storage heaters/electric central heating or gas?

baistow

Hi,

i have ploughed my way through many of the posts but still feel a little confused. Here is my dilemma: We have a holiday midterrace 2 bedroom house, we recently insulated the loft. The storage heaters where more than 20years old, some not working, we took out the electric 7 meater and put in an ordinary meter as it has taken us some 2 years to renovate the house therefore not staying there at all and the electric 7 had a monthly rate wether we used any units or not.

There is no mains gas anywhere in the village, no garden for oil central heating, we have installed a woodburner for when we are there. Do we replace the electric with more storage heaters and return to electric 7 or just wall panel radiators?

Any thoughts would be appreciated, we have a seperate water cylinder, Ariston Classico 125 Litre Direct Cylinder STD125.

Cheers liz

Katie-Kat-Kins

You can get E7 without a monthly standing charge just like you can with flat rate tariffs. Just shop around with your electric supplier.

However if you have your wood burner you may be as well to use ordinary portable electric heaters as and when you need them.

baistow

I didnt realise you could have the e7 without paying a monthly fee, i know not all suppliers will work with it! We thought the storage heaters to supply background heat when we are not there, but we could put thermostats on the panel heaters, i suppose its six and 2 three's!

Katie-Kat-Kins

I think if I were you for background heat when you aren't there I'd stick with a flat rate tarriff and get a portable electric heater fitted with a thermostat and timer and use that (or several) you can leave the thermostat low, and use the timer when you are there but out for the day and want it to be warm when you get in.

Storage heaters aren't that good for setting them and leaving them, they really need you there to change the controls. You would end up heating the house even on a warm day with a storage heater. A thermostat on a small electric panel heater or similar would probably use less power overall.

baistow

Thats what we thought, i have had storage heaters in the past, not good, warm house during the day and need to go to bed by 9pm because its cold, he he,

Thanks for your advice, much appreciated:T

Pincher

Not too sure what you mean by background heat.

Assuming you want to prevent burst pipes in freezing conditions,
you can get tubular heaters with frost stats, but they don't look good, and is meant to be out of sight use, e.g. for keeping loft tank warm.

This is probably more presentable:

http://www.wydels.co.uk/product.asp?typeID=48&subID=192&prodID=1881

baistow

Just like you say, prevent frozen pipes and keep that musty smell at bay, the woodburner is grand when we are there, keeps us toasty.

Cheers:money:

cusally

crikey, this must be one of the longest threads - both in time span and number of postings. I just waded through all of it in my search for advice on this topic. We are off grid and have oil central heating, but it's old and keeps going wrong and the price of oil keeps going up - now at 70 pence per litre. Annoyingly, it is hard to work out comparable costs as usage varies so much across the year, and we end up ordering the min oil order every few months, not ever knowing when it will run low !
Anyway, hubby was suggesting that we should get rid of it and have storage heaters instead, I just wanted to say thanks for all the advice on here because it sounds like storage heaters are not a good option ..... I'll get him to read it all too

kezz2k2

Hiya,

I am purchasing a house in a village without gas and have been reading this thread with much interest. As there seem to be quite a few knowledgeable people contributing to this thread I thought it would be a good place to ask for some help.

The house I am buying is a 3 bedroom terraced house built in the mid to late 80s. It is fully double glazed. The bottom floor consists of the garage, a utility room and the stairs to the first floor. The garage is self-contained with an inner door in the hallway. The first floor is an open plan kitchen/lounge of approx 5.2 x 7.2m. The 3rd floor has 3 bedrooms and a bathroom with a hatch to the very small loft. The 2 staircases (1 near front door, 1 in lounge) are open plan and this is where I could do with some advice.
The house is fitted with electric room heaters (convection).

Does anybody know how the open plan layout will affect heater size? How do I work out what heater sizes should be sufficient to heat the house.

My partner and I mostly work days and are only home in the evening and at weekends. This would mean that the current convector heaters would be on for an hour in the morning and 5 hours at night. Even doing the maths at 6 hours per day this runs up quite a bill for the heaters alone. I understand that the thermostats would ensure that they don't run constantly but whats the best way to estimate the amount of heating required? I guess this will be a function of the amount of heat lost through walls/roof/windows.

