Economy Radiators. Advice Please!!

The_Bridge

Hi,

My flat doesn’t have gas and I am looking into buying electric radiators. Specifically I was looking to purchase from The Economy Radiator Company but I have found mixed, mostly negative reviews. I am quite confused now as last winter I was very cold, and my current panel heaters I have don’t heat my [1 bedroom] flat very well.

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.... As I don’t have gas what are the alternatives?!

Thanks in advance.

penrhyn

The reason your panel radiators are not warming you property is down to their wattage or lack of it. All electric heaters are 100% efficient.
You could look at insulation, or a higher capacity radiator, but go to a recognised manufacturer like Dimplex. To reduce the costs of heating you might want to look at up to date storage heaters.

Have a look at the Rointe thread, to get more info about 'miracle' electric radiators.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2148437

PS Cardew will be along momentarily!

Richie-from-the-Boro

HiYa The Bridge,

- on the top right hand side of the page is a search button called 'search this forum'
- put into the search box one single little word, that word is > snake < and hit the return button
- read the threads that search brings up
- then come back here and ask your questions

The_Bridge

Thanks guys, I'll try that now....

chris1973

No electric heater is better at producing heat than any other, so in other words if you have a 2000 watt heater, then you will get 2000 watts of heat out of it, whether it cost £9 to buy or £1500!

The only difference is the design and cosmetically how they look. Of course a fan heater will warm a certain area more quickly than a convector heater, but the end result will be the same amount of heat entering the room from the heater itself.

The only heaters which output more energy then they input from the mains, are Ground and Air Source heat pumps, and then only if the environment in which they are installed, meets their design spec

If you existing heating is not warming the room, then its a matter of simple science, the room is losing more heat than you are putting into it with the current heater. This means, either increasing the size of heater (KW rating) or bettering the insulation in the room / building so that the energy and heat loss is less than it is currently.

Certainly it would be better to try bettering the insulation first, as upping the heater size and consumption will cost you more in energy, however you can buy a lot of Electricity for the cost of just one miracle radiator!.

Unfortunately Electricity remains one of the most expensive forms of heating, and this is because Electricity in the UK is largely still produced by burning gas, oil or coal and these fuels are also increasing in price all of the time too, so there are two suppliers in the equation in the production of electricity.

If Gas isn't an option, and you intend to live in the property for a while then you might want to consider Economy 7 Storage heaters, these run on cheap rate Electricity during the night, and store the heat ready to be output into the room during the day, although not perfect, they generally cost around 2 to 3 times less to run than using space heaters at normal electricity rates.

I live in an Electrically heated flat, and yes its very expensive, even with storage heaters, however it could be even more expensive if I was getting the same level of heat from standard electricity, as you are doing.

I also invested in one of these, followed by a second one later in the year.

http://www.charliesdirect.co.uk/products/inverter-3016-portable-paraffin-heater-3kw

I run it on Kerosene bought from a friend with oil fired central heating, and bought at 52p - 56p per litre and being almost 100% efficient, it costs me around 5.2p - 5.6p per KW to run, compared to 18p on my current E7 daytime electricity rate

My electricity usage has now dropped so dramatically since using these as a primary source of heating that Npower have been and checked the meter. Sucks to be them.

The biggest advantage of these heaters is that they can be used 'on demand' unlike E7 storage heaters where you have to predict a cold day in order to switch them on the previous night, and if it turns out to be a warm day after all, then you end up wasting the electricity, a seasonable nightmare in our unpredictable springs and autumns!.