please help! im at my wits end :O(

moneysaver78_2

ok PLEASE can you lot help me? im expecting my first bambino soon & the bad weather is fast approaching so i need to sort my heating out ASAP. i have been reading so much on the net & on here that i am so confused & literally have square eyes....
my house has ceiling heating (heat mats) which are breaking & yes i hear you say heat rises so whats the point? i have no gas in the road so am all electric. the ceiling heating is on all day which is expensive (it cannot go on E7) but my emersion is on E7 although this seems pointless because it is a 3bed house and all 3 adults work 8am-5pm . the water that was heated on E7 over night is wasted as we all shower in the evening & so ive had to put a timer on the emersion which heats up at peak time :O(
i have been reading about water filled rads/ air source pumps/ storage heaters/electric boilers/wet systems..... allsorts... and its driving me literally insane i just want some sound straight forward advice please on a system thats not going to cost me the earth to install and is as economical as possible to run.....i was thinking of electric boiler & water filled rads plugged into E10? but as i say the more i read the more i get confused...i need to decide and install fast PLEASE HELP
many thanks in advance

Gothicfairy

You can get oil filled rads that seem quite cheap to run..I have one in my caravan and that does not break the bank to run through electric.
I bought mine from a car boot sale and I have seen them going at charity shops as well.

Owain_Moneysaver

Water heated overnight on E7 should stay hot for at least a day if you have a properly insulated hot water cylinder.

If people are out all day then E7 storage heating probably is not worthwhile, and it's not that cheap to install.

Electric boiler and water rads are IMO the worst of all worlds. E10 tariffs are designed for storage heaters with a daytime top-up, not for running peak-time boilers or radiators.

What sort of budget have you got for installation? Flat/house? How many bedrooms and living rooms? And when the baby arrives will you need heat all day?

Convector/panel heaters with good thermostats and timers will probably cost less to run than ceiling panels, and are fairly cheap to buy, but will still be expensive to run. E7 storage heaters will be cheaper to run but cost more to install. Combination storage/panel heaters such as Dimplex Duoheat will cost more again to install as they need peak and off-peak wiring to each heater.

From a safety perspective, wall-hung heaters would be safer than free-standing, and watch surface temperatures once the baby starts crawling. Storage heaters can be particularly and unexpectedly hot. Wire guards are available, and advisable.

Insulation should be the first priority, then you need less heating.

chris1973

First of all, NO Electric heating is going to be cheap to run. It is the most expensive form of heating there is.

http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk/portal/page?_pageid=75,59188&_dad=portal

Secondly, work out how many KW's of heat you actually need to input into each room comfortably in order to heat it to a comfortable temperature when its below freezing outside. Input the size of each room into a calculator like this one, to give you the answer:-

http://www.flickeringflame.co.uk/tech_detail/tech.htm

You wont always need the exact amount of heat displayed in the calculator, as it depends on the outside ambient temperature, room insulation, and your own comfort level, however the calculator does accurately display the amount of heat needed to take the room to a comfortable level when its 0c outside, and therefore this figure is the minimum amount of heat you should be looking to have available for that size of room. In larger rooms like Living Areas, the heat input required is often more than the 3KW available from the majority of single electric heaters, inevitably this may require the purchasing of more than one electric heater for larger rooms. For maximum efficiency where two heaters are required, they should be located at opposite ends of the room

Getting this calculation wrong, and just using a single 2KW heater in a poorly insulated room requiring a heat input of 4.5KW and expecting it to heat it, will mean that the room never really fells comfortably warm, and the 2KW heater will never turn itself on/off from its thermostat, so it will continuously consume electricity.

The cost of actually running the heaters remains the same, whether its a 2KW Fan heater or a 2KW 'miracle radiator' filled with snake oil

A rough cost of running an Electric Heater according to its KW Loading is shown below. This example assumes an Electricity cost of 12p per unit (KWH)

1KW loading - 1 Unit per Hour - £0.12 per hour
2KW loading - 2 Units Per Hour - £0.24 per hour
3KW loading - 3 Units Per Hour - £0.36 per hour
4KW loading - 4 Units Per Hour - £0.48 per hour
5KW loading - 5 Units per Hour - £0.60 per hour

So if the room size KW calculator says you need 4KW to heat it, then it will require 2x 2KW heaters, and each 2kw heater will cost 24p per hour, per heater to run. So based on this, you should budget a cost of 48p per hour in order to heat a room requiring 4KW of heat input to get the room temperature to 21c when its 0c outside

Most heaters have a built in thermostat which means that once the room is up to the desired temperature they will automatically switch off until the room temperature drops by 1c - 3c at which point they will switch back on again in order to maintain the chosen room temperature.

So the above figures will be for continuous consumption, which will occur until the room gets up to the selected temperature. Once this happens, the heaters will continue to cycle themselves on/off according to changes in the room temperature, from experience on this happens I found that this reduces the hourly cost by around 10 - 20% (all depending on the size of room, insulation level and how many times the door opens / closes and people come and go).

I also find that the cheap, built in, bi-metallic thermosats on portable heaters are poor, as they only monitor the 'local' temperature of the small amount of air around the heater, and may not reflect the room temperature 15 - 20 foot away, where you may be sitting. For this reason, if Electric Heating is the main source, it is far better to invest in heaters which use a wireless thermostat, which can be positioned either near where people sit, or in the center of the actual room, this will give a more accurate picture of the room temperature, and better control of the heaters. On some systems its possible to have one RF thermostat controlling two heaters, mounted at opposite ends of the room, and from a personal level, this was the most effective method I found of controlling the heat from wall mounted heaters.

chris1973

Err... My heat pump uses leccy and is silly cheap to run

So what are the actual figures and how do they add up, come on share! dont keep them to yourself

jalexa

jeepjunkie wrote: »

Err... My heat pump uses leccy and is silly cheap to run

That's good, unfortunately not everybody's experience...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010vzmv

yoda011087

moneysaver78 wrote: »

.... the water that was heated on E7 over night is wasted as we all shower in the evening...

If it's being "wasted" by not being used, why not change to showering in the morning? Then you will not need the expensive daytime boost?

Notwithstanding, as a couple of posters have pointed out, with proper insulation your hot tank should stay shower-warm for at least 10 hours.

spiro

What is you current split in consumption between day and night? This is critical to determining if you should be on an E7 tariff or not.