storage heaters/electric central heating or gas?

vic86

Hi,

I have been doing some research and stumbled across this forum & was hoping for some help and advice please.
I have just purchased a 3 bed semi which has only storage heaters and an old style immersion bolier in.
I want to replace these heaters as we will be out all day at work and my understanding of them is they will be cold in the evenings when we need them- not to mention they look awful huge bulky things.
We haven't moved into the property yet and wanted to get these changed whilst we are decrating ready to move in so I have no idea of running costs as yet.
The house has loft & wall cavity/insullation and currently 6 storage heaters (3 up, 3 down)
I have seen the water filled radiators online which seem the best option to me but as Im a first time buyer this is all new to me!!
Any advice will be great!!

Cardew

vic86 wrote: »

Hi,

I have been doing some research and stumbled across this forum & was hoping for some help and advice please.
I have just purchased a 3 bed semi which has only storage heaters and an old style immersion bolier in.
I want to replace these heaters as we will be out all day at work and my understanding of them is they will be cold in the evenings when we need them- not to mention they look awful huge bulky things.
We haven't moved into the property yet and wanted to get these changed whilst we are decrating ready to move in so I have no idea of running costs as yet.
The house has loft & wall cavity/insullation and currently 6 storage heaters (3 up, 3 down)
I have seen the water filled radiators online which seem the best option to me but as Im a first time buyer this is all new to me!!
Any advice will be great!!

Welcome to the forum.

There are hundreds of posts on the merits/demerits of storage heaters in this section which you need to read.

If you decide to remove storage heaters, there is one important fact you need to appreciate:

All forms of electrical heating is expensive, but they all produce exactly the same amount of heat for the same running cost. So don't believe any advertising blurb that implies a heater filled with
????? will give out more heat - it won't.

A £10 oil filled radiator from Argos will produce exactly the same heat, for the same running cost, as some of these hyped up systems where radiators cost several hundred pounds.

vic86

Hi thanks for your quick response.
I had thought of oil heating but have been told the cost of oil in todays market is through the roof se not really an option for us.

Unfortunatley gas central heating is not an option for us as we have bought in a rural village in Wales and the nearest gas line is miles away!!!
Do you think it best then to replace with newer more efficient storage heaters that wont leak heat during the day when we are not in? Also we are going to put a electric fire in theliving room for some extra heat, I just really dont want to be sat in a freezing house come winter

Swipe

I'd see how you get on with the existing storage heaters first. No point in spending £300+ per heater if not necessary. Or just replace a couple in the most used rooms.

HappyMJ

vic86 wrote: »

Hi thanks for your quick response.
I had thought of oil heating but have been told the cost of oil in todays market is through the roof se not really an option for us.

Unfortunatley gas central heating is not an option for us as we have bought in a rural village in Wales and the nearest gas line is miles away!!!
Do you think it best then to replace with newer more efficient storage heaters that wont leak heat during the day when we are not in? Also we are going to put a electric fire in theliving room for some extra heat, I just really dont want to be sat in a freezing house come winter

I think you'll find that they are already 100% efficient. It's OK to leak a little heat during the day. You do in the middle of winter need some small amount of background heat to prevent the water pipes from freezing up and the amount of heat leaked is enough to prevent that.

The best way to save money is to pick a really good electricity tariff. Compare and switch.

Roger_Rampant

Pincher wrote: »

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

Can you give us another link please, as that one now seems to be obsolete...

jonathankaye

I am reading posts with some interest, I have been a heating engineer for all my working years and have designed heating systems for large commercial and industrial projects as well as domestic homes, additionally I am aware of some of the products being talked about.

Here goes.

