Advice on electric portable heaters please.

saintjammyswine

I need to buy a portable heater for a small studio flat. It is all electric and has an old storage heater that doesnt work very well and just eats electricity. I want to get a portable heater that I can use around the flat, plug in on a timer for the mornings and be able to put a towel on. Can anyone offer advice on the best type (convection, oil filled etc.). Not surprising as I am on this site, I am looking for a cheap but effective one.
Thanks in advance.

ormus

the ones i like best are the oil filled dimplex type.
beware that all electric heaters eat electricity.

saintjammyswine

Thanks, I know shame it is all electric but the storage heater is about 20 years old & not efficient at all, even compared to a portable we borrowed last year.

macman

All electric heaters are 100% efficient, therefore they are all equally 'effective', and cost the same to run given the same rating. So simply buy the cheapest of the kind you like. Try Aldi/Lidl for cheap ones. An oil filled one is probably best if you want to use it as a towel rail.
But bear in mind that if you have E7, this will be running on peak rate, and so about 3 times more expensive than your storage heater, which runs on cheap rate.

saintjammyswine

macman wrote: »

All electric heaters are 100% efficient, therefore they are all equally 'effective', and cost the same to run given the same rating. So simply buy the cheapest of the kind you like. Try Aldi/Lidl for cheap ones. An oil filled one is probably best if you want to use it as a towel rail.
But bear in mind that if you have E7, this will be running on peak rate, and so about 3 times more expensive than your storage heater, which runs on cheap rate.

Thats the bit I was looking for, thanks. Storage heater not working well as a storage heater, too temperamental but has convection boost which obviously uses much more. Looking for something to replace the convection boost aspect really.

rustyboy21

You won't be able to use any form of convector electric fire , which will be able to dry your towels. The only style you could do that with is possibly oil filled.

You can buy wall mounted convector panel heaters, which don't take up any space and would be a boost to any heat coming out of the storage heater.

pinkteapot

I sympathise - I used to live in a storage heated flat and it just wasn't warm of an evening in winter.

To put a towel on, as others have said, you'll need the oil filled type as you can't cover the top of a convector heater. I used to use an oil-filled one for steady heating and also had a convector one for if I needed a quick blast of heat, as it would heat up quicker!

maninthestreet

I have a small, oil-filled electric radiator, and it's got a label stuck on it that states 'DO NOT COVER'.