Alternative to Storage Heaters

Ben84

Have you considered some kind of heat pump or wood pellet boiler?

dieselglider

To dismantle storage heaters usually entails removing a couple of screws securing the front cover, may be underneath or on sides. Withdraw the cover, which should reveal the front heat storage blocks. Lift out the front blocks, which will reveal the elements, these are mounted in cut-outs between the blocks, and should be easily removed to check their circuit continuity with a multimeter. Quite straight forward, just be sure to switch off the heater first!!

Another, although costly option, would be to install a typical 'wet' central heating system heated by off-peak electricity using a thermal storage water tank. Not a very popular option, here are a couple of sites for some info;

http://www.mcdonald-engineers.com/electraflow.html

http://www.miketheboilerman.com/Thermalstores.htm

Owain_Moneysaver

Old storage heaters might contain asbestos so be wary when dismantling.

You can get fanned storage heaters which hold the heat better and have a fan to control the output (which can be time controlled) but they are a lot bulkier than ordinary storage heaters and more expensive to buy. Eg

dave461_2

I'd recomend draft tape on your doors, something like this - http://www.wilkinsonplus.com/insulation/setfast-door-and-window-seal-self-adhesive-white-15mapprox/invt/0097190/?htxt=PsAGyAqy%2FDSGVBgOHPBfATKVETOKIWHcwqoICuDrG%2FxTcDPfxIrYzUvEu76RzzM6wutKTeo9AOCB%0AtDs76aYYKg%3D%3D
My storage heaters work well enough if i turn the output down to 1 before night, only needed to put the input up to 5 (out of 6) in the coldest bit last winter, currently on about 2 input.

Richie-from-the-Boro

monika,

Get one of these to tide you over for this winter , you fill it with this. In the summer months you can buy modern 'storage heaters' for cheap money from ebay, in fact they are virtually given away for 99p each because of the cost of posting. Just set ebay to local first and even now you can replace old and ineffective for newer and effective. The cold spots you feel are almost certainly / definitely not to do with the thermal bricks but will be elements that are worn out, these are cheap to replace, are almost always 850W, but are often different sizes so pick the right one for your brand / model.

Changing the elemets or the whole heater [ apart from the labour ] is easy, what is important is to uprate as well as upgrade:

- where you had a 1.7 make it 2.2kWh
- where you had a 2.2 make it 3.4kWh

The bottom line is your home needs work, effort & money spending on the insulation / draught proofing / doors / windows before you waste your hard earned on a dreamy version of 'wall mounted with a sleek design so that they don't look as glaringly obvious as the bulky storage heaters' do'. Unless you stop the loss of heat and reduce draughts no amount of new spend is going to maintain let alone reduce your monthly bills.

Don't be afraid of night store, a couple of screws, thermostat and a fuse @ a disgusting £26 retail and a load of heavy bricks .. .. there's nothing to them, they are crude .. .. but hey that's why they last 50 or more years maintenance free.

unless you don't replace blown heating elements !
its like an oven that only gets hot on one side !
or a grill that undercooks on the left and burns black on the right !


Hope this helps your understanding.

Richie-from-the-Boro

I have 3 views on Night Store [ water & stored heat ] I said in the thread above what is important is to uprate the storage by that i meant :

..1. When a home was built and a decision was made to install E7 or E10 a bog standard graph was / is used to calculate the number of [ total quantity of stored heat ] storage radiators required, this would be true 40 years ago and true if the home was built this year. At £350 a unit the minimum storage capacity would be installed to save cost, and so all homes with storage radiators were constructed on the very edge of their capacity, this at a point when all the product was new and working at maximum efficiency.

Fast forward 20 or more years and the storage efficiency is reduced / wonkey thermocouples / wonkey dampers / wonkey insulators / wonkey heating elements and an installation standard that was teetering on the edge of not working well is now expensive / ineffective / costly. But the :

- dampers can be repaired and made a good
- the elements & thermocouples can be replaced with new
- uprate the main one by at least 1kWh

.2. Uprating does not mean you are increasing your cost you are increasing your capacity to store the cheap stuff, and reducing your need for supplementary heating. A home with sufficient storage should never need to open a damper, I haven't moved a damper in thirty or forty years, and hold to my opinion that anyone who needs to open a damper is a cost ineffective eejit.

The fact of the matter is insufficient overall storage capacity [ water & heat on E7 ] means you use alternative fuels at twice the price, its not rocket science just common sense, if someone said to you :

- I can get you coal @ 60% cheaper you would build fill your coalhouse
- I can get you petrol @ 60% cheaper you would wish you had a bigger tank

So the starting point with all E7 systems is to get~more~storage .. .. its a relatively cheap and instant solution to an issue that pops up on this board year after year after year. The cost of all new night storage heaters from 1.7 to 3.4 is about the same now as it was in the 80's ranging from around 2 to around 3 hundred pounds, this would pay for itself in two winters. The cost of nearly new second hand stuff in perfect working order is about 99p for any size you choose after Easter in any year.

