storage heaters/electric central heating or gas?

Cardew

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

If you are paying a penny for just 10 watt hours of electricity then somebody should take you aside and explain that this equates to £1 per Kwh. I suggest you get onto Uswitch!

Whoops!

20 hours for a penny - I might get two to heat the whole house!

[Deleted User]

Hi, just to add my two penneth. I live in a 3 bedroom flat with 7 storage heaters. We use 2 to heat the whole place. Our place is not boiling, but very warm. We have a large one in the sitting room, an older type i believe, that only appears to have an output dial, which i have at the lowest setting. The storage heater gets hot and acts like a radiator, with a bit of heat seeping out of the vent, the second one we use is in the downstairs hall, which is a medium size. This is output on the lowest setting and input was on the highest, but i have just turned this down a couple of notches, having read this forum. The heat from this goes upstairs and if you leave the doors open, it takes the chill of upstairs. I find them to be cheap to run, once you know how to use them. We only have electric and my monthly standing order is £55 (just recently gone up slightly), for everything including cooker, water (not including rates) etc. I did have them for years and hated them, but once you get to know how to use them, they can be great.

nanatopsy

Hi everyone, I've read through the last few pages and am not sure that this is the correct place to post so please forgive me if it's not.

My son's ex council flat bought 3 years ago when property prices were at their highest was seriously out of date. We had hoped that there would have been enough cash to modernise it but as I've said the amount he had to pay ate up all the cash and it's basically still the same apart from decor etc.
There does appear to be gas in the ground floor flat as a pipe is coming up through the concrete floor, but the heating in the house when he took the tenancy was the old storage heaters. Prior to buying the flat, the council were out numerous times to repair the heaters but he was told the parts were obsolete. On hindsight we should have perhaps asked for new ones.

Initially we were going to put in gch but with the current recession, this looks too to be too much expense. He's single so now problems about heating the house for children and he has been using cheap convectors from Argos but they run away with the electric.

We're now considering new storage heaters as he is still on the night tariff (Scotland). But when looking at these on the internet, there are different types on this site http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index/Heating_Index/Storage_Heaters_Index/index.html
Can anyone explain which would be best? thanks for your patience:)

HappyMJ

nanatopsy wrote: »

Hi everyone, I've read through the last few pages and am not sure that this is the correct place to post so please forgive me if it's not.

My son's ex council flat bought 3 years ago when property prices were at their highest was seriously out of date. We had hoped that there would have been enough cash to modernise it but as I've said the amount he had to pay ate up all the cash and it's basically still the same apart from decor etc.
There does appear to be gas in the ground floor flat as a pipe is coming up through the concrete floor, but the heating in the house when he took the tenancy was the old storage heaters. Prior to buying the flat, the council were out numerous times to repair the heaters but he was told the parts were obsolete. On hindsight we should have perhaps asked for new ones.

Initially we were going to put in gch but with the current recession, this looks too to be too much expense. He's single so now problems about heating the house for children and he has been using cheap convectors from Argos but they run away with the electric.

We're now considering new storage heaters as he is still on the night tariff (Scotland). But when looking at these on the internet, there are different types on this site http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index/Heating_Index/Storage_Heaters_Index/index.html
Can anyone explain which would be best? thanks for your patience:)

You just need standard storage heaters. Fan assisted will make them run out of heat quicker. Convector elements will tempt you into using them more at the peak rate. Automatic isn't really necessary. Please note those prices are very high. You can get them off Ebay for a fraction (i.e 10%) of the price.

Storage heaters are very basic. It's just an element surrounded by bricks. They don't wear out or become old. The element may break or the damper may get stuck due to dust and muck but that's the limit of servicing they need. New elements are very cheap. Your old ones to me sound like they just need a good clean out.

nanatopsy

HappyMJ wrote: »

You just need standard storage heaters. Fan assisted will make them run out of heat quicker. Convector elements will tempt you into using them more at the peak rate. Automatic isn't really necessary. Please note those prices are very high. You can get them off Ebay for a fraction (i.e 10%) of the price.

Storage heaters are very basic. It's just an element surrounded by bricks. They don't wear out or become old. The element may break or the damper may get stuck due to dust and muck but that's the limit of servicing they need. New elements are very cheap. Your old ones to me sound like they just need a good clean out.

Thanks very much HappyMJ, just the help I needed as we had no idea. This gives me a good start, off to look at e bay!:)

hank.ron

Hi I had Coal fire central heating but have had Gas central heating as i am now disabled, I had it fitted by warm front i need to keep warm all the time so have the house very warm +25 and my gas bill for cooking heating water is around £45 .00 in winter months but as i say i have it very warm. I can turn heating up when i want it and off if needed. I would never go back to any other form of heating. my parents had storage heaters as they lived where no gas main was.
They where always going to bed to get out of the cold they moved house to near me their heating was much cheaper plus they where warm. Gas central heating does need servicing but if you shop around its not that much.
My Corgi gas installer only charges me £50.00 to service and check heating small one man band but make sure they are Corgi or their is a new name they use now but must have certificates ask befor how much and you will never regret having gas. I also had cavity wall insulation and loft insulation that also helps. Hope this helps as mine is on all day every day from 7am till 11.00 pm best of luck hope it helps you decide.:T

Bexm wrote: »

Hello!