Night storage heaters (Economy7) are (in my opinion) a disgrace, they are being banned completely in Germany from January 1st 2012 and should be banned in the UK. Also remember that if you are on an E7 tariff your daytime cost per unit (kw/hr) will be at least 30% more than your centrally heated next door neighbour. Night storage heaters manufactured BEFORE 1973 were actually far better as heaters because they utilized mechanical not electric damping. Mechanical damping uses ASBESTOS to hold unwanted daytime heat effectively inside the appliance until it is required. The dust may have killed you but you died warm! When asbestos was banned the manufacturers came up with ridiculous electric damping (controlled by the output dial) which unfortunately doesn't work as the thin aluminium metal plate it moves across the bricks using a bi-metallic strip, has no insulation properties.
N.B. No-one should remove older night storage heaters without checking first they contain no asbestos OR silicates. Each heater has a code number which should be checked with the manufacturer, if in doubt get a specialist to remove them!
Rointe (or Elnur) rads are, I believe, manufactured in Spain, as far as I know, they are oil filled. RESPONSIBLE suppliers make no ridiculous running cost claims for Elnur which appear to be virtually the same as Rointe. I think potential purchasers should check out the recent ASA report on the Rointe claims before committing and/or google Elnur for alternative prices.
I'm afraid posters such as Cardew are making the mistake of confusing appliance efficiency with effectiveness they are very different things. Just popping into your local Comet and check out the stickers on the white goods. Would you buy an E when you can buy an A?
As far as electric heating is concerned, like all electrical appliances they are ALL 100% efficient - this means they convert ALL electrical energy into heat energy, there is NO waste. So, on the face of it a £50 budget oil filled radiator is just as good at heating your cold room as a £1,000 ceramic filled radiator and will cost exactly the same to run. It would be great if this was true, I'd have retired a millionaire at 30 having destroyed the worldwide central heating market-place overnight!

The effectiveness of any radiator depends on surface area and convection capability. For example, 30 years ago central heating radiators were invariably pretty much flat panels, today they are deeper (80mm) and contain fluting at the back. The fluting increases convection and the surface area of the radiator which makes them more effective than the older panel style rads. of the past. To give another example, if we took 3 identical unheated rooms and placed a 2 kilowatt steam iron in one, a 2 kilowatt oil filled radiator, with greater surface area in the second and a 2 kilowatt German radiator in the third with a nominal surface area of say 60mm and an actual surface area of 3000mm (because of their double flute system), all 3 appliances (a steam iron is a 100% efficient heater!) would consume EXACTLY the same amount of energy and all 3 would heat the 3 rooms, but I can assure everyone the temperature in the first room would be far, far, lower than in the second room and the temperature in the third room would be far greater than the second room.
3 years ago I was asked to design a new heating system for our Edwardian, stone built, village hall. It was running 28.8 kw/hr of night storage and it was still freezing cold in there by around 5 pm on winters' nights, making it impossible to hire out. I looked at 2 or 3 alternatives and finally recommended the German rads. The calcs. for the German rads. came out at just 8kw/hr and so we fitted four 2kw/hr for the main hall and a 1.5 kw/hr for the hallway. I also recommended a PIR sensor which is a great idea for a village hall! Interestingly, because these rads are connected to a room thermostat, they are actually downloading energy for an average of 4 hours a day over the year with the PIR turned OFF. The E7 tariff was, at that time 4.9p per unit and the replacement tariff was 8.7p per unit so the savings in heat energy were significant.
In conclusion I would have little problem recommending the German storage rads as a primary heating system provided your property is not connected to gas mains. At the current time gas piped gas central heating is the cheapest option for virtually all current homes but with the way gas prices are racing ahead, this might not be the case in the future, plus there are maintenance/boiler replacement costs to factor in too.

Hope this helps!

Cardew

jonathankaye wrote: »

I am reading posts with some interest, I have been a heating engineer for all my working years and have designed heating systems for large commercial and industrial projects as well as domestic homes, additionally I am aware of some of the products being talked about.


Rointe (or Elnur) rads are, I believe, manufactured in Spain, as far as I know, they are oil filled. RESPONSIBLE suppliers make no ridiculous running cost claims for Elnur which appear to be virtually the same as Rointe. I think potential purchasers should check out the recent ASA report on the Rointe claims before committing and/or google Elnur for alternative prices.

