Electric wet central heating options?

samtheman1k

Hi,

we currently have night storage heaters in our 3 bed semi, but I wish to replace this with a wet central heating system. Unfortunately, Gas isn't available and neither is oil/lpg due to the regulations and also access problems (but that's another story!). The roof slants East (rear is shaded by neighbour), so solar is out of the question. Not enough space for GSHP either

We are thus only left with electric. I have been looking at a thermal store type system, and have come across two companies who offer a combined thermal store that supplies wet radiators and hot water. They are the Electramate from Gledhill (under apartments) and the Etech-S from ACV .

However, I am a bit worried about the performance of these and whether they would be any better than night storage heaters. The Electramate seems better as it is designed for economy 7 (10 isn't available where we are), but it's recommended for 1-2 bed apartments, not 3 bed semis, so I'm worried about whether it is powerfull enough, and whether we'd have to keep boosting it using on-peak electricity tariffs.

The ETECH-S seems better, but isn't optimised for offf-peak usage. You can heat the thermal store overnight, but if you use it during the day, then it will reheat it up...kinda defeats the object really.

So, does anyone have any experience of these, or other systems? Does anyone know the 'best' way to have electric wet central heating?

Would appreciate some pointers and advice as it's all too complicated!!!!

peat

See PM I've sent.
A thermal store system would probably work ok with E7 if the thermal store tank was big enough. Think you would have to consult a heating engineer to be sure.

lmp_2

hi can you pm me too a am also interested

Cardew

Just joined and 3 slightly different posts all promoting this system.

From a quick glance it would appear that these run using daytime electricity rates.

If so there is no more expensive way of heating.

I suspect this is spam.

Inactive

Water filled radiators running on electricity, get real people, these would cost an absolute fortune to run.

This has to be a wind up surely?:rotfl: :rotfl:

Phil3822

I've recently had an aztec electric centrel heating installed. It works just as well as gas in terms of producing heat. It's not the cheapest system to run but we've found if you use it sensibly the cost works out ok. I was paying £20 per week in the winter on coal and its a damn sight cheaper than that!

We paid £4000 for full installation plus removal of the coal fire and installation of a modern electric fire. Also a new immersion tank and heater.

davidrt

Cardew wrote:

Just joined and 3 slightly different posts all promoting this system.

From a quick glance it would appear that these run using daytime electricity rates.
If so there is no more expensive way of heating.
I suspect this is spam.

Inactive wrote:

Water filled radiators running on electricity, get real people, these would cost an absolute fortune to run.

This has to be a wind up surely?

There are advantages (eg installation,servicing ) although it could well be expensive to run ?
Does anyone know if any independant energy surveys has been done
to compare with say night storage. Day time would appear to be a non starter, but E10 would bring costs down !

Cardew

davidrt wrote: »

There are advantages (eg installation,servicing ) although it could well be expensive to run ?
Does anyone know if any independant energy surveys has been done
to compare with say night storage. Day time would appear to be a non starter, but E10 would bring costs down !

The advantage of electric is that it is cheap to install and doesn't need the expensive servicing/safety checks of gas.

The disadvantage is the higher running costs(over gas) even on Economy 7 and the lack of flexibility.

The Daily Telegraph ran an article some while back(search on this forum) that stated electric storage heating made sense for smaller properties. It also pointed out that modern condensing gas boilers are stuffed full of electronics and you will be lucky to get 10 years use out of modern boilers before replacement is required - at £3,000 a time in some cases.(300pa)

There is no way IMO anyone should contemplate Electric CH running on daytime electric rates. You might as well get fan heaters at £20 a pop.

Leaving out installation costs, the basic running costs are easy to work out. You simply take the price of gas(or oil) and divide by the efficiency of your boiler. So gas at, say, 2.5pkWh with boiler efficiency of say 90% = 2.78p/kWh

Compare that with your electric price which is 100% efficient.

There are other factors, but that is the principle.

MCMitten

my neighbour had an economy 10 wet electric heater installed by the local housing association. the engineer set the timer to come on only during savings hours but her first quarterly bill came in at £300 per month. She noticed that the electric meter was going round at an alarmingly quick pace when the heating system was on. Unfortunatly she is not the only one experiancing these difficulties. She knows of an elderly resident that has switched off the heating and is using old gas bottle heating!
They now want to install it in my house n i can't afford those kind of prices (neither can anyone else by the looks of it!) Any suggestions?

muckybutt

Have you thought about air source heat pump heating, same principal as ground source heating but instead of pipes being buried all you have is a unit like an air conditioning unit outside.
We have just had ours done and its brilliant it uses 2Kw of electric but the output from it is 9Kw so very good coefficent averages cost to run so im told is typically 40 - 50 p per hour whilst system heats up approx 60 mins then once its warm running cost 8 - 15 p per hour so roughly a quid a day, a fully installed system approx £6500 but there are grants available thats how we got ours. Just a shame the plumber was a numpty

Cardew

muckybutt wrote: »

Have you thought about air source heat pump heating, same principal as ground source heating but instead of pipes being buried all you have is a unit like an air conditioning unit outside.
We have just had ours done and its brilliant it uses 2Kw of electric but the output from it is 9Kw so very good coefficent averages cost to run so im told is typically 40 - 50 p per hour whilst system heats up approx 60 mins then once its warm running cost 8 - 15 p per hour so roughly a quid a day, a fully installed system approx £6500 but there are grants available thats how we got ours. Just a shame the plumber was a numpty

From Michele Stewart's post, her house is owned by an housing association so presumably she has no choice in the matter.

Whilst there is little doubt that an ASHP is a far better system than normal electric heating, it really is an exageration to state that you will get 9kW output from 2kW input. That is a COP of 4.5 which it might theoretically achieve in mid summer. That drops off in winter - when you need heat.

A more normal average is a COP of 3 - even for the best systems like the Mitsubishi Ecodan(which uses radiators)