I know there are a few posts similar to this but cannot find one giving the advice I need (if you know of one please direct me!)

We have just moved into a 2 bed house, it has one small 15yr old storage heater in the living room, an electric towel rail in the bath room, and a wall mounted electric ("blowy") heater in each of the bedrooms!

We have set the storage heater going and it makes the house nice and warm in the morning, but not so much in the evening, which is useless as we are generally out from 8-6.
It's not that cold out at the moment so when winter comes we will be freezing!

Currently there is no gas connected to the house, but we can get it connected for around 3-4 hundred (i think).

We only intend in staying in the property for about 5 years.

The thing we are trying to work out is what's going to work out the best for us? We need to do something about the storage heater as its not effective enough, and the electric heaters expensive to run.

We are considering installing either electric or gas central heating or maybe upgrading and adding some more storage heaters, and use some low wattage "plug in" heaters as extra in the evening.

We also want to take in to consideration any value any of this will add to the house when we go to sell.

Has anyone been in this situation? Or got any advice?
We don't know average costs of things yet as we haven't lived there long enough, but we want to sort something out before winter!

Thanks in advance!

Bex

Milktray

Hi,

I used to live in a bedsit with gas ch which kept it lovely and warm .. I now live in a 1 bedroom house (housing association) which is supposed to be warmed by storage heaters but I've had to get a portable gas heater to try to get any heat in the place.

It has the usual insulation in cavity walls and the loft etc etc .. the gas bottle ran out the other day and immediately the house started to get cold .. lol

I keep warm by sitting under the spare duvet so the 'economy' bit makes me laugh, i'm at home all day so missing the gas ch i had b4

I saw a site mentioning a Cosy Homes replacement scheme (up in ireland i think) where they are getting the majority of HA's to replace E7 with gas, i just hope something like that happens in my area :rotfl:

Heather_E

You are talking as though storage heaters are the only form of electric heating! Have you looked into infrared heating panels? They are easy to fit, simply screw to the ceiling and can be plugged in or wired upto programmers are very energy efficient and cheap to run and really do warm you up! A 600 watt panel will heat a 12 square metre room, fan heaters or convector heaters would be about 2000 watts, so these are much cheaper to run although perhaps more expensive to buy, about £300 each, but will really start to save you money after a couple of years. Also, if you are not planning on staying in the property or are renting these panels can be taken with you, this will help your pocket when you start again in the next home. It is a very difficult descision to spend thousands on updating an old heating system especially in a time when there is no guarantee that the house price will ever go up. This solution is more versatile and most importantly is cheap to run!

chris1973

A 600 watt panel will heat a 12 square metre room

Really?, physics would tend to disagree with you.

Using a room heat calculator:- http://www.flickeringflame.co.uk/tech_detail/tech.htm

Entering in a 12m2 room size (4m x 3m) and using a 3m ceiling height, outputs a heat requirement of 2.57kw

Even with a 2m high ceiling the required heat output for the room size is 1.7kw

And you produce enough heat to warm a room whose size requires 1.7 - 2.57kw of heat, using a single 600w heater. What are you heating? - a coffin?

If you can turn 600w output into 2kw+ of usable heat, can you also turn this fiver of mine into £50 note

Sorry, but a 600w heater will output 600w of heat, whether its an oil filled radiator or an infra red panel, it won't magically produce another 1400+ watts out of thin air!

All electric heaters are 100% efficient as described here:- http://electricheatingcosts.com/

The only way that you can get more heat output than the equiv electricity consumed, is by using ground or air source heat pumps

magic_roundabout_2

We had oil central heating put into our 3 bed bungalow 13 years ago, we had to replace a boiler which started to give out a horrible smell (had several people out and nobody could find anything wrong with it). That was 2 years ago, a couple of days ago we had the fire brigade out as our carbon monoxide alarm was going like mad shortly after the heating came on and a horrible smell is once again coming from our recently replaced boiler. The plumber (corgi registered) can find nothing wrong with it but can't explain why it has so much carbon in it and was producing black smoke from the flue. He is coming again to check it today, the black smoke has gone and the smell not nearly as bad but it does still smell and the smell is drifting through the bungalow. We have no gas in our village and I am now really scared of our oil boiler, it looks as if once again we will have to replace it and money is tight. Can someone advice me, should I get yet another boiler and risk the same thing happening yet again or should I go electric and hopefully reuse our current radiator system. I know nothing about heating.