Electraflow - What Tariff??? mcdonaldwaterstorage

ffeindadifyr

My parents have moved into a property with an Electraflow unit installed. I am trying to assist them with chossing the correct tariff for their usage. They are retired so spend a fair bit of time in their home over the daytime.

Does anyone here have this installed? Is the electraflow meant to work in a similar manner to storage heaters? ie. should they be using ae economy 7/10 to heat the watertank over night? Will that keep the radiators hot enough for the whole day and evening?

I would appreciate as much info/help that you can give me.

Thanks :beer:

Richie-from-the-Boro

Wet electric is without dispute THE most expensive electric heating system ever.

Tends to be either no storage.or with a hot water storage. The issues are it tends to be on E10 (hours) not E7 (hours) an exotic, uncompetitive tariff which the few remaining providers constantly seek to take subscribers off.

You need an absolute minimum of 12kW of heating elements to fill the thermal store overnight to avoid drawing core rate expensive electricity during the day.so the word storage is important in heating the amount of water needed.

I've no idea of the size/insulation etc of the property or the kW storage of water of the heating system. I don't envy your problem and wish I could give you more positive advice my friend. Best of luck.

Benight

ffeindadifyr wrote: »

My parents have moved into a property with an Electraflow unit installed. I am trying to assist them with chossing the correct tariff for their usage. They are retired so spend a fair bit of time in their home over the daytime.

Does anyone here have this installed? Is the electraflow meant to work in a similar manner to storage heaters? ie. should they be using ae economy 7/10 to heat the watertank over night? Will that keep the radiators hot enough for the whole day and evening?

I would appreciate as much info/help that you can give me.

Thanks :beer:

As you indicate, the Electraflow Boiler & Thermal store is a product manufactured by McDonald Water Storage Ltd, based in Fife.

Full details of the system, including brochure & instructions are available from their website.
https://www.mcdonaldwaterstorage.com/products/Electric-wet-central-heating.

I suggest you print the webpage, together with the downloads available, and pass all this information to your parents.

As you will see, the product comes in various formats, and you appear to be asking the question over what tariff in the wrong order. i.e. the decision over what boiler was to be installed should have taken into account what tariff was proposed to be used.

e.g. there are various options that allow the boiler to be heated by an external boiler, or solar heating. It also comes in various sizes. Vented or unvented, etc.

As I see it, the tank itself is simply a thermal store. If used for domestic hot water only, and it was suitably sized, then an overnight heat should be adequate for the whole day's hot water.

However, it is no where near big enough to provide space heating without additional input. But as a thermal store, it will provide the benefit of immediate heat when called for.

Bearing in mind where this company is based, I suggest this really is a product that can only reasonably be used as electric only in a cost effective manner using one of the special tariffs that provide low cost electricity for heating purposes during the day.
Scottish Power, for example, have a legacy tariff to those in Southern Scotland that allow this. SSE have a similar legacy tariff in Northern Scotland.

It may be that a suitable tariff is available on request from a particular supplier whereever they live, but there will be little choice I'm afraid.

ffeindadifyr

Thanks both. It seems a strange system... I contacted the manufacturers- and theu suggested that https://octopus.energy/agile/ might be a good way forwards. The manual is incredibly confusing due to the no of variations. I have contacted the original installer for more info- ar my parents also have solar cells installed... this is a new build that they have moved into and it seems very little thought has gone into the design of the heating here. They are lucky to still be in an E7/E10 area in mid-wales, as there is no gas supply to that location. I will look further into what you both said. Thank you, and if you have any further advice I'd be thankful!

ffeindadifyr

Just for anyone coming to this thread in future... bulb also offer an interesting Smart Tariff deal, which seems a good fit to these types of systems: https://help.bulb.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/360017795731-About-Bulb-s-smart-tariff If you find this info useful I have a referral to Bulb in the referral thread.

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Off-peak 7am to 4pm, 7pm to 11pm 7am to 11pm
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