alternatives to expensive night storage heaters and immersion water tank?

pokadot

Hi- i am new to this forum...

We have just moved into a bungalow with night storage heaters and an inmersion heater for the hot water and are on economy 7 as there is no gas in the village. our old house used to have mains gas and we paied £65 a month for all our gas and electric, now we are paying £150 a month- and i am desperately looking for a cheaper option, i am looking at electric panel radiators, or possibly oil-fired central heating but not sure of the cost of installing this. are there any other options?i am desperate to get off economy 7 as i have to do all my washing at night which wakes up the baby with the machine going and am reluctant to use electric for cooking etc in the day as its about 30% more expensive than a standard electric tariff! can anyone give me some good advice on what route to go down? thankyou, pokadot:)

macman

Welcome to the forum. Your DD may be set at £150pm, but are you actually using £150 in kWh each month? That cost is not unusual for all-electric heating, but remember that your usage will plummet once the heating goes off in spring. Panel heaters will cost you even more, as they run off standard rate electricity at about 12.5p per unit.
In the absence of mains gas, your options are oil CH, LPG CH, or biomass. You'd need a proper site survey to assess the practicality and cost of each system.
Most of your electricity cost is heating and hot water, not washing and cooking.
Start logging your actual kWH consumption on each E7 tier.

HappyMJ

Only gas is cheaper than electric night storage heating. Are you on the right tariff? Have you compared suppliers to find the cheapest supplier for your usage. If the machine wakes the baby then don't do it. It doesn't save a huge amount at about 10p per use.

macman

Oil CH is about 6p per kWh. However the investment would take years to recover.
OTOH it should increase the value of the property somewhat-though not as much as mains gas CH.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

Firstly if you use a comparison website, you will find tariffs where the premium for daytime electricity on Economy 7 is much lower than 30%. You don't say where you live, but Scottish Power are particularly attractive for E7 in most districts.

Storage heating and use of an immersion heater are still the cheapest way to heat the house and provide Hot Water if you don't have gas.

Electric panel heating might make sense for a small property when you are out at work all day, but with a baby I suspect that isn't the case.

Oil CH will cost several thousand pounds to install, and there are annual servicing costs. Even with an efficient new boiler the heating and hot water costs are around 6p to 7p per kWh, which is more expensive than off-peak electricity.

If noise at night from the washing machine is a problem, then don't use it as the savings are tiny. Most people greatly over estimate the cost of a washing machine cycle. With the lower water temperatures needed these days a typical wash on a reasonably modern machine is 0.4kWh or 0.6kWh - so say 5p to 7p during the day. If you halve that cost using it at night, the savings do not justify waking the baby.

pokadot

thanks guys for your quick responses, it seems the storage heaters suck up 28Kwh of energy at around 7p perkwh is about £1.20 each perday and it seems we are using about 50p a day on the immersion heater, do you think i could change my tarfiff to a stdard electric tarfiff during spring- autumn at 12.5p per kwh instead of 18p per kwh during the day and 7p per kwh at night on economy 7? then switch it back when it gets colder to the economy 7 tariff to use the night storage heaters? i have a leaflet here on south west heating solutions (as we are in cornwall) they are saying that the electric german storage heaters the provide only use 7 mins of electric every hours (and u can switch them on and off when you want) so for 8 hours of heating = 2 hours and 16 mins of power at 12 p per kwh = 55p or 7p her hour or £3.85 a week- not that we would use this much heating but gives a good idea- does this sound like a cheaper alternative?

pokadot

sorry i meant 17 mins of electric every hr on the german electric heaters

HappyMJ

How much? 18p and 7p is a terrible rate. You should be paying around 15p and 5p. The immersion also uses quite a lot at 50p per night. Are you using all the hot water that is in the cylinder every day?

You could switch to a standard tariff during the summer but most good tariffs have a 12 month fixed term so you wouldn't save much.

The german heaters are a con....you would get the same performance out of a convector or an oil filled radiator. They use very creative maths to prove they only run for 17 minutes every hour. To get to the 17 minutes per hour you must keep them on 24/7. The room must be extremely well insulated and all doors and curtains must be closed all the time.

pokadot

ok thankyou thats great- i will look for a cheaper rate on economy 7 i think and just stick with these ugly night storage heaters for the time being!

pokadot

just out of interest- what do people think about economy 10 and can i use night storage heaters with that?

macman

Which reminds me-have you got decent insulation? Cavity walls, loft, double glazing. Sort that out before you start investing in expensive new systems.
Since you have only just moved in, it's impossible to accurately assess your usage yet. As I pointed out before, your average may be a lot less than £150pm, but until you've got some seasonal kWh figures, it's not possible to say. Though of course you must expect to pay much more for all electric heating than gas CH-surely you were aware of that when you took on the property?
In the meantime, make sure that your DD matches your predicted annual consumption divided by 12.
All electric heaters have the same efficiency (100%) and cost the same to run for the same rated output. Don't be fooled by the smoke and mirrors advertising.
You could only do the E7/standard shuffle subject to minimum terms tariffs, and assuming that your supplier will accept readings from an E7 meter on a single rate tariff. Otherwise you'd have to pay for a meter change every 6 months!