Is E7 a good idea with convection heaters in the flat?

Ally_E.

We just moved in a flat with convection heaters and have E7 electricity, I'm considering switching to a standard tariff because we will most probably be using the heaters at the peak time, not between 11.30pm and 7.30 am. Any advice will much appreciated as this is the first time I had to deal with such heating setup. We're not using heating now, but just want to be prepared for the future

Cardew

There is no 'one size fits all' answer to your question.

It depends on your tariff charges, and what percentage of your electricity you use in the 7 hours cheap rate period.

Don't forget you will heat your hot water tank on cheap rate, and can put timers on appliances to also operate them during that period.

I suspect that the majority of people will not find E7 cheaper. however there isn't likely to be much in it either way.

macman

Does the property not have night storage heaters? That's the usual heating installed to work alongside E7.
Using convectors outside the E7 cheap rate hours will be expensive on E7 (as indeed will everything else) as you pay a premium over standard rate.

Richie-from-the-Boro

If you only get two showers per night, never get a bath ever and use the washing machine once per week, but never use a tumble drier - yes change. <<< it's a bit tongue in cheek.

I'm assuming you mean E7 Storage not E7 Convection Proper Economy 7 Storage or Economy 10 Storage I'm assuming E7 not E10 .. .. below :

- proper E7 is not such a bad system, if you have sufficent storage per sq foot, depending on your circumstances
- though most people will say its rubbish, you already have it, its paid for, clean, safe, reliable, no maintenance costs
- E7 working out all day will be 60/40ish, a retired couple in all day will be 50/50ish day v night cost per unit split
- changing it to say a combi is mega expensive to install / maintain / replace, but cheaper to run per therm
- E7 gives gazillions of boiling water at a cheap rate, and yes a proper E7 tank will keep it that way
- a 2kW panel heater or fan heater will heat the air / air is an insulator / not good / efficient at heating other things
- oil filled panel takes ages to heat up but longer [ minutes ] to cool down
- fan heater is instant heat on and instantly cold when turned off
- storage heaters [ winter ] will still be too hot to touch 12 hours after they have been turned off
- storage heaters [ spring ] will still be too hot to touch 48 hours after they have been turned off
- E7 water [ winter ] will still be too hot to touch 12 hours after it has been turned off
- your E7 compliment water cylinder should never need need ' topping up ' unless you are spectacularly extravagant
- your E7 compliant tank, is insulated to a quite different standard and designed to provide enhanced thermal characteristics
- your E7 tank has a better ' standing heat loss ' figure than other well lagged tanks which lose 2 to 3 kWh every 24 hours
- storage heating needs planning, its not responsive like other forms

The key is double glazing and insulation, and understanding how it works. All heating works by warming the fabric temp of a home, gas does it, coal & oil do it, and E7 does it. In some parts of the world to this day they still cook a whole pig~in~a~pit with hot stones, you great granny used to heat a brick and put it in the bed. All E7 is is the same principle with modern engineering products.

Your E7 storage heaters you will notice are all situated on internal [ never external ] walls. When you first switch on at the back end iof the autumn they will take one night to get far too hot to touch, but three nights to get you home up to a regular warm temp anywhere where one is situated. Similarly when you switch off at Easter for example it may take a day or two for the storage radiator to cool but three or more days for your home to cool down. That's why I said - storage heating needs planning, its not an on demand responsive like other forms.

So if you moved into the place with no heating / water heating you may not start with E7, but moving away from E7 when you already have it to panel rate is not a good idea.

Now thousands will post complicated figures about how expensive E7 is so I'll exit stage door left .. .. ..

NB. Make sure you have proper E7 storage radiators and a proper E7 compliant water cylinder.

property.advert

I've done the maths and whilst Ovo came near with their flat rate offer when they first came on the scene, E7 was always the best and I had daily logs with peak and off peak usage, background usage, the cost of heating broken down and hot water as well. It came near, but over perhaps 40 tariffs, E7 always won out.

chris1973

In short, I don't think you can make the decision until you see how efficient the existing E7 heating is when temperatures are constantly below freezing. Electricity is a poor first choice for heating, regardless of E7 or Standard Rates. If the existing E7 does heat your property (miracles DO happen) then it will be cheaper to 'charge' them overnight for less than 5p per KW/H than it will be to run convector heaters several hours a day for 12p+ per KW/H on a standard rate.

