Which electric heating system do tenants prefer?

DaftyDuck

Do at least briefly consider air source heat pumps. May not be appropriate in the circumstance, and cost to install is high, but it does cut running costs for heating in half or more.

tacpot12

What about underfloor heating? Is there any landlord experience with it?

dannim12345

Hello, I've just left a flat with storage heaters. Luckily the building was pretty warm & they only were needed when the weather was pretty cold. They weren't great but I think the biggest problem is education, I knew they were storage heater and looked online and found out about economy 7 etc however the girl I moved in with hardly have a clue what they were. Leaving a manual & some basic guidance about how they work, economy 7 etc for tenants when they move in would really help.

rtho782

Electricity will ALWAYS be expensive to heat. At the end of the day you can only convert 100% of the electricity to heat, and electricity is 3.5x the price of gas per KwH, so 3.5x as expensive.

Storage heaters try to be cheaper with E7 making the electricity cheaper overnight, but as you say, no option to boost, it makes your daytime electricity more expensive, and ends up bot being much better.

Underfloor electric heating is still just 100% efficient so still expensive.

The one, and only, way to have a good cheap efficient and practical electric heating system is with a heat pump, be it air source or ground source. If you do Air to Water you can have normal radiators and the RHI payments will actually pay for the install over the course of a few years. It ends up being free.

The reason this works is that instead of converting 100% of the electricity to heat, and getting 1KwH of heat for 1KwH of electricity, you are using the electricity to run a "heat pump" that just sucks existing heat in from outside, so your 1KwH of "pumping energy" gives you 4KwH of heat, not created but moved in from outside.

This makes it as cheap or cheaper to run than gas, and effectively 400% efficient.

Your install costs will be higher than storage heaters, but the RHI will offset this long term and it will be very cheap to run. Should increase house value.

Norman_Castle

Could you improve the insulation and draught proofing?

beeg0d

wookie6 wrote: »

Thanks for the reply, I am quickly coming to the same conclusion (i.e. regular storage heaters in main areas (hall and lounge) plus regular high efficiency convestion heaters in all other areas). Do you mind me asking which manufacturers you have gone for and whether you've been happy with them?

With regards to the "boost" option this sounds perfect but I would need to get them wired into the peak supply as they are currently only wired into the off-peak supply).

Unfortunatly im away from home for the next week so i cant give you the manufactures names. The storage heaters ive got are new and work really well, though on colder days they do loose most of their heat by around 10pm. Mine have both an input and output setting cold days input is on max and output is on 6 of 9 (if i turned it down it would proberlly stay a bit wormer later, but then the mornings would be colder. I find the convestion heaters make up for the last few hours of heat needed. I dont find it too costly (though more then gsh) and i recon with newer more efficient convestion heaters that cost would come down somewhat. Oddly enough it took me and 4 plumbers nearly a year to convince the LL he coulnt have gsh installed unless he wanted to pay £40`000 to dig up the main road and communial carpark outside.

Another benefit for you as a landlord (though as i tennant i shoulnt be giving ideas like this to LL) is if one of the heaters fails as there are convestion heaters in the other rooms you will unlikey get a mandoroty repair notice from the council as you have provided other heat source.

Just to check as this could be the souce of your previous tennants problem with costs (it took me a couple of months to realise it). If you have a twin mode emersion heater make sure the tennant knows which switch is for the main water heating (the economy 7 switch) and which is the boost (eco 7 should be on all the time, boost only when boost is really needed). When i first moved in i thought the lower element had failed as the red active light was never on and so always had the boost mode on untill 1 evening when i had to grab something from the airing cupboard and noticed the other light was on. If you dont have a twin mode emersion heater why not? and secondly make sure that is wired into the econ7 ring ruther then mains.

tim123456789

wookie6 wrote: »

I am in the process of replacing the old storage heaters in the flat I rent out. Previous tenants have complained that the heating costs were high.

If the costs of heating a house with SH is high, then either the tenants are using them wrongly or the house is so badly insulated that any form of heating will cost ££££££££££.


Modern SH are not going to be significantly more efficient than old ones, perhaps 10-20% improvement.


I don't know where you got the figures that direct panel heaters are 20-40% more expensive, for any given amount of heat output they are 200% more expensive (assuming that the SHs are on the correct Economy 7 tariff).


The problem with SH is that they provide "all day" heating and that the cost of keeping the house warm whilst it is empty makes them not very efficient for people who are out all day, but even so, keeping them on will cost less than just turning on a panel heater when you get home (or even an hour before if you have a smart timer) because the house will be so cold that the heater is on full blast all evening.


Do you know what the day/night time readings of the tenants bills are.


This will help us calculate if the problem is on of poor insulation and or poor use.


Finally, if you do put in a new system, you don't need to (I would go so far as to say shouldn't) put SHs in bedrooms, this makes them too warm overnight, and provided that tenants learn to keep their bedroom door closed during the day the day time heat is useless. Always put panel heaters in bedrooms.


Finally, finally, don't fall for the "modern" storage hearer con. SH that plug into a 13 amp socket.


These are not storage heaters, they are clever, and overly expensive panel heaters. The claimed costs savings are fictional.

wantonnoodle

I'm another who would recommend Air Source heat pumps. My parents live in the countryside and have had over the years every type of electric and coal fired heating system. They have had an ASHP heating system for the past few years and would never go back to any other heating system. Its one of the cheapest and cleanest systems you could have, and is so cheap you can run it 24/7 without breaking the bank; in fact, that is what they do, just turning the temperature on the thermostat down when they don't need it quite so warm.

luvchocolate

I recently vacated a 2 bed flat with S.H I lived there for 8 years, once I understood how they work...thanks to the energy forum, I have been more than happy with them.
I never turned them on in the bedroom and as said in a previous post left the other doors open.
Water heated trough the night, did washing, food in a slow cooker.
My bill D.D was £51 per month

Fuzzyness

tacpot12 wrote: »

What about underfloor heating? Is there any landlord experience with it?

yes. the house i let out has it but that is only because it was supposed to be my home and not a rental property (long story which i wont bore you with). my tenants have always enjoyed the benefit of it but i wouldnt recommend it as installing it on an existing property would be expensive and you wouldnt get the benefit of it.