All electric - heating - and big mistakes!

Returner

Hello,

We have just moved in to our new home and have already made what I think is our first mistake! Any help to avoid making an even larger mistake would be very gratefully received please.

I'll try to keep it brief whilst giving whatever info may be relevant.

House: located in far south-west (mellow but windy climate). Storage heaters. No gas in village. Detached 3 bed. 30 year old timber-frame. 300mm loft insulation. Cavity wall insulation. Raised timber floor insulated with about 100mm of batting. Newish (2010) double glazing. 4kw PV panels on the roof. 5kw multi-fuel stove in sitting room. No undue air leakage that we can find. But then, the weather's been unusually warm so far.

Us: 2 adults. Both work from home. One a night owl who is often still up and working at 2.00 a.m. Daytime electricity usage, over and above the usual fridge, freezer, kettle, oven, telly etc includes 2 computers and several monitors in the office.

The 1st mistake?: The house had Economy 7 when we moved in. Having not done nearly enough research we had the Economy 7 meter changed to single rate, thinking we'd be better suited by replacing the ancient storage heaters with panel heaters throughout. The argument being we'd have more warmth and greater control than with storage heaters. This may well be true but I am now having sleepless nights worrying about future electricity bills.

With winter approaching we need to come to a decision fairly soon; Do we revert to Economy 7 and install modern storage heaters? Or...?

Neither of us have any experience of storage heaters and the little we think we know tends to be negative anecdotes about ancient heaters. We've looked at the Dimplex Quantum but it would be more to install than we can afford. We've looked at Dimplex Duo heaters but I note that it's not possible to set a temperature below 19 degrees and there are some rooms we'd prefer to be cooler than that sometimes. (I also suspect that given that it's boosted by a direct acting heater, we may just as well have a little fan heater for colder evenings over which we can have greater control. And this would save us having to have a second energy supply wired to each heater).

Not knowing what it's like living with NSH, will we have to be playing with controls on each heater every day? With 7 NSH I think that would get a bit old rather quickly! Or is it that in settled weather conditions the settings can stay the same for ages? Or are there heaters that do it for you? I apologise for such basic questions but we are clueless about what it's like to live with storage heating. From this forum I have been able to pick up that we'd be better with panel heaters in the bedrooms since we won't need heat there during the day. Right???

So...should we reverse our decision and go back to Economy 7 and (modern) store heaters or continue with single rate and panel heaters. Either way we shall have a log burner in the sitting room and some leccy (sometimes) being produced by the PV panels.

I've got to the point where I am having trouble making sense of the information I have gathered so far and would truly value any observations anyone might chose to make. Including bopping us on the head with the idiot stick :embarasse

To anyone who has made it so far, my profound thanks!

Richie-from-the-Boro

There's lots of info in these threads, more than you could read in a month, most of it good advice from actual users.

Your storage heater essentially has just two controls :

- an input for how many kW you put in, and ;
- an output for how quickly you allow those kW to be released
- in reality yours probably looks like this



The starting point objective is to store as much of the cheap [night] stuff to be radiated during the 24 hour cycle and avoid the expensive 13a 2kW convector use although this heater will try to automatically adjust the level of input charge to compensate for changing weather conditions without user intervention. Your storage heater will charge up with 'x' kWh of cheap stored overnight heat, and release that heat through the following 17 hours. The [output] damper :

- is nothing more than a damper, a metal lid on a pan
- this needs to be firmly closed at night and while out of the dwelling at work
- I've never used the damper, day or night - ever in 35 + years

The water cylinder

- I've never used the top up day rate in 35 + years - forget it
- an E7 tank has a very high quality insulation
- so good that you can set and forget it
- it will look something like this :



Instead of asking the group to guess which type of NSH you have or what kind of 365 day hot water you have and how its wired .. .. why don't you use your camera-phone to place photo's here of your night storage heater and water heating tank, wiring, controller and take the guessing out of the conversation ? (1) Revert to NSCH (2) Continue with PV + log burner and 13a panels (3) Unnecessarily update existing E7 & NSCH or buy a new DUO system depends on a couple of photo's so the group know what you have.

Returner

Thanks Richie-from-the-Boro!

