Is E7 always the best for electric only flat?

Magnus91

Hello all,

I purchased a 2 bed electric only, ground floor flat that was built in the 80's in November 2018, moved in in December, but with Christmas, January was my first proper full month there.

When I first moved in the flat was on E7 and had one storage heater in the living room. However I took out this heater as it was was huge, old, dusty and was just in the wrong place in my living room. I also switched to a single rate tariff, although all the E7 circuitry is still there, they just combine the two readings.

Since then I've been using a couple of different heaters; oil filled, panel and convector. I like the idea/safety of the oil filled radiators especially combined with smart plugs to turn on, but find they take forever to heat up the room enough even though they are a sufficient kw. I had a panel heater from Amazon which I really liked until it nearly caught fire :shocked: So now I have a Dimplex 3kw portable convector heater which is great and as I live alone I just move it from room to room for now and I'll probably end up getting more for next winter.

Ideally what I want is a system where I can control all the heating together or each room separately, that I can put on when I'm leaving work so the flat is warm when I arrive but that I also don't have to worry about it being on when I'm not there safety wise.

I've found a local company that could provide this with fitted german electric radiators but I imagine it'll be £2k ish and it's hard to justify knowing they won't be any cheaper to run than my argos heaters! :rotfl: And I think they'll be more similar to oil filled radiators rather than the convector one I like.

I've found it's been difficult to get advice on how to achieve this because everywhere online seems to say that E7 and storage heaters is the best.

However, this doesn't seem right for me as I have an electric shower and a dishwasher (which doesn't have a timer) so I don't heat my hot water tank unless I'm planning on having a bath (about once a month). I also work full time so I'm out of the house from about 9am to 6pm.
I imagine I'll be paying for a lot of heat that I won't be utilizing.

Typically I've been been heating the living room for about 3 hours in the evening, then the bathroom for about 30 minutes, and then bedroom for about 30 minutes. I also have an electric blanket to pre-heat the bed, but generally turn it off then as it's too hot overnight! One day of the weekend I generally heat the whole place just to air it, and if I'm in the other day either just heat the living room or the hallway and kitchen as well.

My electric bill for January was £100, which I think is pretty good considering we even had a day of snow! This doesn't seem too bad for the 4 ish months of winter and it's hard to imagine E7 saving me enough money during this period to make up for the higher day rate during the rest of the year. Of course I'd also have to factor in the cost of buying new storage heaters. I also don't mind having to pay a bit extra for the convenience of having on demand heat anyway.

I guess I just wanted reaffirmation that I'm not crazy for not wanting E7.

Sorry for the long post, just good to get my thoughts out I guess!

wavelets

Magnus91 wrote: »

Hello all,

I purchased a 2 bed electric only, ground floor flat that was built in the 80's in November 2018, moved in in December, but with Christmas, January was my first proper full month there.

When I first moved in the flat was on E7 and had one storage heater in the living room. However I took out this heater as it was was huge, old, dusty and was just in the wrong place in my living room. I also switched to a single rate tariff, although all the E7 circuitry is still there, they just combine the two readings.

Since then I've been using a couple of different heaters; oil filled, panel and convector. I like the idea/safety of the oil filled radiators especially combined with smart plugs to turn on, but find they take forever to heat up the room enough even though they are a sufficient kw. I had a panel heater from Amazon which I really liked until it nearly caught fire :shocked: So now I have a Dimplex 3kw portable convector heater which is great and as I live alone I just move it from room to room for now and I'll probably end up getting more for next winter.

Ideally what I want is a system where I can control all the heating together or each room separately, that I can put on when I'm leaving work so the flat is warm when I arrive but that I also don't have to worry about it being on when I'm not there safety wise.

I've found a local company that could provide this with fitted german electric radiators but I imagine it'll be £2k ish and it's hard to justify knowing they won't be any cheaper to run than my argos heaters! :rotfl: And I think they'll be more similar to oil filled radiators rather than the convector one I like.

I've found it's been difficult to get advice on how to achieve this because everywhere online seems to say that E7 and storage heaters is the best.

However, this doesn't seem right for me as I have an electric shower and a dishwasher (which doesn't have a timer) so I don't heat my hot water tank unless I'm planning on having a bath (about once a month). I also work full time so I'm out of the house from about 9am to 6pm.
I imagine I'll be paying for a lot of heat that I won't be utilizing.

Typically I've been been heating the living room for about 3 hours in the evening, then the bathroom for about 30 minutes, and then bedroom for about 30 minutes. I also have an electric blanket to pre-heat the bed, but generally turn it off then as it's too hot overnight! One day of the weekend I generally heat the whole place just to air it, and if I'm in the other day either just heat the living room or the hallway and kitchen as well.

My electric bill for January was £100, which I think is pretty good considering we even had a day of snow! This doesn't seem too bad for the 4 ish months of winter and it's hard to imagine E7 saving me enough money during this period to make up for the higher day rate during the rest of the year. Of course I'd also have to factor in the cost of buying new storage heaters. I also don't mind having to pay a bit extra for the convenience of having on demand heat anyway.

I guess I just wanted reaffirmation that I'm not crazy for not wanting E7.

Sorry for the long post, just good to get my thoughts out I guess!

Plenty of threads discussing this already. Please use the search function.