.3. Yes sorry ! I've emboldened the word storage all the way through, sorry to drive you all mad :mad: but its about storage of the cheap stuff to avoid the expensive but entirely avoidable alternatives.

grahamc2003

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

A home with sufficient storage should never need to open a damper, I haven't moved a damper in thirty or forty years, and hold to my opinion that anyone who needs to open a damper is a cost ineffective eejit.

.

That's just nonsense, but anyhow, are you saying you have storage heaters and that the output setting is always set to zero? Even last winter?

In that case, not only are your heaters oversized, but you are spending more on heating than you need to.

chris1973

Also bear in mind that Electricity overnight used by the Storage Heaters was purchased at least 50% cheaper than the daytime rate on a standard tariff, which you'll be using if you give up storage heating and revert to a standard tariff and use 'real time' heat as required.

Many people giving advice seem to refer to 'a heater' to heat a room, well use a room heat calculator to work out the room heat required in an 'average insulated lounge or living area and it will probably output a figure of at least 4kw to 5kw to heat it properly when its freezing outside and that effectively means heaters - ie using more than ONE!, this figure from the room / heat calculators will probably also increase significantly in an old, poorly insulated property, and so to get a level of warmth where the OP can actually sit in their living room without a coat, then two or three 2KW heaters will probably be required, when its -5 or -10 outside, and those types of temps have been recorded for weeks on end during the last two winters!.

Those advising the use of using a single 2KW heater to heat a cold, poorly insulated room, which by its size and dimensions, requires a minimum of 4kw worth of heat input are probably also the ones wondering why it takes 6 hours for the room to become warm enough, and why their electricity bills are sky high and why the thermostat on the heater rarely seems to 'click' off.

To give you an idea of cost, your off peak E7 electricity overnight probably costs you about 5p - 6p a unit, daytime electricity on a good non E7 tariff with DD payment will cost around 10p - 12p a unit - double the cost, whichever way you try and dress it up.

Therefore to run 2x 2kw convector heaters together they would consume 4 units of Electricity per hour, costing 40p per hour to run, even at 10p per unit. If you have more than one room to heat, then you can also multiply this one room figure, depending on the number of additional heaters.

40p is of course a worse case figure and based on both heaters drawing current continuously for each hour, however in reality once the room heats up to the temperature selected on the heater thermostat, then they will switch off, until the room cools down by a degree or so, when they will turn on again to keep the desired room temperature. How long it takes for this to happen, and how often the heaters are required to cycle on / off to maintain the room temperature, of course depends on how warm you like the room, how insulated it is, and how often people open / close doors and walk in / out of it!. But even if you reduce the figure to allow for the heaters to cycle, it will probably still cost more than 30p+ per hour, especially in a draughty building with little insulation to keep the heat in, common sense says the heaters will be more 'on' than 'off'

I also recommend the use of the paraffin invertor heater linked to by the other person, above I use one of these to supplement my E7 storage heating, and to avoid having to use 'peak rate' electricity at 18.85p per unit when the E7 heating runs out of steam. These heaters are rated at 3.2 - 4kw which makes them more powerful than standard portable Electric Heaters, and they quickly warm a room, when they automatically switch to their Eco setting - which is still pretty effective at maintaining the room temperature.

These paraffin heaters also are 99% efficient, making them more efficient at producing heat than oil C.H or portable gas heating, they also dont emit the moisture associated with older gas bottle and traditional paraffin heaters.

Paraffin costs me (currently) 70p a litre bought from a local allotment society, and from burning 1 litre of paraffin I get 10kw worth of heat. This means a cost of around 7p per KW by using paraffin compared to daytime Electricity at 18.85p per KW/H on an E7 daytime rate. It still offers a saving over standard rate electricity at the example 10p - 12p per KW/H, although of course the payback period for the actual heater purchase will be longer, but there are bargain 2nd hand units going for £50 on Ebay from time to time.

Graham1

£288 a month is a bit high. One obvious thing to check is that you are on a tariff with a good night-time rate, a difference from 5p to 6.5 or 7p will make quite a big difference to the bills. Also know what % of your usage is at the night-time rate so that the comparison sites will give an accurate tariff comparison. It's easy to have a night-time consumption of 70% of your total averaged over the whole year if you have 3 or 4 storage heaters.

grahamc2003

chris1973 wrote: »

Also
These paraffin heaters also are 99% efficient, making them more efficient at producing heat than oil C.H or portable gas heating, they also dont emit the moisture associated with older gas bottle and traditional paraffin heaters.

.

Where does the water from combustion go with these heaters? Is it somehow condensed within the heater i.e. do you have to empty a water container occasionally?