alternatives to expensive night storage heaters and immersion water tank?

HappyMJ

pokadot wrote: »

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

E10 is more expensive. I have not seen a usage profile where anyone would save using that tariff. There is much more competition with standard and E7 rates. If you pick E10 there are only a few suppliers that support it and they do not compete on price.

pokadot

yes thankyou- i have a smart meter thingy from brish gas which shows me what im using, since turning the storage heaters off its about £2- 2.50 a day, i think i need to change the immersion heater to come on less but not sure how to do this- its a newlec one and yes its cavity wall and lots of insulation in the loft but we could do with new upvc as some windows are aluminium. i will contact brish gas to see f i can switch to stadard electric in summer then back again in winter or look for a cheaper supplier!

macman

Your immersion should have a simple timer or E7 controller, if not they are cheap and easily fitted. It should only need to be on for a couple of hours on the cheap rate, if you boost it during the day then that will cost you. Is the tank properly lagged? If so it should keep warm all day.
The seasonal tariff switch is not really viable for the reasons outlined above. It has been thought of before...
What E7 tariff are you on? If standard, that is the most expensive.

pokadot

yes i am on a standard e7 tariff! oh dear:(

macman

That rate is horrendous. SP E7 (Online Fixed Price Energy July 2013) in your region is probably the cheapest, that is 11.8p day, 6.2p night. If you do nothing else, get on the comp sites and switch!
And one of these will sort the immersion out:
http://www.gil-lec.co.uk/products/Heating/Controllers/Timers/Immersion+Heater+Timers/Economy+7+Immersion+Heater+Timer+-+Digital/3175786601

pokadot

thankyou so much- i am going to switch right now- any ideas on the best website to switch to get cash back/ best deal for switching?

macman

Use a comp site to find the best tariff, then switch via a cashback site. Quidco, topcashback etc.

Mister_G

pokadot wrote: »

thankyou so much- i am going to switch right now- any ideas on the best website to switch to get cash back/ best deal for switching?

Hi

I've just done it using the Energyhelpline recommended by MSE. My best deal (in the South of England) for about 9000kWh was OVO. Saved about £100 on my £1000 annual bill. And you get a £15 cashback as well.

Hope this helps.

Cardew

pokadot wrote: »

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?

As said above - that is a very poor rate.

The German heaters are just a con - a joke! They provide no more heat for the same running cost than a £10 heater from Argos - loads of threads about these merchants.

melanie_king

Hi
We had some of these German radiators fitted as we decided to get away from oil fired central heating due to the number of thefts of oil from storage tanks around here in Cornwall and also I couldn't stand the smell after living in a house with mains gas ch for 20 years.
We now intend to remove the last of the wet radiators and finish off the house with the electric ones. (We're keeping the boiler for our hot water.) What impressed us the most is that the firm who fitted them calculated the house insulation (uValue) and then were able to make what's turned out to be a pretty accurate energy usage estimate.
They told us is that energy usage is highly dependant on the insulation level and, as our insulation is really good (cavity wall, new d.g. loft insulation, etc.) our running costs would be about the same as oil central heating but without the maintenance issues, and that's turned out to be right, but I think that's also down to the fact we are able to set temperatures for different rooms at different times much more easily than we can with the central heating.
As the previous poster said they may give out no more heat in total than a cheap Argos heater, but they certainly are far more able to spread the heat evenly through the rooms and its a really comfortable heat as well.
I don't know anyone that heats their home with £10 Argos heaters myself; so it's obviously a completely stupid comment in my opinion.
As for E7, Our first house had night storage heating and it was just horrible. At 6am my bedroom was boiling hot but by 6pm, the radiators were stone cold.
The couple in the house next door have brand new e7 rads and they say they are worse than the old ones they've just had removed, so I'd definitely be open minded about alternatives.