storage heaters/electric central heating or gas?

prunus

My wife and I live in a detached 3 bed bungalow with lounge, dining room, kitchen, and bath. We are all electric and have seven storage radiators for all our heating. We would take a deal of persuading to change to anything but a heat pump system.

We are both retired and love having the house warm 24 hours a day, which it is. We watch the weather forecasts and adjust the intake of the rads accordingly. We air the house every day, except in the worst of weather like last winter, but are not stupid about leaving doors and windows open unnecessarily. We didn't need to have any supplementary heating to the rads in the living rooms last winter because we sized the room rads properly to start with.

I changed elec suppliers a few months ago so can't give exact figures for heating costs but, before then, they worked out roughly at up to £900 pa. Remember, the elec bill and the water bill are the only ones we get.

I've been prompted to post this because the rad in the small bedroom has suddenly gone faulty. This is the first real fault we've had in the twenty odd years we've been relying on storage radiators. I don't suppose that many other heating systems offer that low a level of maintenance and repair costs!

prunus

Don't suppose anyone is reading this thread now but I want to tell you why my storage radiator failed. It was just that some insect managed, somehow, to get into the inside of the radiator where it shorted the wires.

A simple rewiring job fixed matters.

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