Is my heating really inefficient?

Solvalou

I am after some advice and opinions. I've only just started properly living in my first property (a sortof 1 bedroom bungalow that's raised with a small street going under it to a courtyard). I already knew it wasn't the most efficient home being "F" rated by the agents that advertised it but as winter has set in I'm finding it harder and harder to not whack the heating up more and more each day.

Here's the breakdown; I have 3 "Mathius" storage heaters of 80's vintage. One large one in the front room, one medium sized one in the hallway and one little one in the bedroom. All of these are on all 7 hours of Economy 7 and all are on atleast 50% input and never use any output.
Now he reason I'm asking here is I hear alot of people saying they only need to use their heater for 3-4 hours at night on 30% input and that apparently lasts a whole day for them, hell my parents have even older heaters that are both downstairs and they manage to heat the entire 3 bedroom house comfortably, even upstairs! Is there something wrong if I'm still feeling cold with all 3 heaters on for 7 hours at night at 50%+ power in my one bedroom flat sized property? I know I'm at a disadvantage with no wall insulation and solid concrete flooring that has cold open air beneath it but is that enough to make it this hard to heat efficiently?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I feel limited being as I don't own he property (I rent). Even just someone who can let me know their storage heating setting and layouts would shead some light on this.

Cardew

With no wall insulation, and particularly with air underneath your concrete flooring, you will have huge heat loss. Thus comparison with your parent's house is invalid.

You need to turn the heat input on the storage heaters up to maximum input and not leave them at 50%. It is appreciated that will cost more, but that is the penalty of a poorly insulated property.

P.S.
Your storage heaters being 1980's vintage will not affect their efficiency - in that for the same electricity input, you will get out the same heat output as any other storage heater.

Solvalou

Thanks for the clarification. That would explain why it's rated so poorly on the as before moving in. Is there anything I can do to improve it as a tennant?

DREKLY

hardboard sheets, thick underlay, heavy carpets, rugs on top !!!!

oh, and an electric blanket....