storage heaters costing a lot!!!

stanley2642

Hi All,
I have just moved into a rented property in which we have some old very bulky storage heaters. We moved in on the 27th Oct and so far we have spent £60 on electricity (12days). We are very careful to turn every switch in the house off and only have the boiler set for hot water for around 1 hours in the am and 3 hours in the pm. I can only assume that the storage heaters are whats costing so much. Does this sound like a normal amount considering we only have 2 switched on at the wall as the others are in rooms we dont use? I dont understand how these work but it seems as if they are set to release heat at night time. Other posts have mentioned on and off peak. Is there a way to make these for cost effective. We also have no double glazing so the heat we do get escapes through the large windows. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

CashGuru

Are they economy 7?

macman

You mention a boiler-is that only supplying hot water? If you have gas CH then that will be much cheaper to run that storage heaters, even if they're running on E7. If they're running on standard tarrif, then even more so.
What electricity tariff are you on?
Not much you can do about the glazing, but is the loft properly insulated?

iluvr

We actually have no hot water and the storage heaters are costing us about 40 something pounds for about 1 1/2 weeks... it's ridiculous.. we cant even turn the boiler on because that would be so much more expensive.. we too do not have double glazed windows... so its really bad right now. We simply can not afford it so we have a couple of portable heaters just to take the chill out the room Anyone that can give suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm from the states and we dont have storage heaters or anything like this so it's a bit confusing.

macman

What sort of boiler do you have ? Mains gas, oil, LPG? What makes you think that it would be more expensive that heating a house via portable (electric?) heaters or storage heaters. Typically it costs two to three time more to heat a house by electricity than by gas CH.

iluvr

We arent heating an entire house with just electric heaters. Only 1 room out of four. And we can only have it on for about 2 hours a day. If we are in the living room - then the heater comes with us and we let it run for a little bit to take the chill out.

The portable heaters arent on all day. (I wish!)
The storage heaters (which is what we have in this flat) are run on electric. Also we are on a prepaid tariff and the guy who owns it wont change it! ... therefore it's even more expensive and extremely inconvenient.

stanley2642

to be honest i dont even know what economy 7 is! The estate agent gave us no information at all on these heaters. The boiler is run on electric as we have no gas at all in the house so yes only provides hot water. It is a listed cottage so about 400 years old, also has no loft. I wanted to at least try and keep the heat in the house and people in other threads suggest masking tape (or something similar) but we dont have one large window pane it its like lots of mini windows so would involve a lot of tape! I have notice other people mentioneing it costs them £60 per month to run theres so why on earth does mine cost that in just over a week? I know this as we have a key meter for the electric in the house so i can monitor exactly how much we spend.

macman

iluvr wrote: »

We arent heating an entire house with just electric heaters. Only 1 room out of four. And we can only have it on for about 2 hours a day. If we are in the living room - then the heater comes with us and we let it run for a little bit to take the chill out.

The portable heaters arent on all day. (I wish!)
The storage heaters (which is what we have in this flat) are run on electric. Also we are on a prepaid tariff and the guy who owns it wont change it! ... therefore it's even more expensive and extremely inconvenient.

Does your STA say that you cannot change the metering/tariff? If not, it's none of the landlords concern. If the account is in your name then you control it.

macman

stanley2642 wrote: »

to be honest i dont even know what economy 7 is! The estate agent gave us no information at all on these heaters. The boiler is run on electric as we have no gas at all in the house so yes only provides hot water. It is a listed cottage so about 400 years old, also has no loft. I wanted to at least try and keep the heat in the house and people in other threads suggest masking tape (or something similar) but we dont have one large window pane it its like lots of mini windows so would involve a lot of tape! I have notice other people mentioneing it costs them £60 per month to run theres so why on earth does mine cost that in just over a week? I know this as we have a key meter for the electric in the house so i can monitor exactly how much we spend.

It's a dual rate tarrif which is specifically designed for storage heaters-you get 7 hours of cheap rate power overnight, which is when the storage heaters charge up-they then release that heat during the day.
However, the downside is that for the other 17 hours you pay a higher rate than the standard tariff for all your other electricity consumption.
Is there previous debt already on the prepaid meter?

Katie-Kat-Kins

Ok firstly don't panic, storage heaters aren't as bad as many would have you believe!

The key is to understand them and use them correctly or take an informed decision not to use them. After a few years, I'm now fairly happy with ours! They do cost more to run than gas central heating but they don't require annual services, last forever and are generally very reliable so overall they are not that much more expensive than gas.

Your electric bills might look horrendous but remember that you don't have a gas bill! :-)

First job is check your electricity tariff. You will probably be on Economy 7 or Economy 10, this can be pre-payment or billed in arrears. E7 and E10 both give you an off peak period of electricity either 7 or 10 hours which will be much cheaper than normal rates, typically your peak rate will be a bit more expensive than a flat rate tarriff, but if you use a lot of electric during the off peak time you will be better off. Phone your electricity provider and find out the tarriff you are on and what the off peak hours are (they are typically 11pm-6am GMT but do vary so CHECK!).

Once you know the off peak times get everything that uses electric set up on a timer so that you can use off peak electric. I use my washing machine overnight and heat my water overnight.

Your water heater is an immersion, it works kind of like a giant kettle, and will have a thermostat that regulates the temperature the water can get to. It is worth checking that it isn't set too high, ours was heating the water so much it was cracking glasses when we washed up! Such a waste of electric, so we have now turned it down. If your tank is well insulated you can probably set it on a timer to heat for two hours over night and it will keep hot enough to wash the pots after dinner. But you may need to play around with this to get something that suits you. If it hasn't got a timer switch already you can buy them very cheaply and it is very worthwhile.

In terms of your heaters you need to check which ones are storage heaters and which are not. The storage ones are bulky as they are full of insulating bricks, they normally have two dials on top to control them google the model number for information on them.

Broadly speaking they have an input switch and an output switch.

The input controls how much electricity they use over night when they are "Charging" (thinking of them like a rechargeable battery is a good way to view them). Set them high and they will charge fully, set them low and you may only have enough "charge" for a couple of hours heat.

The output switch controls how quickly they dissipate the heat (or how quickly they lose their charge). Set it low and they will not give out a lot of heat but it will last most of the day, set it high and you will be warm in the morning and cold very quickly!

Ideally you should turn the output down to the minimum before bed, and leave it there untill you need more heat. So I turn ours down to 1 and then up to say 4 in the evening when we are watching tv.

You do need to experiment a bit with the levels so you know what input level you need to ensure that you don't run out of charge in the evening.

The biggest irritation for me is that you can't set them on a timer (or not the model I have) so unlike central heating I can't set it to have the house warm when I come in from work, I have to get in and turn the output up and wait for the house to warm up a bit. Generally they work pretty well though!

You do need to check that your storage heaters are wired into your E7 off peak circuit and that this is operating at the correct times though, if you aren't on E7 that could explain the high bills!

The big problem for you is that your home is poorly insulated so whatever heat source you use will be expensive as the heat will leak away outside.

stanley2642

Yes there was a small debt of £5.67 - but the supplier has said they will refund that to the meter (althought that was a week ago and as of yet, no refund!) I wondered if i was setting it wrong as i have the output and input on the highest number? I had no instruction manual left in the house either.