Advice Required: Alternative to using storage heaters (i.e.portable heating)

savingup80

Hi

I have a small one bed flat with storage heaters on Economy 7. After searching multiple comparison sites I chose the best deal:

Electricity standing charge 17.26p* per day
Unit rate (Night) 4.77p* per kWh
Unit rate (Normal) 10.09p* per kWh

However, I am usually in one main room and out most of the day which means the heat emitted from the storage heaters is wasted as I am not at home 6 days a week during the day .

I would like to know if anyone can suggest the best alternative portable heating option, so I can heat my main room in the evenings. Perhaps a calor gas portable heater? Or a oil or water radiator (plugged into electricity). I am sure that electric (fan/halogen) heaters are not economical.

Any advice would really be very much appreciated. I checked other threads which seem to say a portable gas heater isnt much difference to using electricity but as I am out most of the day, the storage heaters (although on Economy 7 at 4.77p per kwh) seems such a waste.

Thank you in advance

chris1973

That tariff sounds like a bargain for E7. I pay 5.3p for offpeak and 18.85p for peak

Can I ask who quoted you that tariff?

would like to know if anyone can suggest the best alternative portable heating option, so I can heat my main room in the evenings. Perhaps a calor gas portable heater? Or a oil or water radiator (plugged into electricity). I am sure that electric (fan/halogen) heaters are not economical.

At 10.09p per Peak rate KW/H Electricity heating would be pretty reasonable for a few hours in the Evening, I've never come across an E7 tariff that low so i'd grab it whilst you can!.

Personally, I use one of these:-

http://www.charliesdirect.co.uk/products/inverter-3016-portable-paraffin-heater-3kw

I buy Paraffin from a local allotment society pump for 70p per Litre, which gives out 10KW of heat per litre burned, so effectively the equiv cost to run is 7p per KW/H, so 11p per KW/H less than my peak rate electricity.

They are expensive to buy, but you can find them second hand now and again on ebay. The running costs also depends on what the cost of the paraffin is locally to you, I had to shop around for that price, and look outside of the usual sources of pre-packaged stuff from B&Q etc which is atupidly expensive

slenderkitten

unfortunately I too have the same problems, it doesn't matter how cheap the tariff at night if the heat are gone in them during the day, come night time they are stone cold i am looking at a calor gas heater as opposed to a

macman

Have you adjusted the input/output controls to delay the heat release in the day to the evening?
Failing that, switch to conventional electric heaters and (of course) switch to a single rate tariff instead of E7. Howver this means that you will lose the benefit of cheap rate water heating, which you presumably use at present.