Electric Heating

The_One_Who

I wasn't sure where to put this, but this board seems as good as any other!

I am in the process of buying my first property and the current front-runner is perfect in almost every way, except it has electric panel heating and hot water heating on normal rate tariff. It's a small(ish) flat of around 54 square metres, and if I remember correctly there are two large panel heaters in the living room, a medium one in the bedroom as well as a small one in the hall and a heated towel rack in the bathroom. I didn't quite have the cheek to ask the seller what is fuel bills were, and every other flat I've viewed has had storage heating (gas isn't an option in any of the flats).

Can anyone tell me roughly how much this would cost me to run? I don't have the heating on much at the moment and I'm happy to curl up with a hot water bottle and a blanket.

Would I be better getting some storage heaters installed for the living room area and moving onto a E7 meter, especially for the hot water? How much would that cost to install, roughly?

I'm a bit clueless when it comes to this sort of thing!

jk0

The_One_Who wrote: »

I wasn't sure where to put this, but this board seems as good as any other!

I am in the process of buying my first property and the current front-runner is perfect in almost every way, except it has electric panel heating and hot water heating on normal rate tariff. It's a small(ish) flat of around 54 square metres, and if I remember correctly there are two large panel heaters in the living room, a medium one in the bedroom as well as a small one in the hall and a heated towel rack in the bathroom. I didn't quite have the cheek to ask the seller what is fuel bills were, and every other flat I've viewed has had storage heating (gas isn't an option in any of the flats).

Can anyone tell me roughly how much this would cost me to run? I don't have the heating on much at the moment and I'm happy to curl up with a hot water bottle and a blanket.

Would I be better getting some storage heaters installed for the living room area and moving onto a E7 meter, especially for the hot water? How much would that cost to install, roughly?

I'm a bit clueless when it comes to this sort of thing!

You need to look at the Energy Performance certificate.

An E7 meter is installed free. What I did in one of my flats is buy some Dimplex duoheat storage heaters, and connect them in place of the direct heaters. I replaced the spur boxes with Timeguard timeswitch spurs. Ditto with the immersion spur box.

The_One_Who

What am I looking for on it?

It's currently rated D66 and one of the recommendations is high heat retention storage heaters. The 'primary energy indicator' is 255 kWh/m2/year. It's got the homes heat demand as space heating 1950 and water heating as 2000 kWh per year. Honestly, that means nothing to me!

Obviously I know storage heating and an E7 meter is cheaper overall, but I'm only planning on being in the flat for a couple of years. So would it be economical to change to storage heating, and roughly how much would it cost to do so?

HappyMJ

The_One_Who wrote: »

What am I looking for on it?

It's currently rated D66 and one of the recommendations is high heat retention storage heaters. The 'primary energy indicator' is 255 kWh/m2/year. It's got the homes heat demand as space heating 1950 and water heating as 2000 kWh per year. Honestly, that means nothing to me!

Obviously I know storage heating and an E7 meter is cheaper overall, but I'm only planning on being in the flat for a couple of years. So would it be economical to change to storage heating, and roughly how much would it cost to do so?

You wouldn't see any payback in such a short period of time.

Why would you buy a property for just a couple of years? The costs in buying and selling, the interest on the mortgage and the interest you no longer get on your deposit will outweigh the costs of renting it. I could buy the flat I am living in right now but it's not worth buying. It's far cheaper to rent it. Make sure you do your sums and show that buying for a couple of years is cheaper than renting for that same period. I rent this 2 bedroom flat for £475/month and to buy it would cost £110,000. If I purchased it I would have to pay service charges and pay to maintain the inside of the property and I would lose and pay £4,000 in interest.

Storage heaters cost quite a lot of money to buy and install. You're looking at a couple hundred per heater for a medium sized unit.

I would just leave the panel heaters in and make sure you're on a good electricity tariff.

The_One_Who

Buying is cheaper because the service charge/factor fee (Scotland) would come into it anyway, and it's just generally cheaper, at least in this case. Plus, I might be in the property for longer, or I may not even be successful in buying it, this is all hypothetical at the moment.

The EPC seems to indicate that the energy costs would roughly halve with storage heaters, but I do agree that to change over is quite a large outlay initially. Would changing them have any effect on possible re-sale value for the property?

jk0

The_One_Who wrote: »

What am I looking for on it?

It's currently rated D66 and one of the recommendations is high heat retention storage heaters. The 'primary energy indicator' is 255 kWh/m2/year. It's got the homes heat demand as space heating 1950 and water heating as 2000 kWh per year. Honestly, that means nothing to me!

Obviously I know storage heating and an E7 meter is cheaper overall, but I'm only planning on being in the flat for a couple of years. So would it be economical to change to storage heating, and roughly how much would it cost to do so?

You add 1950 to 2000 making 3950, and multiply that by your electricity cost per unit. If it's 15p per unit, the cost will be £592.

If you were on E7, maybe it would be 75% off peak, and 25% peak, so say 3000 units at 6p and 950 units at 20p, making £370.

Those storage heaters I mentioned are about £500 each and the timeswitches about £30 each. Therefore unless you are going to be there longer than two years, probably not worth bothering with.

HappyMJ

The_One_Who wrote: »

Buying is cheaper because the service charge/factor fee (Scotland) would come into it anyway, and it's just generally cheaper, at least in this case. Plus, I might be in the property for longer, or I may not even be successful in buying it, this is all hypothetical at the moment.

The EPC seems to indicate that the energy costs would roughly halve with storage heaters, but I do agree that to change over is quite a large outlay initially. Would changing them have any effect on possible re-sale value for the property?

It's very unlikely for your energy costs to halve.

Your day rate units will increase in price by 50% whilst your night rate units will halve. Average the two out and it's exactly the same as having on demand electric heating used sparingly. The bathroom heater will not be a storage heater as you only want heat whilst you're in the bathroom and your bedroom heater will not be a storage heater as you only want a little in the morning when you wake up and a little in the evening when you go to sleep. There is no point heating a bedroom all day when you aren't in it.

i.e a good 24/7 rate might be 10p/kWh and an E7 rate might be 5p/kWh for 7 hours and 15p/kWh for the other 17 hours. Whilst your winter bills would be less your summer bills will increase as you won't be using anything at night.

You would also have to change the hot water cylinder for a larger one with 2 immersion heaters one on the E7 circuit at the bottom of the cylinder and one on the main circuit at the top of the cylinder for top up heating if the hot water cools too much.

The hot water cylinder needs to be bigger to be able to store enough water heated at the low night rate. A HWC on a 24/7 supply doesn't need to be as large as it reheats the water instantly.

Changing heating from panel heating to storage heating will not add any value at all to the property. You will lose value by removing the panel heaters (you bought them with the house and are now throwing them out) then you'll add the lost value back by reinstalling a different heater. The net effect is that you don't add any value.