I'm afraid posters such as Cardew are making the mistake of confusing appliance efficiency with effectiveness they are very different things. Just popping into your local Comet and check out the stickers on the white goods. Would you buy an E when you can buy an A?

As far as electric heating is concerned, like all electrical appliances they are ALL 100% efficient - this means they convert ALL electrical energy into heat energy, there is NO waste. So, on the face of it a £50 budget oil filled radiator is just as good at heating your cold room as a £1,000 ceramic filled radiator and will cost exactly the same to run. It would be great if this was true, I'd have retired a millionaire at 30 having destroyed the worldwide central heating market-place overnight!

The effectiveness of any radiator depends on surface area and convection capability. For example, 30 years ago central heating radiators were invariably pretty much flat panels, today they are deeper (80mm) and contain fluting at the back. The fluting increases convection and the surface area of the radiator which makes them more effective than the older panel style rads. of the past. To give another example, if we took 3 identical unheated rooms and placed a 2 kilowatt steam iron in one, a 2 kilowatt oil filled radiator, with greater surface area in the second and a 2 kilowatt German radiator in the third with a nominal surface area of say 60mm and an actual surface area of 3000mm (because of their double flute system), all 3 appliances (a steam iron is a 100% efficient heater!) would consume EXACTLY the same amount of energy and all 3 would heat the 3 rooms, but I can assure everyone the temperature in the first room would be far, far, lower than in the second room and the temperature in the third room would be far greater than the second room.
3 years ago I was asked to design a new heating system for our Edwardian, stone built, village hall. It was running 28.8 kw/hr of night storage and it was still freezing cold in there by around 5 pm on winters' nights, making it impossible to hire out. I looked at 2 or 3 alternatives and finally recommended the German rads. The calcs. for the German rads. came out at just 8kw/hr and so we fitted four 2kw/hr for the main hall and a 1.5 kw/hr for the hallway. I also recommended a PIR sensor which is a great idea for a village hall! Interestingly, because these rads are connected to a room thermostat, they are actually downloading energy for an average of 4 hours a day over the year with the PIR turned OFF. The E7 tariff was, at that time 4.9p per unit and the replacement tariff was 8.7p per unit so the savings in heat energy were significant.
In conclusion I would have little problem recommending the German storage rads as a primary heating system provided your property is not connected to gas mains. At the current time gas piped gas central heating is the cheapest option for virtually all current homes but with the way gas prices are racing ahead, this might not be the case in the future, plus there are maintenance/boiler replacement costs to factor in too.

Hope this helps!

Wow – another first time poster extolling the virtues of ‘special’ radiators – German this time! Why German?

Firstly your accusation that I confuse efficiency with effectiveness is nonsense.

Your analogy about 'A' or 'E' white goods is totally specious. An 'A' rated appliance is more efficient than an 'E' rated appliance. All electrical heaters have exactly the same efficiency.

Indeed it is you that are confusing(deliberately?) the ability of any heating device to dissipate heat with efficiency and running costs.

There are just two points that are important in this discussion.

Firstly that any electrical heating appliance that consumes, say, 1kWh will produce exactly the same amount of heat – measured in any unit you wish.

So granny’s old 1/2/3 bar fire, a £10 fan heater, a £30 oil filled radiator, or a £1000 radiator of any shape and size, and filled with any substance known to man, all will produce the same heat which will have cost the same. Indeed a steam iron that has consumed 1kWh can also be added to that list.

Thus for the 12p cost of a kWh you will always get EXACTLY the same amount of heat.

How the various heaters dissipate heat is the next consideration.

If we consider radiators, it is stating the blindingly obvious that the larger the surface area the more effective it will be in dissipating heat. Indeed the 'old fashioned' cast iron radiators of our school days had a huge surface area: http://www.castrads.com/

Thus the poor old steam iron performs badly in this respect!

If you want fast distribution of heat, get a £10 3kW fan heater or a fan assisted radiator. The 3kW fan heater will dissipate the heat produced by the 1kWh in 20 minutes.(assuming that the thermostat does not operate)

A 1kW/2kW/3kW electric radiator will dissipate EXACTLY the same amount of heat in 60/40/20 minutes and cost exactly the same.(again assuming the thermostat doesn’t operate)

I don’t know if you meant to phrase the below quote in the way you have, but it is either absolute nonsense – or deliberately obfuscating.

