STorage heater & Way to monitor actual leccy use?

holmesgroove

Lifeforms wrote: »

as it is a key meter I never can get an absolute amount I use a week, but it's roughly between 15-20 a week just on non-heating use. I'll run it for a week, and see what the difference it roughly and work on that.

What I can't work out also is just how to use it. Should i have it on full during the night for charging (6/6 on the overnight charge) with the room temp set at zero until the evening? Or is i better to leave it half and half.

To be fair on the costs of these, I Was regulary paying £60ish a fortnight for coal in my last place, so I know heating costs money, it's just frustrating trying to work out what it costs. I have a small calor gas mini heater, which I can use instead of, or as a top up during the evening if the storage heater isn't enough, but that I know the cost of, per hour/half hour, with this, it's a whole new ballgame for me.

Again, "Also, a NSH should be set to 6 input, and 0 output over night. This allows the bricks to heat up to optimum temperature. This allows you to release the heat when needed."

In saying that, since you have more than one NSH in the property, you could have the input set to whatever you feel necessary. It is best to have the output set at 'closed'/0, as this gives you more control later in the day/evening.

macman

HappyMJ wrote: »

How do you tell which switch to turn on to charge during the night? OP said it had two switches. A night one and a day boost. The landlord doesn't know or care which one is which.

OP said the wireless monitor is out of range. 2nd floor flat maybe. It's difficult to tell it it's running through the day as the storage heater is warm and the meter is clocking up units anyway for normal usage so which are storage heater units and which are not.

OP....There is no energy monitor for storage heaters. You need to loop a monitor around one of the wires and as all the wires are together in the core then the energy monitor can't work. It's really just a matter of experimenting. Hard to do it with a key meter which as you say measures in blocks.

We have not yet established if these have anything at all to do with the storage heaters.

grahamc2003

While you're working out how much it costs you to run with your tariff, a good first approximation, given no other data, for a large storage heater to fully charge at night is around £1.25

Should be easy to get the power of yours. Just stick around with your monitor about the time E7 night rate kicks in (00:30 for me atm, 01:30 after the clocks go back next week), and watch the reading. You'll likely see it jump from 200w to 7600w or similar, meaning they are both 3.6kw (make sure the swithc for both is On!).

If they are, and you're paying 6p/kwh night rate, then the theoretical max per heater is 6p/kwh x 7h x 3.6kw = £1.50. In practice it will be less, because the thermostat within the heater will click in and out to stop the elements overheating, so reckon on £1.25 per heater per night and you won't be too far out (remember that's for the max input heat setting - you could always have the input set lower to lower the cost (and the heat stored).

These big bulky old storage heaters really aren't up to the job these days, and lose too much heat when the output is set to zero, meaning they may run out of heat before the end of the evening. Modern ones are a big improvement, and sometimes go very cheaply on ebay.