The problem with most E7 tariff's is that some of the cheaper night rate electricity is subsidised by a higher cost of peak rate electricity!. If you can keep your daytime usage to a minimum and the property is super efficient at hanging on to the off-peak heat produced by the E7 system right up until you go to bed, then it isn't so bad, however if you start using power hungry standard plug in convector and fan heaters at what is, lets face it, higher than 'average' daytime rates, then your bills are likely to rocket, and I mean ROCKET!, especially if you want to heat more than one room.

I rented a flat with E7 Pre-Payment meters (not a personal choice - Landlords choice), and I paid over 18p a unit for daytime 'peak' rate electricity with N-Power who also insult these high rates with a kick in the teeth standing charge!.

Running a 3kw heater during the day at 18p a unit cost around 54p an hour - run it for a 12 hour period, such as a Winter Saturday whilst home from work and its £2.16. Okay, so that doesn't allow for the heater thermostat clicking on / off all of the time, but suffice to say if you either like comfortably warm temperatures or live in a badly uninsulated / cold flat during a cold snap then budget for the heater to be actively drawing current more than its 'off'

And thats just for one heater, if you buy 2x 2KW heaters and run one in a bedroom and one in a Front Room, then thats 4kw of lovely expensive Electricity you'll be burning off, or 4KW/H which at 18p a unit is 72p an hour. Its quite easy during a cold snap to run up a higher bill for a weeks worth of convector heater use in a E7 property, than some people pay for a month on Direct Debit to their Gas supplier - FACT

Having lived in properties with both GCH and E7, I can honestly say that its possible to be cavalier in your approach to running GCH and a big shock when you move to one with E7, as its entirely possible to heat a 3 bedroom house to toasty levels from getting up to going to bed, for a cheaper weekly cost than it is to run E7 heaters alongside Peak Rate 'top up' heaters to survivable levels!.

Of course, a lot depends on how old and Efficient your E7 system is, and how well insulated your abode!. But from my own experience, I was shoving around £100 a month into the Pre-Pay meter in mid winter as the E7 just didn't cut it in the Evenings and it was impossible to live at 19c+ without using a variety of additional heaters at premium peak prices which the likes of NPower and their evil followers royally screw you.

I was often returning home at around 5.30pm in December for example, to find the ambient room temperature barely hitting 16c, despite having a 3.4kw and 2.4kw storage heater fitted at either end of a fairly average sized lounge. The single 2.4kw storage unit in the one bedroom, got to around 19c on the coldest days at lunchtime, but was about 11c - 12c by Midnight when I went to bed. In short, woefully inadquate and it was impossible to live in the building comfortably without running additional heaters for a large part, if not all of the evening.

Unfortunately E7 IMO, is an old fashioned torture device invented in the 1950's when electricity for lighting was cheap and before Gas became commonly available, and is best left resigned to the history books. At the moment it only seems to be a popular choice in places where Gas still isn't available and for Landlords, who don't have to pay the running costs - GO FIGURE!.

The only people who seem to sing the E7 praises, are Eskimos wearing 10 layers of winter clothing whilst they watch Coronation Street and those living in 9ft x 9ft new build shoe boxes built to ultra efficent standards, oh and those who now know it was a bad choice but who won't be seen admitting it on a public forum!.

Many people also sing the benefits of using Off-Peak Rate for Washing Machines and Tumble Dryers. I don't know about them, but I have better things to be doing at 2AM than my washing! - sleeping is the popular choice!. Having suffered a tumble dryer fire several years ago, I don't think i'd be advising setting them on timers when everybody is asleep!.

To be honest, after living in three E7 properties and a variety of GCH heated ones, if I had a decision on whether to rent a property with GCH or one with E7 heaters, then sorry Landlords!, but I would always opt for the GCH property without second thought every time, even if the rent was higher!. In fact its the first question I ask before a viewing!.

Maybe I just had a poor choice of 'cold' property (three times), but either way, I wouldn't choose to live in one by choice, you live and learn and winters seem to be getting colder......

It isn't the E7 which is expensive, its whether you really can live in a property where the E7 output SOLELY will be high enough to keep you warm at 6PM for the months when its -5 outside, and whether you want to stay up at weekends to watch the late film or retire to bed, and the Electric Blanket at 8PM because you really don't want to run that 3KW heater for the next 5 hours!, and its bloody freezing.

Owain_Moneysaver

chris1973 wrote: »

Unfortunately E7 IMO, is a torture device invented in the 1950's before Gas became commonly available,

In the 1970s actually, because there was a lower demand for electricity at night, and they needed to make better use of idling generator capacity.

In the very early days of electricity, electric heating during the day was offered at a cheaper rate because the bulk of consumption was at night for lighting.

