Why is my electric more expensive than friends with bigger homes?

Tracy2912

Sorry I don't know what type of jacket is on the cylinder, this is a rented property, I think the tank is an old one though. I'm sorry I don't know what the capacity is either.



I apologise to the person (not sure who it was!) that I may have reported spam about, it was an accident, I'm new to this site and using an iPad to use means accidentally clicking on the wrong thing when I should have scrolled. Hope you will accept my apology:)

HappyMJ

Tracy2912 wrote: »

Sorry I don't know what type of jacket is on the cylinder, this is a rented property, I think the tank is an old one though. I'm sorry I don't know what the capacity is either.



I apologise to the person (not sure who it was!) that I may have reported spam about, it was an accident, I'm new to this site and using an iPad to use means accidentally clicking on the wrong thing when I should have scrolled. Hope you will accept my apology:)

Is it copper or is it green/yellow or whatever color of foam sprayed on or does it have what looks like a thick duvet wrapped around it. Set the timer to come on at 4am and off at 6am and you will have hot water all day.

macman

If you are running convectors on E7 peak rate and leaving the immersion on 24/7 then of course your bills will be huge. The whole point of E7 is to utilise cheaper rate power, and that means heating by storage heaters and heating your hot water overnight-if the tank is properly lagged it will keep hot all day.
You do not seem to be aware that every single kWh you use outside the 7 hours of cheap rate is charged at a premium rate-not at standard rate.
What is your annual kWh consumption on each rate? That is the key to budgeting. if you are not using a minimum of 33% on cheap rate then you should probably not be on E7 at all.

Tracy2912

I think the answer is for us to turn everything off at 7am and switch it back on at 12 midnight, that way we can't get charged for any peak rate electricity. My point being is that our storage heaters are old and not working efficiently therefore having to pay out for extra heating!

MusicalLawyer

With your storage heaters what do you have the output set at?

If you have it on maximum, then it releases the heat fast. I have my output on very very low so it releases heat all day long and keeps the room toasty - well that was until i took advice from here & changed it, as i only have one storage heater which is my bedroom, but thats another story for another time.

Again, put your immersion heater on timed 4am - 6am, thats what I've done (though i messed up the timing for the first night! haha)

My bill is roughly £80, but its going down each month atm as we're doing extra things like using washing machine during the night.

Cardew

Tracy2912 wrote: »

I think the answer is for us to turn everything off at 7am and switch it back on at 12 midnight, that way we can't get charged for any peak rate electricity. My point being is that our storage heaters are old and not working efficiently therefore having to pay out for extra heating!

Storage heaters being old does not decrease their efficiency.

The biggest problem is that they can leak heat during the day, but if the output is turned to minimum while you are out, there should be heat left when you return.

Also a tank full of hot water on E7 will remain hots for a couple of days. Even if it does lose heat, that warmth goes into your flat.

Tracy2912

All our storage heaters were on number 1 for output and turned up in the evening but didn't get anything out of them. The input was set to number 5 so it stored lots of heat. I don't think we can set the immersion on a timer as its just a switch you turn on and off, I can guarantee you that if I turned it off I would forget to turn it back on!!!

cb1979

When we moved to our present house it was fitted with night store heaters and they were wired into a fuse box that was switched by a Radio Teleswitch which only turned them on for 7 hours at night on the cheap economy 7 tariff
We only used them for half a winter as the used to get a bit cool by 6pm in the evening
We then had central heating fitted
We are with scottish power on their economy 7 tariff and pay £105 per month in a 4 Bed house with 3 adults bathing every day

cjard

I've a 2 bed flat on a fairly expensive (i think) tariff with EON E7: 29p/18p day rate and 6p night rate. I use 10,000 kwh a year on a 27%/73% split day/night and typically have the heaters on from oct/nov to feb/mar, input between 2 and 5 (out of 6) and output between 2 and 4.. I pay on average 83 a month, which isnt bad considering electric does everything here, no other fuel

Right now the big one in the lounge is on 3/3 in/out, the main bedroom is on 2/1 and the small bedroom is 1/1
I wanted to point out that these are set all the time, with minor adjustments only for changes in outside temperature.. i.e. I don't mess with the dials on a daily basis; storage heaters heat overnight according to the input value and the heat is released at a rate according to the output value, with respect tto the room temperature. That is to say that a SH on output level 2 in a cold room will emit more heat than the same heater on 2 in a warm room.. As such, theyre not meant to be used like conventional heaters/heating where it's off during the day, your house is cold, you blast it up to heat, live and sleep in it and be warm at evening and night, then let it go cold over the day..
Storage heater heated houses maintain a fairly consistent heat in the entire house all day long even when there's noone in it - there isnt this notion that you should turn them down and let the place go cold during the day because they cannot output heat such that they bring the house up to temperature well on demand. Dont look at it like youre paying to heat a house youre not in; youre paying so that you dont have to heat a house much when youre in it later on

For this reason, check that your place is well insulated, free of draughts etc. Accept that a ground floor flat has no rising heat benefits from below and is going to be the coldest one in the block
Remember also that everything in the house gets to a temperature and contributes to the feeling of warmth.. My brick walls are warmer than my brother's house because the flat is constantly betweem 19 and 24 (depending on how well i've read the weather and prepared the storage heater settings a day in advance).. His house is heated by central/rad and thus has warm and cold cycles to its air and generally cold walls etc

Right now, it's just before midnight and the main heater in the lounge has been off all day... just about to come on, but it's too hot to touch comfortably on settings of 3/3 - The air in here is 22 degrees, so the output lid (if you look through the vents on my heaters you can see the output flap opening and closing with the twisting of the output knob) is just barely open.. It's trickling out just a tiny bit of heat and keeping this place at 22, like it has all day

cjard

ps; immersion heater has a timer and comes on for an hour a day 5am - 6am, shower's a normal heat-as-it-goes electric type, so the immersion is just for washing up/hand washing.. 1h's probably overkill for that, but a 2.7kw heater element equats to about 15 p per day for hot water (2.7 * 6)

if you leave your immersion on 24/7 it will have a thermostat to knock it off when its heated the whole tank, but you lose control of when it runs, which means that it probably does most of its hard work in the 9am - 11 pm after everyone's caned the hot water for showers, and 8pm - 9pm when again theyve caned it for washing up, evening activities etc - expensive times
If mine ran all day (at my prices) it'd be 7 hours * 2.7 * 6p plus 17 hours * 2.7 * 22p (the average of my day rates) it'd cost me £11.23 a day! 3 hours of expensive rate use (3*2.7*0.22) is about £1.80 a day, or £54 a month!

If your immersion provides your hot water and you use a lot of it, invest in a timer..
If you have an electric shower (9.5kw) at 22p/kwh a 15 minute shower costs 50p.. Showering before 6am would see my shower cost drop to about 10p - cost of being a late riser