Economy 7 help :(

macman

Improve your insulation?

rogerblack

esmecullen wrote: »

Sorry to hijack the thread.............. but I have night storage heaters wired to E7 and keep the vent shut for charging overnight...............I find by 6p.m there is little or no heat coming from them when I most need it......... the evening.

If you keep the vents closed, is there heat in the evening when you open them?

If so - the solution is rather simple - get more storage heaters, as you don't have enough storage.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-Used-Night-Storage-Heaters-Dimplex-Unidare-/130797512655?pt=UK_Home_Garden_Hearing_Cooling_Air&hash=item1e7423a7cf (for example), plus an electrician willing to wire them.

(The above is simply an example, I have no recommendation of that seller).
The bricks can be easily removed for transport.
Don't buy ones older than 1975!
http://www.storageheaters.com/storage-heaters-asbestos.htm
The above site is useful, but IGNORE the large banner ad for expensive peak-time heaters.

Richie-from-the-Boro

esmecullen wrote: »

Sorry to hijack the thread.............. but I have night storage heaters wired to E7 and keep the vent shut for charging overnight...............I find by 6p.m there is little or no heat coming from them when I most need it......... the evening.

We dont have gas mains where I live and putting in an alternative heating system (such as oil fired or a complete calor gas system) is not an option.............. nowhere to install it, hence the electric storage heaters, apparently the property is insulated and double glazing............. but the place is absolutely freezing of a night during the winter (all windows are shut, except for the vents). I do have a medium size calor fire, but even that is expensive buying the bottles

Is there anything I can do to keep the place warm of a winter........... I dont want to go through another bad winter like 2010

Thanks

Your answer is to read #7 again - your starting point is you have insufficient storage

- you can put in more storage capacity now, and better insulate later
- you can better insulate now, and manage with your current storage capacity
- age, size [kWh] and location of your storage radiators please ?
- bedrooms & small rooms can and should be taken care of with any £20 ALDi [direct] convector / panel

NOTE : A Calor gas heater will put 5 litres of water / damp into your home for every 1 kg of gas you burn.

esmecullen

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

Your answer is to read #7 again - your starting point is you have insufficient storage

- you can put in more storage capacity now, and better insulate later
- you can better insulate now, and manage with your current storage capacity
- age, size [kWh] and location of your storage radiators please ?
- bedrooms & small rooms can and should be taken care of with any £20 ALDi [direct] convector / panel

NOTE : A Calor gas heater will put 5 litres of water / damp into your home for every 1 kg of gas you burn.

thanks Richie

........hmmmmm not sure of the kWh of the heaters (will check and see if I can find out) but I have one in the living room, one in the hall and one in the bedroom, they're about 3yrs old.

Of a night the controls are set correctly, vents shut etc.......... but its when it gets to 6 - 7p.m there is little or no heat coming from them, they are luke warm:( and I have to put on the calor gas fire

The property is not that old........... approx 20yrs and I was told that the walls have cavity wall insulation......... no loft as I'm in a ground floor apartment, have double glazed windows, heavy curtains and draft proofing around the doors.......... just cannot understand why the place is cold of an evening!!

Because there is no gas mains where I live, the only alternative is oil heating or calor gas. The apartment is completely electric, hence E7 for electricity........... it was awful in that winter of 2010 as we had to contend with a 4-day power cut too and low temps of well below freezing (I know that is not relevant, but background)


Cant afford to replace the heaters again nor put anymore in:(

Wywth

Sooby-Lou wrote: »

This is a bit complicated, bear with me

My Mum is elderly and living in a 2 bedroom bungalow. She has no central heating and the bungalow is VERY cold, it's poorly insulated with no cavity wall insulation and no damp course so is very damp, moldy and chilly. She has 3 storage heaters, and plug-in electric heaters in the other rooms. She has two metres, the storage heaters are tied directly into an Economy 7 meter, but ONLY the heaters are on it, she doesn't get anything else cheaper at night as far as we can tell. Certainly not the hot water, she has an immersion heater which she puts on for about an hour each day.

The problem is that the Economy 7 tariff makes using the plug-in electric radiators particularly expensive Also the storage heaters come on (start storing) at 2am, totally out of whack with the typical Economy 7 tariff hours/times, which is mystifying us. They don't have timers on them that can be changed. She pays around £60 per week for her electricity, which is really far too much for a pensioner What's worse is that the house is still freezing cold even with all that! I have no idea what she can do to make this any cheaper, and Swalec (her supplier) have been absolutely no help whatsoever, they say they cannot explain why her bills are so high or suggest any way for her to reduce them. (In fact quite honestly they seem completely disinterested and couldn't answer even basic questions about her set-up.)

Any advice here would be very gratefuly received. Really she needs central heating putting in I think but we can't afford it

Hmmm... your numbers don't make any sense to me.

You say she paays £60 per week?
Lets assume a generous £10 per week excluding heating so that would leave £50 a week on heating

Lets assume 5p per unit at low rate, so that's 1000kWh per week on heating, or over 20 kWh per hour for each E7 hour.
Thta's a lot of heat!

How many storage heaters does she have? 6 or more? That's waht she would need to consumne that amount of electricity

A typical 2 bed bungalow would only normally have about 3 storage heaters, so I don't think it's the storage heaters that is consuming the £60 pw

Wywth

esmecullen wrote: »

Cant afford to replace the heaters again nor put anymore in:(

New storage heaters cost from about £180 (or 3 weeks electricity your mother is consuming somewhere)

Richie-from-the-Boro

esmecullen wrote: »

thanks Richie

........hmmmmm not sure of the kWh of the heaters (will check and see if I can find out) but I have one in the living room, one in the hall and one in the bedroom, they're about 3yrs old.(

- use a guess, just measure the width there's about 20+cm between each of the 3 different kWh sizes

Big 'n 3.4 give or take 100cm wide
Middle 2.5 give or take 75cm wide
Small 1.7 give or take 55cm wide

The living room should be the 3.4kWh, any less means the pratt designing the system didn't do the job right before the install stage. The bedroom one is not necessary and whilst it is not ruled out for bedrooms is not recommended, a panel type wall heater with thermostat and time switch is all that's required and there's an infinite collection of those available ranging from a more than adequate £20 ALDi to a £1200 snake~oil version. All storage heaters should be installed on internal walls only, never external, and storage radiators should never have been installed in a home with a chimney, if you have a chimney get it 'blocked' properly .. .. a very high % per hour of the heat you pay for is literally [24 hours per day every day] going~up~it.

This means that the 1.7kWh one is the bedroom could easily be relocated [in the absence of money to do otherwise] in the living room as a second form of storage. The now heatless bedroom could be dealt with by a ALDi / LiDL £20 special. The fact of the matter is you can still buy second use 3.4 radiators for a tenner or less, here are 3 of them for 99p each :

- they're always so glad to be rid [weight] they pay you to take them away
- just set your search to 'nearest first' and collect only and you'll get them for nowt even at this time of the year

Your floor plan probably means your bedroom one could be relocated to your living room very easily cabling through the partition wall [2cm drilled hole only will do it] or leave the bedroom one alone and buy a second use one as above and put that in the living room. There are many options to avoid being cold.