I'm sorry, we cannot give medical advice here, so am unable to comment on your mental health.

matelodave

You could try something like this and use yur smart phone to control it and set up schedules. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07CKVZFGX/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B07CKVZFGX&pd_rd_w=VVf5n&pf_rd_p=8e5be0e3-b258-4b06-8b6e-695b24f935a4&pd_rd_wg=3Yh4N&pf_rd_r=ETWYV03D79MC2V0MHSEK&pd_rd_r=b521f59f-28a4-11e9-9163-391412f074f0

other makes like Belkin are available

It's not ever so expensive to get one and see if it will do what you want.

The problem with on-demand heating on a single rate tariff is that it's more expensive to run than storage heaters on an off-peak tariff.

Any sort of electrical heating will cost the same to run for the same energy consumption although oil filled rads are slower to heat up and slower to cool down than say a panel, convector or even a fan heater. They just deliver the heat in a differnt way.

Do not be tempted to buy heaters with magic fairy dust or any other super-duper, extra efficient very expensive exotic fillings.

Just have a trawl around this formum for Fischer, Rointe and Intelliheat if you want to hear horror stories from those who've been persuaded how good they are

mmmmikey

Hi - no not crazy, there are circumstances where E7 isn't necessarily the most cost effective solution, and your reasoning as to why it might not be best for you looks sound to me. If your non-heating load is high in relation to your heating load and predominantly during the day you could spend more extra on day rates than you save on night rates. In order to compare costs you need to know your heating and non-heating loads, which you can either estimate from first principles or measure using a smart meter or other energy monitor. Once you've got these figures you can use uswitch or similar to compare. In the meantime, do have a look through the forum and have a good chuckle about how emotional the debate gets

Magnus91

matelodave wrote: »

You could try something like this and use yur smart phone to control it and set up schedules. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07CKVZFGX/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B07CKVZFGX&pd_rd_w=VVf5n&pf_rd_p=8e5be0e3-b258-4b06-8b6e-695b24f935a4&pd_rd_wg=3Yh4N&pf_rd_r=ETWYV03D79MC2V0MHSEK&pd_rd_r=b521f59f-28a4-11e9-9163-391412f074f0

other makes like Belkin are available

It's not ever so expensive to get one and see if it will do what you want.

The problem with on-demand heating on a single rate tariff is that it's more expensive to run than storage heaters on an off-peak tariff.

Any sort of electrical heating will cost the same to run for the same energy consumption although oil filled rads are slower to heat up and slower to cool down than say a panel, convector or even a fan heater. They just deliver the heat in a differnt way.

Do not be tempted to buy heaters with magic fairy dust or any other super-duper, extra efficient very expensive exotic fillings.

Just have a trawl around this formum for Fischer, Rointe and Intelliheat if you want to hear horror stories from those who've been persuaded how good they are

Thanks!

Funnily enough I do actually have those exact smart plugs, the problem is I don't trust them to be used with anything other than oil-filled radiators and then again I need to make sure they're on the correct settings on the actual radiator because usually I start it off on the highest setting to heat the room faster but then turn it down once it's been reached, but forget to turn them back up again for the next day

Those heaters with magic fairy dust do have a great marketing team, even though I know they're no different it still makes me want them! But I will definitely resist though.

mmmmikey wrote: »

Hi - no not crazy, there are circumstances where E7 isn't necessarily the most cost effective solution, and your reasoning as to why it might not be best for you looks sound to me. If your non-heating load is high in relation to your heating load and predominantly during the day you could spend more extra on day rates than you save on night rates. In order to compare costs you need to know your heating and non-heating loads, which you can either estimate from first principles or measure using a smart meter or other energy monitor. Once you've got these figures you can use uswitch or similar to compare. In the meantime, do have a look through the forum and have a good chuckle about how emotional the debate gets

Thanks very much for this!

Yes, over the last couple of months I think I have managed read every forum post across the internet on this topic but of course you never find someone in your exact position so it's great to get some personal advice and know I'm not mad

I think if I was heating water too that might be enough to make me consider E7, but as it is the only thing on during the off-peak would be the fridge/freezer and then other small appliances like clocks and chargers etc. So it would just be mainly the storage heaters, which I don't think would account for 40% of my electric usage over the year, which I think is the magic number you should aim for to make E7 worth it (not even factoring in the initial cost of storage heaters).

I don't have a smart meter just yet but do have two smart plugs that can measure energy consumption so I have been using them just to get an idea of the cost of heating. Although they can't be used with my 3KW heater as the load is too high.

Thanks again both!

[Deleted User]

As a rough rule of thumb E7 is worth having if you think you use at least a third of your electricity during the cheaper seven hours overnight. Less than that it won't save you anything.
I'm with Eon and use 37% on E7 so I make a small saving of about £20 a year on my particular tariff.

wavelets

Deleted_User wrote: »

As a rough rule of thumb E7 is worth having if you think you use at least a third of your electricity during the cheaper seven hours overnight. Less than that it won't save you anything.
I'm with Eon and use 37% on E7 so I make a small saving of about £20 a year on my particular tariff.

That's an extremly rough rule of thumb though.

The range of tariffs for E7 varies so much, there is no useful rule of thumb.
e.g. some suppliers will charge you exactly the same for E7 (charging the same for normal and chaep rates) as a single rate tariff ... so no matter how much cheap rate you use it will never be chaeper than a single rate

At the opposite end of the spectrum (at least for the supply region I looked at) someone suggested those on an E7 meter should go with Yorkshire Energy who apparently would allow a single rate tariff anyway.
My investigations concluded that would be a very poor decision
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=75417891&postcount=22
i.e. any electricity usage would always be cheaper on E7

So best advice is to consult a comparison site and see for your own specific circumstances (usage, region) what is cheapest. It takes less than 5 minutes.