Help!! Electric central heating

[Deleted User]

Fit a Parkray boiler, it will be lovely and toasty. You'll need proper radiators installed too.

macman

EdGasket wrote: »

No nonsense. Just ask anyone having to fork out £5K approx every 4 to 5 years to get their boiler replaced and fixed/serviced in between. That's all some last for !

That would only apply if you a) installed a rubbish boiler that only lasted five years, and b) paid about twice the going rate for an install. Most decent brands now offer at least a five year warranty anyway.

Richie-from-the-Boro

mrsides

Do you know the current heaters are no good? Set them up correctly and you may find they are perfectly adequate. Cost=0

We here, know from experience that the above is almost always the practical truth, and should always be the benchmark starting point from which all other options can be objectively measured. Few things, even with the volatility of world carbon prices over the last 50 years, have changed since their original install - the cost of domestic energy from any source will increase year on year, in an off-gas situation choices are even more limited.

Changes

You are off gas and have an existing E7 wiring and room-heat & water setup. It is a fact that storage heating is the cheapest workable setup. Your opening statement is that you """need a new central heating system for my cottage""" - Why ? What is it about your existing heating that makes you want to buy a new one, and what type of new one would you dream about.

A tin is a tin and a brick is a brick and they come in 0.9kW to 3.5kW sizes, a brick holds about just short of 3kW of heat and there are between 9 and 16 bricks in a tin depending on the kWh delivery over 19 hours [off charge]. How much you need per room depends on the size of the room to be heated and the amount of insulation but its always always a lot more than what used to be installed and a lot more than the size you think you will need now - put simply store enough cheap stuff for the coldest winter or pay twice the price when you get caught short. All NSCH systems are the same, some are better looking [aesthetics] than others, and some are more efficient [thermal insulation] than others but they are all a tin full of bricks.

Leccy goes in and the brick get hotter, the tin gets hotter and releases radiated heat into the room. Things change, when White Meter NSCH was originally prevalent the cheap tariff was 11 or even 15 hours and 'damping' or retaining heat in the can was not seen as needed, indeed manufacturers designed heaters to release as much of the heat stored in the brick as possible. "White meter" delivered up to twice the hours you now get on E7 hence the reason underfloor electric heating was chosen by many including myself. The then domestic norm was 17-18 °C, now its 19-21°C and the then full central is now best served by part night store and occasional radiant panel heating. This leads me to why some storage heater types are better than others. Radiant is better than convected, fan is an absolute no no, and DUO is better than single and insulation which was always important is now critical to the current 'standing loss' which is why some heaters retain more radiated heat and why others leak convected heat.

It, insulation is also why the 2% of capacity per hour 'standing loss' has hardly been reduced over the last 40 years. If material technology was used to put more heat into each brick the tin can, even a stainless one would melt at 600°C and anyway would not be allowed into a domestic setting. That's where we started NSCH - its also why we are here in 2015. You are still miles better off with your E7 wiring and room-heat & water setup rather than any other setup, spare cash in this early stage should first be used taking you home to B from a C on the EPC scale or closing the open fire as LeeUK said, with an excellent Rayburn or equivalent winter use fire only, you do not need a boiler.

Best of luck - got questions ask - lots of good people here !