How much will I be paying?

NathanE

Buying a 2 bed apartment (top floor)... I've no idea how much I'll be spending on electricity?

It has 4 storage heaters, big one in the living room, small one in the hall way, and 2 small ones in each bedroom.

The kitchen has a electric or ceramic hob (not sure which yet), and electric oven.

I'm guessing it will be quite expensive in the winter months?

dogshome

Cost of 2 Bed all Elec flat with 4 storage heaters ?

I'm afraid it's the most expensive way of heating a home, and at present day prices you are looking at appx. £1,400 a year - £117 a month Direct debit.
If it's payment by prepay card it will be more as you will lose some discounts.

If you haven't actually made the commitment to buy it yet, it would be worth looking around for one with gas central heating, that was built within the last 3 years with high insulation standards

HappyMJ

dogshome wrote: »

Cost of 2 Bed all Elec flat with 4 storage heaters ?

I'm afraid it's the most expensive way of heating a home, and at present day prices you are looking at appx. £1,400 a year - £117 a month Direct debit.
If it's payment by prepay card it will be more as you will lose some discounts.

If you haven't actually made the commitment to buy it yet, it would be worth looking around for one with gas central heating, that was built within the last 3 years with high insulation standards

That's an interesting estimate. Over the last 12 months I have used electric heating and my whole 12 month bill wasn't even anywhere near half of that. I have a 3 bedroomed semi detached house.

Storage heating is not the most expensive way to heat a home. It's actually quite cheap. There are other more expensive ways. Convector heaters for one.

Recently built flats don't normally come with gas. Too dangerous to build them with it. They are just about always E7 heating. At least around here they are all electric.

NathanE

dogshome wrote: »

Cost of 2 Bed all Elec flat with 4 storage heaters ?

I'm afraid it's the most expensive way of heating a home, and at present day prices you are looking at appx. £1,400 a year - £117 a month Direct debit.
If it's payment by prepay card it will be more as you will lose some discounts.

If you haven't actually made the commitment to buy it yet, it would be worth looking around for one with gas central heating, that was built within the last 3 years with high insulation standards

Wow that's pretty negative!

It has double glazing from 2007 and the loft looked well insulated when I viewed it.

I can always replace the heaters. It's not like they're particularly expensive.

The apartment is ~530 sq ft, so not huge...

I don't think your estimate is realistic as the current place we are in (4 bed detached house, very large)... we are spending about £1600/yr on gas & electric. And it has a lot of electronics/appliances that are always sapping electric.

heavenfire

I have a one bed place, all electric. I pay £37 a month and have built up a small credit. I do my best to conserve energy so it might be on the low side. Saying that I put my heating on whenever I felt cold for however long I wanted last Xmas. My mum has gas and electric (gas central heating. cooker etc) and her electricity bill is way more higher than mine. I'm not sure how!

HappyMJ

heavenfire wrote: »

I have a one bed place, all electric. I pay £37 a month and have built up a small credit. I do my best to conserve energy so it might be on the low side. Saying that I put my heating on whenever I felt cold for however long I wanted last Xmas. My mum has gas and electric (gas central heating. cooker etc) and her electricity bill is way more higher than mine. I'm not sure how!

I don't know how either my friend also has a higher electricity bill than me @£45 a month and also has gas central heating where I don't. I've tried giving her electricity monitors to use in her house and it's still very high usage and I'm the one using electric heating, electric shower and an immersion heater for hot water.

chris1973

I have three storage heaters, to run them all night at an input setting of 7 -8 with the output damper closed consumes a total of 50 - 55 units of Electricity. At my current E7 rate of 5.3p per unit that works out at £2.915 per night. To run them all for 30 nights for a 30 day month would cost £87.45 a month, before any other general usage is taken into account, including the immersion heater, bathroom heater, washer, lighting etc

Yes, this 50 - 55 units of consumption does vary from night to night - it largely varies from 50 - 55 , so hardly a ground breaking difference.