Good idea about the pictures. I don't have a camera phone but we seem to have 16+ year old versions of this one. Sunhouse SSH12M
http://http://www.electric-heaters-direct.co.uk/p/15272/sunhouse-ssh12m-manual-storage-heater-1-7kw

I had assumed that we'd at least need to update these having read about modern NSHs being much better insulated, and thus staying warmer for longer.

For our hot water, to describe what I see in the airing cupboard; Yellow foam covered tank. In the top is what I think must be the heater element (says 2.5-3kw 27" length). This is wired through a clockwork type timer. The electrician set this up recently. Didn't see what was there beforehand though there's no evidence that there was once a second element. Having cold-feed appliances, and an electric shower, our sole use for hot water is to wash hands and rinse the odd coffee mug during the day. Currently we have a timer set to heat the tank for 45 minutes a day which seems adequate for our needs.

Is there any more information I can usefully supply?

macman

For a property that needs heat in the day when working from home, ripping out E7 and NSH's was a huge blunder-but you already know that. Unless you want to pay 300% more for single rate electric heating, revert back.
Modern storage heaters are more controllable than the older ones, and less intrusive.
Your stove and solar panels will provide some benefit, but will never counteract the cost of single rate otherwise. Unless the stove can warm the house sufficiently, you are still going to need to heat the house during the day with expensive single rate electricity.
You'll also add some value back to the property with E7
What you don't want to do is mix convectors and NSH's on E7.

Richie-from-the-Boro

The 12M is a small[ish] 1.75kw, they are still current and can be bought new for about £250 retail delivered and 30% cheaper trade and can be charged with about 12kWh of stored heat energy over the 7 hour night to be released over the following 17 hours. I would expect your living area to have at least one 3.4kw which would be [24kWh - double the 12kWh of the 12M] a model number SSH24M or SSH24A.

Look the objective is to store as much of the cheap [night] stuff to be radiated during the 24 hour cycle and avoid the expensive alternatives. Questions would be :

- lifestyle - home all day or only at weekends and after 6 pm - E7 or E10 is [except AGA / Rayburn solid fuel] the only off-gas solution
- full or part - do you want all rooms to be heated all of the time
- or merely occupied rooms - so living area @ 22°C and the kitchen / bathroom / bedrooms on panel heating
- water - the foam covered tank will originally have been a PartL with a top & bottom element, either way the bottom not top element should be used
- older heaters - are fine, they take a long time if changed to earn their investment back
- if funds are no problem - a DuoHeat radiator system or the top of the tree Quantum system is an excellent and shellproof upgrade path
- macman is right- whether FNSCH or PNSCH you appear to gave shot yourself in both feet
- one alternative is to do nothing this winter and keep a dairy of 30 day cycle costs and benefits and look at again next easter

Returner

Oh yes, I am certainly aware of the error. I have the bullets in my feet should I forget it!

I think that the mistake is still rectifiable in that we still have the NSH in place and only the meter has been changed so far. Thank goodness some small modicum of common sense nudged me to start to question the decision to go to panel heaters. The mistake would have been costly on more than one front had we already bought them. Both of you, and others on this forum, have helped direct my thoughts better and I'm most grateful.

Of course, I shall have to swallow much humble pie and not be surprised when the supplier now wants to charge us for changing the meter back (Fair enough, they did the initial swap out FOC). That's assuming they will...!

I have read many other threads on the forum too. I can see that there are some who still loath NSH with a passion but I think these heaters will better suit our work-from-home-lifestyle reasonably well, so long as we build in sufficient capacity. Would something like the following work?:

Plenty of NSH capacity in living room, hall, dining end of kitchen and office. Panel heater in each bedroom but set low and on a timer. Backed up with the log burner in the living room on cold evenings and the solar PV helping out when it can with the higher rate usage during the day. Not sure what to do about the (small) bathroom yet. Nor the kitchen end of the kitchen/diner (I read somewhere that you shouldn't put NSH in a kitchen?)

Hot water can go to off-peak and I shall review the solar panel threads to see how best to time other appliances.

A more difficult computation is whether it makes financial sense to update the old NSH now whilst we are doing some other renovations. We hope and plan to stay here for a good long time. Maybe even our forever home. We did look at the Quantum system Richie-from-the-Boro but it would be more than we could afford. The Duo looks interesting too, though we'd have to have some re-wiring done for the second connection. It's all grist for the mill and I shall get out a calculator and pen and paper and see if I can come to some reasonable conclusion before the really cold weather arrives. We've been so lucky so far this year.

