I've made a REALLY expensive mistake, help!

puppy999

I hav to agree storage heaters are an eye sore my friend as a beautiful apartment and he as "UGLY" storage heaters in and it spoils the look of the place and you cant control the heating like radiators but I would not live in a place were there is no gas

grahamc2003

puppy999 wrote: »

I hav to agree storage heaters are an eye sore my friend as a beautiful apartment and he as "UGLY" storage heaters in and it spoils the look of the place and you cant control the heating like radiators but I would not live in a place were there is no gas

Each to their own I guesse. While I don't think modern storage heaters are great to look at, they aren't that bad imv. The jkey is the word 'modern' - the old brick boxes of yesteryear were pretty horrible to look at, as well as not working too well - and that's probably why today people generally have a poor view of them. Having said that, I don't like CH radiators, and neither the pipework which goes with them. The main advantage of storage heaters over gas CH imv is the lack of breakdowns and annual service (and all those entail) - the main advantage of gas CH is the controllability, six of one half a dozen of the other, a tight call.

Looking at heating at a more macro level, I think the era of 'central' heating is coming to an end, to be replaced over the next decades with 'local' heating. This due to energy costs. The idea of having the whole house warm just on the off chance you may visit a certain room will in the future seen to be extravagent, imv. Prices will force, eventually, just the main occupied room to be heated to a comfortable level, with all others heated either less or not at all. For example, imv, bedrooms don't need to be heated at all - a hot water bottle or electric blanket providing more local heating than house or even room level. Prices will also force the 'comfortable' room temperature to become lower, with people wearing either thermal vests, or clothes designed to be more insulating than current designs, imv. Welcome to the new world of expensive energy, which will become similar in many ways to the lifestyle of 100 years ago, before cheap energy had made it into our homes.

pothole50

grahamc2003 wrote: »

Looking at heating at a more macro level, I think the era of 'central' heating is coming to an end, to be replaced over the next decades with 'local' heating. This due to energy costs. The idea of having the whole house warm just on the off chance you may visit a certain room will in the future seen to be extravagent, imv. Prices will force, eventually, just the main occupied room to be heated to a comfortable level, with all others heated either less or not at all. For example, imv, bedrooms don't need to be heated at all - a hot water bottle or electric blanket providing more local heating than house or even room level. Prices will also force the 'comfortable' room temperature to become lower, with people wearing either thermal vests, or clothes designed to be more insulating than current designs, imv. Welcome to the new world of expensive energy, which will become similar in many ways to the lifestyle of 100 years ago, before cheap energy had made it into our homes.

A very valid point, in my home the era of central heating never started, and with rising energy prices and the cost of installation and servicing probably never will. We only need to heat the rooms we live in, just put more clothes on if its cold, or go outside for a couple of minutes, its surprising how warm the house feels when you come back inside, feeling chilly give yourself a quick blast with the hairdryer, you can get some nice warm clothing down the charity shops.

Pincher

You hide things you don't want to see.

The simplest thing is some kind of radiator grille.

Build a cabinet around it, with grille cabinet doors and vent grille on top like for a built-under oven.

Build an airing cupboard with the storage heater at the base. Run air ducts from the cupboard along the ceiling to the rooms.

chris1973

Make sure that the size (KW) of heater is adequate for room size, there are calculators on the internet which you can enter the room dimensions and it will tell you how many KW worth of heat is required in order to heat the room to 20c - 21c when its 0c outside. Obviously its wise to add a little to this figure in order to allow for extra capacity when heating the room to 21c when its -18c outside.

Unfortunately, most average sized living areas (or if you expect one heater to heat a hallway and 1 / 2 bedrooms) requires a lot of heat input to do, i've just entered my own medium sized living room dimensions into a KW Calculator and it tells me I need 4.7KW worth of electricity to heat it successfully to the example temperatures. So to provide this heat input, I would need a 2kw and 3kw convector heater, or as is already fitted - a 3.4kw and 2.55kw storage heater.

Storage heaters fitted in larger rooms, tend to be rated 2.55 to 4kw, with the common living area size being 3.4kw. Simply replacing a 3.4kw storage heater with a 500w to 2000w heater is not a direct replacement, and if the room requires 4kw of heat input, then a 500w heater will not even touch the surface.

If your room needs 4kw of heat, then putting 0.5kw of heat into it isn't going to work, and I dont care if its a a basic £15 convector heater or a miracle radiator filled with oil developed by NASA and drained from the Starship enterprise. If it was the case that you could heat large areas with little current input, then i'm sure the Royal Albert hall and every hotel chain would be using them.

Unfortunately, Electricity remains the most expensive form of heating there is, whatever heating appliance is consuming it.

One of the reasons I switched to using portable indoor paraffin heaters, was after finding out that there is no such thing as 'cheap' electric heating, and putting 4kw - 5kw worth of heat into a room at daytime electricity rates of 11p KW/H (unit) would cost upto 44p - 55p per hour I began looking for alternatives.

