would you prefer night storage over electric heaters in a rented property?

Fire_Fox

Depends on who your target tenant is, the size of the rooms, which is going to impinge upon furniture placement, whether you have an E7 meter and are willing to change it.

luvchocolate

from a tenants point of view I moved into a property with storage heaters 4 years ago after always having gas central heating.
They are brilliant I work all day and come home to a warm flat and it does not go cold early evening in fact it never goes cold!!
It costs around £50 per month.
after advice on here the best way to use them I am very happy with them.

Richie-from-the-Boro

luvchocolate wrote: »

from a tenants point of view I moved into a property with storage heaters 4 years ago after always having gas central heating.
They are brilliant I work all day and come home to a warm flat and it does not go cold early evening in fact it never goes cold!!
It costs around £50 per month.
after advice on here the best way to use them I am very happy with them.

Agreed I've had them in 3 or more properties for 3 or more decades. 35 years ranging from old cold to now new build insulation spec dwellings.

Economy 7 heat is not wasted during the day, and storage heaters will not have given up by about 5 pm, that's an urban myth put about the interwibble and copied and pasted millions of times over by people who (1) do not / have never had night store or have had night store which was badly implemented and / or badly user understood. A fallacy. Modern implementation of comfort heating design rather than background heat design output is worlds apart from the old 70's to 90's thinking on needs based design implementation. In addition the heaters themselves are also much more able to reduce heat transfer loss when the damper is in the closed position.

By example #1:

- the night storage i have is OLD
- all the insulation has fallen to bits
- the elements have bent, and knobs have broken off etc
- I absolutely cannot stand the sight of them
- they are ugly things

- so I'm thinking maybe buying some new heaters.... Duoheat
- new nano insulating blanket, a considerable imrovement on 'leaking' heat out
- a dual purpose product, able to store 23.8kWh of cheap heat and a 2000W panel heater
- that stored heat is released at around 0.933kW of heat per hour depending on 'damper' use
- I've never had a damper open in 30 or more years but mine is designed for this dwelling, as it was for the others


Learn how to use them - learn how to improve them.

annoyd

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

Agreed I've had them in 3 or more properties for 3 or more decades. 35 years ranging from old cold to now new build insulation spec dwellings.

Economy 7 heat is not wasted during the day, and storage heaters will not have given up by about 5 pm, that's an urban myth put about the interwibble and copied and pasted millions of times over by people who (1) do not / have never had night store or have had night store which was badly implemented and / or badly user understood. A fallacy. Modern implementation of comfort heating design rather than background heat design output is worlds apart from the old 70's to 90's thinking on needs based design implementation. In addition the heaters themselves are also much more able to reduce heat transfer loss when the damper is in the closed position.

By example #1:

- the night storage i have is OLD
- all the insulation has fallen to bits
- the elements have bent, and knobs have broken off etc
- I absolutely cannot stand the sight of them
- they are ugly things

- so I'm thinking maybe buying some new heaters.... Duoheat
- new nano insulating blanket, a considerable imrovement on 'leaking' heat out
- a dual purpose product, able to store 23.8kWh of cheap heat and a 2000W panel heater
- that stored heat is released at around 0.933kW of heat per hour depending on 'damper' use
- I've never had a damper open in 30 or more years but mine is designed for this dwelling, as it was for the others


Learn how to use them - learn how to improve them.

thanks for your help so far...so what duoheat would you recommend for my lounge, i think the biggest one is DUO500N.. but it says its only 1.4kw.... i dont understand how that works... surely that isnt enough? I cant find any bigger ones though.

Owain_Moneysaver

annoyd wrote: »

thanks for your help so far...so what duoheat would you recommend for my lounge, i think the biggest one is DUO500N.. but it says its only 1.4kw.... i dont understand how that works... surely that isnt enough? I cant find any bigger ones though.

The Duoheat 500 is 2.6kW (storage) / 0.54kW (convector) according to TLC.

Not as much stored heat as a conventional storage heater though

Richie-from-the-Boro

Duoheat, was I assumed from your #1 post what you specifically wanted to compare with. The Duo500n is a 2.6kW storage heater and a 0.54kW panel heater in one. You are correct the Duo500n is the biggest DUO they make and retail.

Work out what the room needs, a room size and lifestyle that needs 3000kW of core rate 26p per kW hour electric panel heaters on for a 7 hour [78p per hour x 7 = £5.46 per night] evening might need only 1000kW of night rate 6p per kW hour heat outputted for 24 hours.