So, again, thank you for your help. And anyone else who'd like to offer any observations, all thoughts are gratefully received. Assume I know nothing at all about storage heating (which doubtless will already be all too obvious )

Richie-from-the-Boro

Plenty of NSH capacity in living room, hall, dining end of kitchen and office. Panel heater in each bedroom but set low and on a timer. Backed up with the log burner in the living room on cold evenings and the solar PV helping out when it can with the higher rate usage during the day. Not sure what to do about the (small) bathroom yet. Nor the kitchen end of the kitchen/diner (I read somewhere that you shouldn't put NSH in a kitchen?)

- in general the living area's @ 22°C with enough headroom storage capacity and DUO supplemental capability
- so if you have (1) living and (2) office in use in the day you really only need two rooms to be full NSCH
- all other rooms can be panel or change the panel for a DUO, which is 13a panel & 20a night store combined
- ditto the living and office area can be changed from a 12kWh SSH12M to a 24kWh SSH24M DUO occupying the same wall space
- the 12kWh SSH12M can then be recycled into other areas of the dwelling replacing panels relatively free of charge
- off peak hot water using the bottom of the two elements will give you a cheap 365 days of bubbling hot water

The above can be done now, and relatively cheaply as they are 'stand alone'. You can .. .. say 2 years from now return to the issue and incorporate your two new DUO night store heaters into a new centrally controlled system.

CashStrapped

What have your neighbours got for heating/hot water?

Another consideration,(if you intend to live there for a long time) is an oil powered boiler for a wet central heating system. Yes, it may be a large initial inventment, but one that may pay itself back, especially if you will be there for a long time. It may also increase the property value compared to having an all electric system.

I looked at a few calculations and the oil powered boiler route could have much lower running costs, but , as with all things, do your research, how much oil costs localy etc.

Thats why I wondered what your neighbours have.

Returner

Thanks for your thoughts too CashStrapped. In fact, my personal preference is to do exactly as you suggest, bite the bullet and go for oil-fired CH. It's what all our neighbours have too and they have even formed an oil buying group and manage to buy in at comparatively reasonable prices as a result. My problem is that my OH is (at this moment anyway) adamantly opposed to the upheaval of fitting a wet system. Especially all the floors coming up to fit the pipework apparently.

So the plan I am forming now is along the lines suggested by Richie-in-the-Boro; Call our supplier and beg for our E7 meter back and go through this winter with these old storage heaters, knowing we may need to add the occasional fan heater if the heat from the stove doesn't reach the office. This will then buy us some time to see how the NSH system suits us - bearing in mind that it won't be optimal so to take that in account - and me some time to work on the OH over the next several months about OFCH. (I think the increasing-the-value-of-the-house tack might well work )

My thanks to you all. I was going around in circles on all this and each of you has helped me to clear my thoughts a bit. I had better start to gen up on OFCH as I'm not quite sure where we'd put a boiler.....!

matelodave

If you do decide to go for wet central heating you could consider installing an air source heatpump especially if you are at home all day.
It sounds like your place is pretty well insulated and you could get a chunk of your money back via the Renewable Heat Incentive.

The running costs should work out cheaper than oil and by the time you've installed an oil boiler, oil tank & base etc you might find that the cost difference isn't as big as you think (and don't forget the RHI).
I reckon my ASHP costs me about 4p/kwh on full price electricity and I'm getting £672 a year in RHI payments for the next 7 years. It takes up a lot less space than an oil tank in the back garden and there's no hassle in getting fuel deliveries.

Smiley_Dan

I really think putting in a new oil system in this day and age is rather backward thinking. It sounds like your house would be suited to a heat pump, but you need to investigate it thoroughly.

Separating heating and hot water can be a very good decision under some circumstances.

A2A heat pumps are the most efficient and the cheapest to install. You don't have to worry about all the RHI complications.

Do you have an immersion diverter for the PV panels? That will cover hot water for half to 2/3 of the year, assuming a bottom mounted immersion and a well insulated tank. For the rest, with just two of you and assuming a top mounted immersion in addition you can just use the immersion... it's not too bad dripping in 2-3kWh a day.