So unless you have the option to fit gas or oil / lpg heating, then unfortunately you have already got rid of the 'cheaper' electricity heating option.

The only thing I can suggest is that you start looking at cheaper forms of personal heating, like electric blankets for overnight use, and heated throws for watching tv use, both of these consume around 100 - 120w of electricity, meaning they run for upto 10 hours for just one unit of Electricity. Obviously not practical if you want to actually warm the room itself, but they will be far more effective at keeping you warmer than the space heating you have now fitted.

bigfatface

I was going to chip in on this matter, but then I read this from the OP:

a woman would have taken the word "MISTAKE" on board right away and offered advice to help correct it

Being a woman, I have taken your comments on board and felt a bit offended by this.

You're on your own.

rogerblack

grahamc2003 wrote: »

Looking at heating at a more macro level, I think the era of 'central' heating is coming to an end, to be replaced over the next decades with 'local' heating..

I disagree.
It's quite technically possible now to make a house that needs little or no active heating.
Heat-exchange ventilation, super-insulation, very good draught sealing.

This will get cheaper as time goes on, and insulation will slowly improve.
For example, one can now get vacuum insulation that has the same insulative value as 'normal' insulation foam, but at a tiny fraction of the thickness. (it fails after 15 years or so at the moment)
And aerogel insulation as cavity filler is being used in some places, and it also works inside double glazed windows (when you just want them to be translucent).

The hard part is of course houses that are not new-build.
It's _very_ hard to upgrade their thermal performance to this level.

Directronics

I came across this posting about BEHA convector heaters and although it was posted in 2011, as the sole UK and Spanish importers of these heaters I felt I should correct a few errors.

Convector heaters are what they say, they convector the air, they are not radiators and do not throw out lots of heat as a water radiator or a storage heater.

Next they should be fitted as low as possible, 2 inches from the floor is perfect, hot air rises so if they are fitted half way up the walls (as we have seen some do) you end up with cold feet.

There should always be sufficient in the house in all the rooms, preferably under windows, and not just one big one in a large room but two smaller ones at each end to distribute the heat.

Then they can be controlled by a wireless controller or each heater can be fitted with an economy plug. If you fit either of these recommendations (the initial investment is a little more than the heaters) the savings in electricity will be a lot.

Finally heaters should not be switche off. They should be reduced in temperature when not needed but the energy required to bring a cold house/flat back up to temperature is much more than just leaving them on in 'tick over mode'

BEHA heaters are made in Norway where it is really cold in the winter. They are a quality product (unlike some Chinese look alikes) manufactured by a company in Norway that has been in family ownership for 100 years. You were abviously given bad advise when considering your installation, if its not too late go on the Internet to BEHA . no and get the advice you should have had in the first place.

grahamc2003

Directronics wrote: »

Finally heaters should not be switche off. They should be reduced in temperature when not needed but the energy required to bring a cold house/flat back up to temperature is much more than just leaving them on in 'tick over mode'

BEHA heaters are made in Norway where it is really cold in the winter. They are a quality product (unlike some Chinese look alikes) manufactured by a company in Norway that has been in family ownership for 100 years. You were abviously given bad advise when considering your installation, if its not too late go on the Internet to BEHA . no and get the advice you should have had in the first place.

The bolded bit is simply incorrect. No one with basic physics would say such a thing.

If the op comes to you for advice, I'm afraid she'd be jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

She has had mainly correct advice on this thread up to now, even though it went unappreciated and we had to endure abuse for giving it.

I expect she'll be in touch with you, and you'll have no problem offloading a couple more panel heaters on her, which I expect is your aim. Just tell her thay are pretty, and try to avoid mentioning they cost about 3 times the cost to run than storage heaters on E7.

Cardew

Directronics wrote: »

Finally heaters should not be switche off. They should be reduced in temperature when not needed but the energy required to bring a cold house/flat back up to temperature is much more than just leaving them on in 'tick over mode'

It is quite ironic that you should come up with such totally incorrect advice, when there is a thread running about the Myth that you have just repeated. The Energy Saving Trust(EST) have unequivocally stated that you are wrong.

As stated above, anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Physics would know that your statement is incorrect.

You specifically stated 'energy required etc) Leaving aside any distractions about comfort/frost prevention etc, consider this scenario:

You are to leave the house empty for two years, would you leave the heating on low for those two years - because you state it takes more energy to bring the house back up to temperature.

I suspect you might concede that it is cheaper to switch off heating for those two years.

How about one year, one month, 1 week, 1 day?

For you to be correct, at what point does the law of thermodynamics cease to apply?

The very simple answer is that the longer heaters are switched off - the lower the cost.

Please please don't try and wriggle out of your error by quoting comfort etc.

Sorry to be so blunt, but a recurring theme on this forum is people given completely wrong advice by a man down the pub, an electrician friend etc. Your advice, as the owner? of a electrical heating firm would carry conviction if it were not firmly rebutted.