After reading this thread I understand that all electric heaters (except ASHPs) provide the same output for the same input therefore the current heaters wouldn't need replacing (if correctly specced) if I stayed with "on-demand" heating however I am thinking of installing fan assisted storage heaters which I believe would charge up overnight on the cheaper tariff and then could be programmed to come on in the evening to release the stored heat when we're at home. They are pretty expensive tho so I want to make sure I understand the maths before committing to any outlay. I was thinking of installing 1 heater in the bottom hallway and another in the lounge. Bedrooms could then remain with the existing convectors to top up as required.

What size heaters and how many do I need? Is there any guidance available that would allow me to work this out?

Thanks in advance

kezz2k2

Cardew

kezz2k2 wrote: »

Hiya,

I am purchasing a house in a village without gas and have been reading this thread with much interest. As there seem to be quite a few knowledgeable people contributing to this thread I thought it would be a good place to ask for some help.

The house I am buying is a 3 bedroom terraced house built in the mid to late 80s. It is fully double glazed. The bottom floor consists of the garage, a utility room and the stairs to the first floor. The garage is self-contained with an inner door in the hallway. The first floor is an open plan kitchen/lounge of approx 5.2 x 7.2m. The 3rd floor has 3 bedrooms and a bathroom with a hatch to the very small loft. The 2 staircases (1 near front door, 1 in lounge) are open plan and this is where I could do with some advice.
The house is fitted with electric room heaters (convection).

Does anybody know how the open plan layout will affect heater size? How do I work out what heater sizes should be sufficient to heat the house.

My partner and I mostly work days and are only home in the evening and at weekends. This would mean that the current convector heaters would be on for an hour in the morning and 5 hours at night. Even doing the maths at 6 hours per day this runs up quite a bill for the heaters alone. I understand that the thermostats would ensure that they don't run constantly but whats the best way to estimate the amount of heating required? I guess this will be a function of the amount of heat lost through walls/roof/windows.

After reading this thread I understand that all electric heaters (except ASHPs) provide the same output for the same input therefore the current heaters wouldn't need replacing (if correctly specced) if I stayed with "on-demand" heating however I am thinking of installing fan assisted storage heaters which I believe would charge up overnight on the cheaper tariff and then could be programmed to come on in the evening to release the stored heat when we're at home. They are pretty expensive tho so I want to make sure I understand the maths before committing to any outlay. I was thinking of installing 1 heater in the bottom hallway and another in the lounge. Bedrooms could then remain with the existing convectors to top up as required.

What size heaters and how many do I need? Is there any guidance available that would allow me to work this out?

Thanks in advance

kezz2k2

The heaters you refer to are called storage heaters.

You are correct that they store heat produced from cheap rate electricity at night on a tariff called Economy 7.(E7) There are other variations but that is the most common - 7 hours of cheap electricity somewhere in the 9 hours from 11:30pm to 8:30am.

However you need to be aware that if you get E7 or any of the variations you pay a premium on your daytime electricity(the other 17 hours).

As you intend to use other heaters, it may well be that your savings on cheap rate are are cancelled out by the extra you pay during the other 17 hours.

Also the storage heaters do tend to 'leak' heat during the day, even if the output turned to minimum, and run out in the evening. Obviously for a working couple this is not ideal as you can't take advantage of the heat produced during the day.

There are mixed opinions on storage heaters, and it is fair to say that many people hate them. Not least because you have to forecast the next day's heating requirement

Others find they make financial sense as you can heat water up overnight using the immersion heater and put appliances on timers to make maximum use of cheap rate.

Incidentally if you go down the storage route, it is imperative that you look at proper Storage Heaters(basically they are a pile of bricks with heating elements) and not some of these hugely expensive electrically heated radiators that purport to 'store' electricity because they are filled with a magic gel/clay etc.

Nobody here can forecast the heating load for your house as it depends on size and insulation properties. However that is not so important with electrical heating as if your heater output is more than required, you can simply turn down the output by setting the thermostat lower.