To give another example, if we took 3 identical unheated rooms and placed a 2 kilowatt steam iron in one, a 2 kilowatt oil filled radiator, with greater surface area in the second and a 2 kilowatt German radiator in the third with a nominal surface area of say 60mm and an actual surface area of 3000mm (because of their double flute system), all 3 appliances (a steam iron is a 100% efficient heater!) would consume EXACTLY the same amount of energy and all 3 would heat the 3 rooms, but I can assure everyone the temperature in the first room would be far, far, lower than in the second room and the temperature in the third room would be far greater than the second room.

If they all had consumed ‘EXACTLY the same amount of energy’ in the same time, then they would have all produced exactly the same amount of heat. So how could the room temperatures be different?

Again this quote is strangely phrased.

So, on the face of it a £50 budget oil filled radiator is just as good at heating your cold room as a £1,000 ceramic filled radiator and will cost exactly the same to run. It would be great if this was true,

It is absolutely true that a £50 budget oil filled radiator will cost EXACTLY the same to run as(your German?) £1,000 ceramic filled radiator.

If the £1,000 radiator dissipates heat faster, the room will heat faster, but cool down quicker - you don't get ought for nowt!

I really wonder why people like yourself bother to come on to these forums and post such misleading nonsense. Presumably you think it will boost the sale of German radiators(Elti perhaps?)

glasshill

Thanks Jonathankaye for this:
I also recommended a PIR sensor which is a great idea for a village hall! Interestingly, because these rads are connected to a room thermostat, they are actually downloading energy for an average of 4 hours a day over the year with the PIR turned OFF. The E7 tariff was, at that time 4.9p per unit and the replacement tariff was 8.7p per unit so the savings in heat energy were significant.
In conclusion I would have little problem recommending the German storage rads as a primary heating system provided your property is not connected to gas mains. At the current time gas piped gas central heating is the cheapest option for virtually all current homes but with the way gas prices are racing ahead, this might not be the case in the future, plus there are maintenance/boiler replacement costs to factor in too.
What is a PIR sensor please (sorry to be dim) and please can you explain the tariff bit more fully? Do you do better if you switch from E7 if you install these German radiators? And is anybody out there actually using a similar system in their home? I think they could be an excellent solution for me as a replacement for oil fired heating in a small house where I work from home and need a source of steady, low-level background heat, but I cannot find anyone who actually uses them and has submitted a review anywhere, which makes me cautious.

grahamc2003

jonathankaye wrote: »

3 years ago I was asked to design a new heating system for our Edwardian, stone built, village hall. It was running 28.8 kw/hr of night storage and it was still freezing cold in there by around 5 pm on winters' nights, making it impossible to hire out. I looked at 2 or 3 alternatives and finally recommended the German rads. The calcs. for the German rads. came out at just 8kw/hr and so we ...

Hope this helps!

Well, no it doesn't help. Apart from the mistakes already pointed out, I really can't see how you can design any form of heating system if you don't understand the terminology and the units used. A heating system does not 'run at 28.8 kw/h' (kilowatts per hour), I suspect you mean Kw (kilowatts), a measure of power, or rate of delivery of heat (but I'm not sure since 28.8kw is a mighty lot of heating).

While the general public may not be expected to understand these things, anyone having had the most basic training in heating systems, and especially if they design them, knows them from day 1, as does anyone who has studied basic physics at school.

As to the system you said you designed, if the hall needed 8kw to heat, then that can be delivered by any form of heater - 8x1kw bar fires, 4x2kw fan heaters or even 80x100w lightbulbs, or 4x2kw gel filled, electronically controlled digitally finned expensive heaters. They'd all do the job for the same running costs (for the same tariff) - the only difference is the preference in the mix of radiant and convective heat (assuming you dumped the storage heaters).