- a 2.6kW holds 18.2kWh so 18.2 ÷ 17 = ± 1.07kW per hour over the 17 hour cycle. NOTE not 1.4 as Dimplex suggest, however the DUO unlike others in its own range let alone other manufacturers has an innovative and much more effective thermal [nano] barrier that reduces heat loss in the 7 or more sleeping hours, leaving more as it were 'in the tank' for use later.

- a 3.4kW [any brand] holds 24kWh so 24 ÷ 17 = ± 1.411kW per hour over the 17 hour cycle. I'm not aware of any other brand and model other than the DUO that uses this expensive [nano] thermal blanket.

There's a thread here where ' michty6 ' just went through the whole series of questions you are struggling with her conclusions .. .. are here.

My living room is about 22m squared, I went with the 3.5 Kw since I think having more cheap heat available for this room is not a bad thing. Also it has 2 external walls.

There is a door at the top of the stairs, so I just ordered a simple 1 Kw panel heater (with timer) for the downstairs landing. We can always set it to heat during the night so that nothing down there freezes. Or if my Mum goes to the shops, she can pop it on before she leaves and turn it off when she gets back...

So I ordered 6 panel heaters (2 bedrooms we use, 2 study/spare rooms, bathroom, downstairs) and 3 storage heaters (living room, hall, kitchen). Total cost £1.2k.

For anyone interested, this site was the cheapest I found for automatic charge storage heaters:
Alert Electrical

Others that weren't too far off:
Tlc Direct
HW Electric

For panel heaters, I went with the hygienesuppliesdirect.com links posted earlier in this thread for the ones with thermostat + timers at a really good price.

We know a local electrician so I am hoping he will know how to install these/take-out the old ones - otherwise I have asked for a few quotes from people I found on the web. Hopefully get this up and running not too long after the 20th when Hydro changes us over to E7!

Update! Thought I'd update this since sometimes people might not know how these things end.

The storage heaters were installed before Xmas. Since then my Mum informs me that the house is nice and toasty with no issues at all. Our first meter readings came in and we are using 80% of our electricity overnight so have drastically cut our bills after switching to a proper E7 meter. The new storage heaters are also very easy to manage - if my Mum can do it anyone can! You don't even need to remember to lower the output before you go to bed as the automatic charge control does this for you - just set the input for what you want for the next day and you're sorted!

Furthermore, looking on-line I found there are a bunch of companies that not only have cheap overnight rates but the day rates are very comparable to what you'd get on a day-only plan.

So great success, thanks to everyone for all the help!

annoyd

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

Duoheat, was I assumed from your #1 post what you specifically wanted to compare with. The Duo500n is a 2.6kW storage heater and a 0.54kW panel heater in one. You are correct the Duo500n is the biggest DUO they make and retail.

Work out what the room needs, a room size and lifestyle that needs 3000kW of core rate 26p per kW hour electric panel heaters on for a 7 hour [78p per hour x 7 = £5.46 per night] evening might need only 1000kW of night rate 6p per kW hour heat outputted for 24 hours.

- a 2.6kW holds 18.2kWh so 18.2 ÷ 17 = ± 1.07kW per hour over the 17 hour cycle. NOTE not 1.4 as Dimplex suggest, however the DUO unlike others in its own range let alone other manufacturers has an innovative and much more effective thermal [nano] barrier that reduces heat loss in the 7 or more sleeping hours, leaving more as it were 'in the tank' for use later.

- a 3.4kW [any brand] holds 24kWh so 24 ÷ 17 = ± 1.411kW per hour over the 17 hour cycle. I'm not aware of any other brand and model other than the DUO that uses this expensive [nano] thermal blanket.

There's a thread here where ' michty6 ' just went through the whole series of questions you are struggling with her conclusions .. .. are here.

so the figures of 1.07kw over a 17hour cycle.... could that be changed, so it lets out around .5kw for so many hours and then 1.5kw for others etc? or is 1.07kw the ballfigure it would release per hour. If it was just a constant release at 1kw an hour, then i dont think the duoheat would be the best choice. But if it can be changed around and altered using the controls then i think it might just do the job. might buy a thermometer and see how cold the room/house gets is... its been minus 3 today outside, house was unnocupied after midday today. I went there at 6 tonight (bear in mind theres no heating what so ever at the moment)and i wasnt cold in a t shirt.. i wouldnt have needed a heater on if i lived there at that point of time. Was just a normal temperature