Dreading Winter can't switch economy 10

JasX

OP should check the hours they make use of their electricity and if its significant during the day switch away from E10 to a normal tariff and stop paying the daytime premuim.

shop around for suppliers that DO rather than don't let you onto normal tariffs without a meter change by adding up the separate useage totals..... supplier policies vary here

jalexa

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

ive in shorts all 52 weeks and never wear jumpers..

Maybe warm enough for the Fischer brochure hot "lady in the bikini" to move in:D

Richie-from-the-Boro

jalexa wrote: »

Maybe warm enough for the Fischer brochure hot "lady in the bikini" to move in:D

Nice one jalexa -

chris1973

Brilliant .. .. I went there two years ago with JETA1 fuel @ 90p per litre [ proper helicopter fuel, ( yes those big ones the RAF fly ) but sold VAT free to a Model Aircraft Club ] from a local airport. I've made many posts in the recent past on this board on that very subject.

I must admit that i've been toying with the idea of using alternative fuels beyond the recommended C1 Paraffin in the heater, as I need to travel to 'stock' up on Paraffin and so have to coincide it with a trip into the next town in order to maximise the savings. In comparison I can get Jet A1 from plenty of places locally.

How did the heater perform on Jet A1?. I know that many people say that the ties between Paraffin and Kerosene (ie JET A1) are the same, or at least close enough to substitute, but i'm reluctant to venture into the unknown!.

Well there is your problem, you should be using more off peak that peak.

You are confusing Electric 'Wet' central heating with an Immersion Heater on E7. Dont' forget that this system is heating radiators around the house in a similar way to Gas Central Heating, but using an Electrical boiler to heat the water feeding the radiators. Its not like E7 Immersion heaters where you can heat the boiler during the E7 period and then use the water throughout the day.

If you have GCH, imagine how many times your Gas boiler 'lights' whilst the heating is on during a cold snap, now imagine the same thing but instead of a gas boiler you have an Electric one drawing the same current as two 7kw electric showers or 14 one bar Electric fires.

Just as a GCH boiler lights on 'demand' at random times, so does the Electric one, inevitably these periods will be during waking hours which are not E10 and so are charged at peak rate. Electricity companies aren't stupid, its all about mass profits and to hell with their customers' welfare.

Even with E7 or E10 and an average sized 150 Litre electric boiler, it would be impossible for it to pre-heat, store and circulate enough water to feed several large radiators throughout a house on a single E10 'top up' during the cheaper periods alone, without the temperature of the water dropping and the boiler kicking in. Since most people want to be warm when they are at home in the evenings or all day during a winter weekend, inevitably the boiler will be at peak demand, during peak rate daytime and Evening periods.

To do what you suggest would require the OP only running the boiler (central heating) during the E10 periods, the lions share of which are usually largely the hours where they would be tucked up in bed, and then switch off the heating and be freezing cold during the waking hours when normal people are up and about.

Of course their usage is higher during peak rate hours, thats when they want to be the warmest. These systems are not like storage heaters which heat during the night and then give off heat during the day, there is no long term storage of heat in this system other than the initial boiler capacity of 150 litres, which goes nowhere when circulated through the same sized radiators as used on a gas central heating system. The temperature drop in the circulated water is huge and its not long before the boiler clicks in again.

Richie-from-the-Boro

In #18 I said """ Now that will sound more than impossible, but a ' phone back call ' from your provider will give you those precise answers in a minute. They also have the ability to predict this years 2011 - 2012 useage with the same breakdown, the figures will be right there on their puter. Whether or not they choose to give them depends on the way you ask the question """"

- - There is an in~trade [ vocational language ] name for this analysis, anyone reading this know / REM the acronym for this term ?

I've now remembered the acronym it's .. .. CAC and stands for Calculated Annual Consumption.

Hope this helps.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Chris1973,

Over the last two years :

- its had about 40 litres through it of JetA1
- about 3 4litre can B&Q versions of the ' appropriate ' fuel
- and two 4 litre Tozane / Caldo type [ Aromatic Content of less than 1% ]

I personally know someone who uses standard VAT free paraffin [ flashpoint much lower than the Tozanes (s) 61 degC ] from a farm and apart from a whiff when it starts up it works ok, he's had it for more than two winters and continues to work ok.

I can't remember the detail, I'll look again another day, but I once read the chemical spec *.pdf of both the BLUE & PINK label versions of the paraffin and discovered that there was no chemical difference between the cheap and the more expensive versions.

grahamc2003

As a rather blunt first step to instantly lowering your bills (while you think of more elegant solutions), simply ensure your electric 'boiler' is only on during off-peak hours. Not ideal of course, but you have accepted you're going to have to compromise (i.e. probably being colder than you're used to).

Your heating system and your house has thermal mass which may help a little. For example, the rooms will continue to be heated after the boiler is turned off (say at 16:00 when a peak rate starts), so you may be comfortable (depending on many factors) until say 18:00. At that time, you could simply turn on a stand alone heater to just heat the room you're in, rather than the whole house. Do that sparingly, since peak rate electric heating should always be minimised. Of course, at 20:00 when a cheap rate starts, then your boiler could be turned on again (which will probably start warming the house again after 20 or 30 minutes), but also the stand alone heater which will supply instant heat (assuming all your electricity is cheap at that time - is that correct?).

Your thermostats need to be set very low during the night, then higher at say 04:00, so the house is warm when you get up (remember it will go off at 05:00, and the hope is the house keeps warm enough when you get up). You may need to invest in a new thermostat if your current one doesn't allow that functionality.

The above may or may not produce acceptable heating in your particular circumstances, but I think it's the type of strategy you need to adopt to instantly cut your bills.

If you don't mind possibly breaching regulations, you could hook up a small (1.5kw) storage heater into your ring main or e10 circuit, and that could be driven solely on cheap rates and deliver heat very effectively during the peak hours.

Ids61

Thanks all for your help, I am planning what to do. Many great ideas.
The biggest problem is the electric boiler.
I know exactly what I'm using the iphone app Kwh
Is very useful as is the owl meter which gives the kwh usage in real time.I
Think the best thing to do is only use the boiler off peak and supplement the heating with other methods.
See how it goes. But will have to keep the usage down.
Thanks again to all.Sure many are in a similar situation with utility bills.

Ids61

Just a update, our meter is two hours out, thinks it's 1pm it's actualy 3pm.
Our efforts to use low rates at the times we thought have been wrong all along.
New meter coming, Rebate????

marshdaisy

Have you checked when your meter changes over to the cheaper tariff? I know that sounds a bit basic but we are on E.10 and meter doesn't change at the times we were told by the electricity company when we had it fitted! It is out by about two hours which would have made a huge difference to our bills if we hadn't been monitoring the switch over times.