How to heat my flat?

JonnyThunder

Good morning,

I've got a small 2 bedroom flat which is electric only (no gas supply to my area). It's got cavity wall insulation and is generally warm most of the time without any heating switched on.

During winter time, it does need a little heating and at the moment I have those Dimplex storage heaters which work from both on peak and off peak metres. These storage heaters are okay - but for eight hours of the day I'm not even home, so it seems like a bit of a waste.

I'm really looking for suggestions of a better way to heat a very small flat, without using these storage heaters. In my experience they are pretty expensive to run and impossible to control. I'm only looking to heat the flat for around 5 hours at night and (if possible) a little bit in the morning. I've been looking at timed oil heaters but there are stacks of them out there and I've no idea what's good. Then I also heard of water filled heaters which heat up quicker etc.

What would you recommend??

Thanks,
JT

Pincher

Small flat, good insulation, even if there is something with lower running cost, it won't save you that much.

If you put in a heat pump for £1,500 , how long will it take to re-coup in energy cost?

Oil filled heaters are quiet, fan heaters are noisy, and the exposed heating element is a potential fire hazzard, and you get burning dust smell sometimes.

JonnyThunder

I suppose what I'm really asking is, will an oil / water filled radiator be any more economicaly than my storage heating? I only used one storage heater to heat the whole flat during last winter - but it was costly. I was hoping that one big oil radiator or something similar would do the same job?

Pincher

They both use a heating element, so 1kWh of electricity goes in, and 1kWh of heat comes out. The only real choice is whether you use Economy 7 electricity.

If you have a day time boost button on the storage heater, use that.

A 2kW oil filled heater will cost 12p x 2 per hour at maximum output.
It will click on and off , so let's say 80p for 5 hours. Assume you use it for 120 days a year, 5 hours each, that's 80p x 5 x 120 = £480.

Assuming COP = 3, a split air-con heat pump will give you the same amount of heat for £480 / 3 = £160, a saving of £320 a year.

Assuming £1,500 installation cost, break even is five years.

JonnyThunder

Thanks very much for the post - that's really helpful to me.

I'll do some sums and see what will work out best.

andyrpsmith

Jonny, the oil filled option may work for you. I use them for my whole house in place of storage heaters. I use the Delonghi Rapido 3Kw which has 7 heat options they cost between £100 and £140 but are well built and last in excess of 10 years). I changed supplier to get a cheaper unit rate currently 7p fixed until 31 dec(not economy 7) and I save £1000 per year over the whole electric costs with storage heating and E10 tariff I had before, so it can work.

JonnyThunder

andyrpsmith wrote: »

Jonny, the oil filled option may work for you. I use them for my whole house in place of storage heaters. I use the Delonghi Rapido 3Kw which has 7 heat options they cost between £100 and £140 but are well built and last in excess of 10 years). I changed supplier to get a cheaper unit rate currently 7p fixed until 31 dec(not economy 7) and I save £1000 per year over the whole electric costs with storage heating and E10 tariff I had before, so it can work.

Dont suppose you know off the top of your head what model it was?

EDIT: Ignore that - I think there is only one model! lol

grahamc2003

JonnyThunder wrote: »

Good morning,

I've got a small 2 bedroom flat which is electric only (no gas supply to my area). It's got cavity wall insulation and is generally warm most of the time without any heating switched on.

During winter time, it does need a little heating and at the moment I have those Dimplex storage heaters which work from both on peak and off peak metres. These storage heaters are okay - but for eight hours of the day I'm not even home, so it seems like a bit of a waste.

I'm really looking for suggestions of a better way to heat a very small flat, without using these storage heaters. In my experience they are pretty expensive to run and impossible to control. I'm only looking to heat the flat for around 5 hours at night and (if possible) a little bit in the morning. I've been looking at timed oil heaters but there are stacks of them out there and I've no idea what's good. Then I also heard of water filled heaters which heat up quicker etc.

What would you recommend??

Thanks,
JT

If your flat has decent insulation to the outside walls (and loft if applicable) and your storage heaters are resonable modern ones (i.e. are better insulated/much better controllability than the old thivk type), then they will almost certainly be cheaper than any peak time electrical heating (excepting heat pumps).

Andyprsmith's situation seems pretty much the exception - he was on e10 (a rip off tariff, e7 is almosty certainly cheaper) and he's currently at the end of a very low fixed rate deal, and at 7p/kwh, he won't be far off increasing his bills by 80-100% when his deal ends.

As others have said, an air to air heatpump could suit you - you could have the market leader installed for about £1.3k. The restrictions on your lease may put a halt to that though, since you have to hang an outside unit on the outside wall.

andyrpsmith

Current OVO fixed rate is 10.42 ie 47% increase. they usually give an offer in Nov which is a little less than current fixed rate.

JonnyThunder

I since spoke to the electricity company and found out the exact times that the off peak electricity kicks in, which are...

03:30 - 06:30
11:00 - 13:00
19:45 - 21:45

This kinda changes things. I'm going to aim to use the electric during these times for the heating, bar perhaps an hour earlier in the evening - using an oil filled radiator.

I'll see how it goes. Thanks for the input folks - appreciated.

chris1973

I'm in an all electric property, where the storage heaters are crap and so I've taken the old fashioned approach, and now use Paraffin.

I'm on a pre-pay E7 tariff which charges almost 19p / KWH for daytime Electricity (07.30 - 00.30 currently), this means that even a single 2KW convector heater would cost nearly 38p an hour to run in the daytime and evenings. I would need around 3.5KW of heat to heat my front living room, which would mean upto 66.5 pence an hour to heat. Could work out quite expensive when home at the weekends and over Xmas Holidays!

So outside of E7 hours I use a modern, safe Paraffin Inverter heater. I get paraffin currently for 70p a litre and 1 litre gives out 10KW of heat - so the equiv cost to run it is 7p / KWH compared to Npowers' rip-off 18.85p daytime E7 rates. It also gives out 3KW of heat and heats a room very quickly.

The paraffin heater is also 99% efficient, putting it very close to that of Electric Heaters, and far more efficient than Gas, LPG or Oil heating, plus it requires very little maintainance

Also make sure that you have an adequate amount of heat from whatever source you choose to heat the size of room its intending to heat, most people just buy a cheap heater from Argos and expect a single 2KW convector to heat a full size living room on a freezing December afternoon and then wonder why they still feel chilly and their bills are so high.

Enter your room dimensions into the calculator here and it will then tell you how many KW of heat you need to heat the inside when its 0c outside.

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