Wet electric heating elecramate 2000- help!!

Whosgotamatch

Hello all,

First post here and in dire need of any wisdom. Myself and my partner have just purchased out first home, it is a 2 bed conversion quite spacious, formerly an old mill. It has no gas supply and therefore relies solely on electric for heating, hot water, cooker and so on. The equipment is an elecramate 2000 fitted in 2005 and the are 7 radiators. We are on the second floor. We both work during the day.

Any help on approx bills or information in general is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Nicola.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

The principle is explained here.

http://www.electramate-repairs.co.uk/electramate-2000.html

Basically a heat store(big water tank)

You should of course be on an Economy 7(or possibly Economy 10) tariff. This gives you 7 hours cheap off-peak electricity in a 9 hour period(times dependent on you area) to heat the water.

Most properties these days are wired so all electricity is at cheap rate during those 7 hours - but check that applies to your property - so you can put appliances like dishwasher/dryer/washing machine on a timer to take advantage of the cheap electricity. However be aware that this can cause a noise problem and some blocks of flats do not allow that practice.

Running costs will depend on your usage and it will take trial and error to get it optimised for your requirements.

One important point is to ensure that you are on the correct Economy 7 tariff. There is a huge disparity in charges between companies. I believe Scottish Power have the cheapest E7 tariffs for most people at the moment - but that could change.

You will need to use a comparison website and estimate your consumption(or ask a neighbour).

sheffield_lad

Good advice from Cardew there, just to add I often find customers with heat stores get on fine with it, the main issue tends to be when folk are not realistic about the costs of an all electric property. You need to consider this bill is a normal electric bill & your heating bill so don't expect sub £50 bills especially in the winter.

Often due to high bills customers cut the amount of hours the store uses in the off peak period which is self defeating as the store then has to take more electric during the normal period when there is demand on the heating.

GL

Wywth

Whosgotamatch wrote: »

Hello all,

First post here and in dire need of any wisdom. Myself and my partner have just purchased out first home, it is a 2 bed conversion quite spacious, formerly an old mill. It has no gas supply and therefore relies solely on electric for heating, hot water, cooker and so on. The equipment is an elecramate 2000 fitted in 2005 and the are 7 radiators. We are on the second floor. We both work during the day.

Any help on approx bills or information in general is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Nicola.

This would have been a good enquiry to have requested to be answered by the seller before you exchanged

What does the EPC say?

matelodave

It's hard to know how much you'll use but assuming its a fairly large place with 7 rads the I'd suggest you start putting about £150 a month away towards your electricity bills until you've got a good idea of how much it's going to cost you over a year. Read your meters regularly and often (weekly is best but not less than once a month).

Record the info and make sure you correct any estimated electricity bills as soon as they come in. Keeping a record of how much you are using will help you identify any savings you can make and any anomalies where there are spikes in your consumption. It will also help you budget for your bill and give you information for use when comparing tariffs. Turn stuff off when you aren't using it (including X-boxes, DVD players, TVs and computers etc - can save nearly £100 a year). Even washing machines, cookers and other stuff that sit on standby all the time can use power unless they are switched off at the socket

We are all electric and our consumption this year has varied between 1500kw in January to 140kw in May when we were on holiday - our overall annual usage is about 8500kw but we do have a well insulated bungalow and we use a heatpump for heating & hotwater which is significantly more efficient than a thermal store (a lot more expensive to install though). We are on a good tariff at the moment and will pay just under £900 this year, but it's due to end in November and I expect our bill to just tip over the £1000 mark when we renew/change.