Here is the worst case potential total overnight consumption of each type of storage heater when run for 7 hours on the E7 tariff

3.4KW model - 3.4 units per hour - 23.8 units
2.55KW model - 2.55 units per hour - 17.85 units
1.7KW model - 1.7 units per hour - 11.9 units
850w Model - 0.85 units per hour - 5.95 units

So, using the above, we can work out that a single 3.4KW storage heater can consume anything upto 23.8 units during the 7 hours it is switched on. So again based on 5.3 for each E7 unit, that is a potential 23.8 x 5.3 = £1.26 cost just to heat one single storage heater. No smoke and mirrors required.

Note, that I refer to worst case and use words like potentially in reference to the total consumption of the storage heaters above. This is because the storage heater has a built in thermostat which controls current to the heating element and is based on the real time temperature of the bricks which hold the heat. So depending on how high the 'input' control is set, determines how much heat is input into the bricks, and how long the heater consumes electricity for before switching off the element, and from then onwards, once the 'input' control setting is reached, it will begin cycling the heating element(s) on/off for the rest of the period in order to maintain that heat setting for as long as the the E7 period is active.

However, again from monitoring using loaned logging equipment from work, I found that one of my own 3.4KW storage heaters set to '8' on the input setting actively drew current for a total of 6 hours and 7 minutes out of the 7 hour E7 period available to it, meaning it consumed just over (6 x 3.4 = 20.4) units of Electricity. Slightly better than the 'worst case' figure of 23.8 given above, but still £1.08 in electricity cost based on 5.3p per unit, to heat one 3.4KW storage heater, running for one night.

So in other words, any actual storage heater is unlikely to be consuming current continuously for the full 7 hour period, so the figures above may be reduced depending on the level of the input control, how much its reduced by depends on the age of the heater (and condition of it inside), the fabric of the property, size of the room, input setting, and more importantly, how well insulated the building is. All of these factors also equally apply to determine just how effective the heat from out of it will be in heating the room, once the Electricity to the heater is switched off automatically at somewhere between 7AM and 8.30AM (depending on your area and E7 provider). After this time, you are reliant entirely on the stored heat continuing the provide an adequate level of heat to the room, in order to meet your own comfort level.

Bear in mind however, that you only effectively get out, what you originally put in, so dont expect to set the control at '3' and expect it to be lovely and warm at 6pm when its snowing outside. Whatever anybody says, these are storage heaters, and not wall mounted christmas miracles.

The other problem with storage heaters is that its not real time controllable heat, other than beyond the input and output (damper) controls. So for example, if you didn't "guess" the 'input' control and get it right so that it was set high enough to combat the cold for the following day, then you may be freezing by 1pm the next afternoon. If you set it too high and a milder than forecast day follows, then the Electricity will be wasted, and you may find yourself too hot, just from the residual heat stored in the heater.

I find that even on 9 or 10, my storage heaters are ineffective at maintaining a room temperature much above 16c from around 6pm onwards in the middle of winter, meaning some other heating supplement is required unless you retire to bed at 6pm or are a person who is comfortable at 16c. If you do have to use other heating to 'top up' during the times when the output of the storage heaters is dwindling, then you will be charged at daytime rates, which on an E7 tariff are expensive, and the cost of using additional electric heating outside of E7, should also be added to the E7 costs!.

So in other words, if you are fortunate enough to find your storage heaters are efficient enough to carry the room temperature at a comfortable level for the 17 hours that they are not actively taking in heat and so you are happy watching the midnight movie with no other supplementary heating running, then yes, you will find storage heating an attractive form of heating. If on the other hand, like myself, and some others sharing their experiences, you find you have to be resorting to using other forms of heat because the storage heaters are not keeping the room at a comfortable temperature after a certain time, then if these heaters are also electric and running at expensive rates, then you be adding a lot to your bill.

The only way of finding out is to switch them on and just get on with it. If you get to the coldest part of the winter and you find you dont need any other form of heating on, then you will know that the property is well insulated, the storage heating effective and in good condition, and you should be able to roughly work out your monthly bill from the math examples given above. Allowing for some variation either way as all properties (and people's comfort levels) are all different.

dogshome

Hi NathanE - Lot's of conflicting opinion.
The only way to get a definative answer is to contact the flat's current Utility supplier and ask them what the Day/Night Kwh consumptions were in the previous 12 months