Changing electricity meter / tariff means storage heater, hot water may not work?

Richie-from-the-Boro

gruntled not,

Is anyone in the property all day ? For example are you retired ? If you are your E7 rates for day & night will be 50/50

If you come off the E7 tariff and use the immersion for hot water it will as others have said be an xtreme expense but you will never get enough for a bath if you leave it full belt for 12 hours.

The reason for this is E7 cylinders have two separate elements a night time / bottom .. .. and a day time / top. The E7 is connected to the bottom and heats 100% of the volume of water, the ' boost ' function is connected to the top stat & element and heats only the top 10%. If you go off the E7 tariff you will need someone to change out the control unit and ensure that the new arrangement powers only the bottom element with what you call ' boost ' or ' immersion heater '.

gruntled_not

macman
"If your peak usage is twice your off-peak, (66% to 33%) then you are right on the cusp of E7 being cheaper..."
hi, thanks for your help.

Richie-from-the-Boro
"...If you go off the E7 tariff you will need someone to change out the control unit and ensure that the new arrangement powers only the bottom element with what you call ' boost..."
Hi again, and thanks so much for this second input. I'm coming to the conclusion I just can't fight the E7. Really hacks me off, tho, that I have so little choice.

Housebuilders, please note: Just wire the damn house so the occupant has a choice. Lifestyles are changing and not everybody goes to out to work 9 to 5 and returns delightedly to the uncertain comfort of a storage heater.

Thanks so much everyone who helped me out. This s a really great forum.

Richie-from-the-Boro

gruntled_not wrote: »

macman
"If your peak usage is twice your off-peak, (66% to 33%) then you are right on the cusp of E7 being cheaper..."
hi, thanks for your help.

Richie-from-the-Boro
"...If you go off the E7 tariff you will need someone to change out the control unit and ensure that the new arrangement powers only the bottom element with what you call ' boost..."
Hi again, and thanks so much for this second input. I'm coming to the conclusion I just can't fight the E7. Really hacks me off, tho, that I have so little choice.

Housebuilders, please note: Just wire the damn house so the occupant has a choice. Lifestyles are changing and not everybody goes to out to work 9 to 5 and returns delightedly to the uncertain comfort of a storage heater.

Thanks so much everyone who helped me out. This s a really great forum.

E7 has for its entire long life been a ' marmite ' choice, you either love it or hate it, and nothing on Gods earth will make you change your mind.

The one problem I've found with almost all E7 installs and all disgruntled E7 owners is that it was bloody badly done in the first place. House builders look at the 2 bed house and say 4-4.5kWh of storage plus water and 5-5.2kWh for a three bed unit. A cheap standard storage [ not panel ] heater is about £100 so they put in the minimum they can get away with. All factoring tables are out of date, the days when we were happy wearing two vests and a woolie jumper in a house with the heating set to to 18c are over, these days we want [ I do ] 21c at floor level or else !

The trick is not to use supplementary heating, but to buy extra storage for the heat you get cheap. If last winter you used an extra £100 worth of leccy spent on fan heaters or whatever .. .. invest that same money in another storage unit and get the house up to and slightly over spec.

People pay £200pa every year for the rest of their lives for gas boiler insurance / maintenance and £2.5 to £4.5 to have it replaced every 5 plus years which is usually the length of their warranty. There are no costs with night storage, they will run cost free for 50 years or more, in those same 50 years a gas combi would have cost a householder £55,000 more for maintenance than I pay, and I can't get gassed or blown up or set on fire

gruntled_not

Richie-from-the-Boro,
Good storage heater pitch! I never thought I'd say it, but getting another storage heater does make sense. Hopefully I can get one a little less repulsive looking than the current incumbent.
And yes, I so agree re decent temperature vs being bundled up to the nines - I can't work encased in layers of bulk.
Brilliant. Many thanks again.

Richie-from-the-Boro

gruntled_not wrote: »

Richie-from-the-Boro,
Good storage heater pitch! I never thought I'd say it, but getting another storage heater does make sense. Hopefully I can get one a little less repulsive looking than the current incumbent.
And yes, I so agree re decent temperature vs being bundled up to the nines - I can't work encased in layers of bulk.
Brilliant. Many thanks again.

The bricks inside are heat proof but they are also designed to absorb and store heat as well, modern versions of the brick are [ not much ] more efficient than the older type, but have led to ' slimmer ' rads. You could for example buy more storage and change your 1.4 for a 3.4 and get a sparky to re situate / plumb the 1.4 in [ preferably an internal wall ] elsewhere. That puts a bonus 2kWh heat release into your home at the cheap rate, when you need it.

Over the 30 years in three different homes using E7 I've found that if you have sufficient plus a bit extra storage for your needs and leave the ' damper ' closed, you will never need any so called supplementary heating.

Best of luck.