in London that had panel heaters and when turned on during a very cold day (such as last winter) they would invariably make the wall behind them very warm to the touch.
I think the place was fairly well insulated but it still took two 2KW panels all day to heat the main living area (working from home) The bedrooms upstairs could then be warmed from the rising heat (or doors left open and then they would be OK)

An oil filled radiator closer to me would have invariably cost less to run.

But then the other rooms wouldn't benefit from the heat, so you'd end up paying more to heat those...

bonbongirl

I should probably clarify - these heaters are so rubbish that if you try to turn them to a low temperature (after the room has heated up, say), they turn themselves off and the room goes freezing cold. This has been happening at night in our bedroom quite a lot - which is makes waking up even less fun than it normally is!

Also, further clarification: we live in a one bedroom flat. Our living area is fairly large, but includes living room and kitchen, so probably relatively standard. Surely a heating bill of (if you take into account how much we've gone over the monthly direct debit over two years) around £120 is way too much...?

We'll try an oil filled radiator at fairly low temperature at night I think - hopefully that'll make things better!

jonewer

What about your electric boiler? When I lived in a 1-bed flat with an electric boiler my bills were staggering.

bonbongirl

Yep - electric boiler too. We tend to basically always leave it off and turn it on for an hour or two in the evening (when we need to do the washing up). The shower is also electric. So to be fair, even when it's summer and we have no heating, our bill is probably around £60 quid a month already...!

Katie-Kat-Kins

It sounds like you may not be using your panel heaters correctly. If "when you turn them to a low setting they turn off" this sounds like they have a thermostat rather that a low to high setting.

I'm guessing they are similar to a couple I have and have a dial on the front, marked low to high. Mine uses a sort of line that gets thicker for high.

This is a thermostat and not a temperature control. The panel heater only has one heat setting "full" and is either on or off.

If you turn the dial to "high" this is like turning your central heating thermostat to MAX so the heater will be on constantly trying to heat the room up to sauna like levels.

If you turn the dial down to the very lowest this is like setting your central heating thermostat to say 10C so the panel heater will only come on if the temperature in the room drops below this level and once heated above this level will remain on until the temperature drops again.

So to figure out the best way to set your heater (as they aren't helpfully marked at 20C) turn it on and turn the dial from low to high until you hear a click. The click is the heater turning on and will show you where on the dial the current temperature is. If the room is at a temperature you would like to maintain leave the dial at the position where it clicks. If ideally you would like the room warmer keep turning a little further. If you leave the heater turned on and don't fiddle with the dial the heater will cycle on and off to maintain the room temperature. If you go out turn it off at the wall and leave the dial in place.

You might want to mark the dial with a comfortable day and night temperature so it is easy to set and reset.

The draw back is that there isn't a timer built in so having the room warm when you get up is difficult unless you leave the heater on overnight. You could use a plug in timer to switch the heater on before you get up and leave the dial set at the temperature you would like it to be when you get up in the morning.

Hope that helps!

bonbongirl

Having searched high and low for the instructions for the panel heaters (which were never provided by our landlord!) I found out you're right - they are indeed thermostat heaters. So that's incredibly helpful advice, thanks!

They do have these little remote things, so they can be set up to go on daytime/nighttime setting at set times. Shame the remote in our bedroom doesn't work... Hopefully I can get that fixed. Fingers crossed it'll all cost a bit less now...

Katie-Kat-Kins

Sounds like you've got pretty good heaters there, I'm jealous!!! Hope you get them sorted now and that they proove a little more economical!