Richie-from-the-Boro

chris1973, an Eskimo living in the Boro shoebox said : """" I rented a flat with E7 Pre-Payment meters """"" - unfair comparison my friend and .. .. .. the rest of your subjective post comes down to the fact that the O/P should pack up the kids and belongings and leave the flat & find somewhere else, not helpful at all.

chris1973, have you had too much falling down water mate ?

Your Para 1 is answered with - if you have sufficient storage per sq foot, depending on your circumstances
Your Para 2 is answered with - E7 Pre-Payment meters are not a like with like comparison
Your Para 3 is answered with - applying diversity formulae for the thermostats - look it up

- Ditto most of your other exists~in~the~mind~only opinions are answered with either the ' sufficient storage / or / Pre-Payment meters ' answer

Richie-from-the-Boro

Yes chris1973, you are currently replying to my post 12:07

- still waiting .. .. .. 12:14
- still waiting .. .. .. 12:18 - is it your 3G 2G 'dial up' speed ?

chris1973

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

In the 1970s actually, because there was a lower demand for electricity at night, and they needed to make better use of idling generator capacity.

In the very early days of electricity, electric heating during the day was offered at a cheaper rate because the bulk of consumption was at night for lighting.

Either way, I stand by my original comments that it is a dated, inflexible and costly method of heating, Unique only by its tendency to part you with your cash, and one dictated to by desperation (i.e no Gas supply) or by the modern day Rigsby's who don't want the cost of maintaining and safety checking a GCH system. Incidentally one of the properties I rented was an annexe, and it didn't go un-noticed that the LL house was heated by double radiators and GCH with a nice wood burning stove in his front lounge, and the rented Annexe was fitted with these ancient E7 torture devices - Enough Said.

In fact, I've only ever lived in one property which cost more to heat than E7 / Electricity, and that was Oil CH. But even then at least it was WARM, Could be switched on when needed and didn't require moving plug in heaters to be shifted around to 'top up' the heat in different rooms, and didn't require close monitoring of the weather forecast in order to make the decision on whether to switch on the storage heaters the night before or not.

Because if you got it wrong and the forecast was wrong or it went cold unexpectedly then it will be ice cold in the morning, and sorry!, you forgot to switch on your storage heating, so no heat from them today and too late to do anything about it until E7 clicks back on a 1.30AM tomorrow morning!. Yes, very 'modern'

Yes chris1973, you are currently replying to my post 12:07

But seriously, i'm flattered that you took so much time to reply to my post. However you missed a couple of other points during your speed reading of my post during the TV adverts, namely

chris1973, an Eskimo living in the Boro shoebox said : """" I rented a flat with E7 Pre-Payment meters """"" - unfair comparison my friend

There were two other properties I rented also fitted with E7, please quote me the section where these were also Prepayment systems?. Or are you being selective in your ASSUMPTIONS?. Maybe you just don't read posts properly?. Perhaps if you spent more time reading what people post, rather than who is writing a reply to you.......

Richie-from-the-Boro

chris1973 wrote: »

Either way, I stand by my original comments that it is a dated, inflexible and costly method of heating, Unique only by its tendency to part you with your cash, and one dictated to by desperation (i.e no Gas supply) or by the modern day Rigsby's who don't want the cost of maintaining and safety checking a GCH system. Incidentally one of the properties I rented was an annexe, and it didn't go un-noticed that the LL house was heated by double radiators and GCH with a nice wood burning stove in his front lounge, and the rented Annexe was fitted with these ancient E7 torture devices - Enough Said.

In fact, I've only ever lived in one property which cost more to heat than E7 / Electricity, and that was Oil CH. But even then at least it was WARM, Could be switched on when needed and didn't require moving plug in heaters to be shifted around to 'top up' the heat in different rooms, and didn't require close monitoring of the weather forecast in order to make the decision on whether to switch on the storage heaters the night before or not.

Because if you got it wrong and the forecast was wrong or it went cold unexpectedly then it will be ice cold in the morning, and sorry!, you forgot to switch on your storage heating, so no heat from them today and too late to do anything about it until E7 clicks back on a 1.30AM tomorrow morning!. Yes, very 'modern'

Shouldn't you be out burning witches or something?

I am, precisely that - I thought it was your 3G taking 30 minutes to actually upload the post, now nothing you have just reiterated can not be answered by my original reply in #8 .. .. nothing new then !

BTW

- did you really use ' plug in heaters ' instead of putting in a new storage unit to correct your earlier mistake of insufficient storage ?
- and what's this about interfering with the way they work by turning them OFF & ON in the cold weather .. .. are you mad ?