Which electric heaters are the best?

fletcher75

Hello and thanks in advance for any advice.
My husband and I have recently bought our first home and it has no gas mains so the house is heated by 30 year old Dimplex night storage heaters. I experienced them during the tail end of winter and they are terrible to come home to after a day's work as the house is cold. Our first monthly electric bill had also tripled to be £160.
We've started asking around for quotes for new electric heating and wondered if anyone had any advice on which company to go with. Our experience so far is this: Fischer are extortionate and I didn't like the pushy sales person where we had to sign up to get their discounted deal. Trust are very reasonable but they are a new company so I'm wondering if my 25 year guarantee will actually be worth anything should they not succeed. We have quotes to come from North East heating and potentially Sunflow. They all tell me the same thing...that their heaters are the best and most economical. I just don't know who to believe. Any advice would be very welcomed. Thank you.

Richie-from-the-Boro

See: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3516223/fischer-storage-heaters

Gerry1

Sadly, it has to be said that you've made a big mistake if it's absolutely impossible to get a gas supply installed.

In the short term, you could consider switching on the storage heaters on Friday night and off on Sunday night, using plug in electric heaters as required during the week, but the latter will be mostly at expensive daytime E7 rates.  Read the meters every night and morning, do the sums and see whether it makes sense.  Make sure the immersion heater only uses cheap overnight E7 rates and the Boost switch is always off.

Assuming you'll be staying there for a while, you could consider upgrading one or more NSHs to well insulated fan assisted programmable storage heaters such as Dimplex Quantum.  You won't waste so much heat overnight and during the working day, and you can top them up in the evening if it's too cool, but this will still be at expensive daytime E7 rates.

All plug in electric heaters will be equally efficient, whether it's a £15 fan heater from B&M or a magic dust ££££ Fischer one.  They will also be equally and horrendously expensive to run.

The other possibility is a heat pump, if the property is suitable.  Likely to be dearer than gas but cheaper than storage or plug in electric heating.  Might be worth reading the relevant threads in these forums; it seems to be a bit of a black art.

I trust you've done a whole of the market E7 comparison?  Start with the Citizens Advice and 'Switch with Which?' sites.

stewie_griffin

If the house is cold when you get home from work you've either got the input turned too low, the output turned too high, they're not big enough for the room or not all the elements are working any more due to the age.

When I moved in to my home about 10 years ago there was one of the original storage heaters, which was nearly 40 years old. After the first winter I replaced it with a very basic new storage heater and my home has never been cold since. It cost me less than £300 at the time and I fitted it myself (I wouldn't recommend this unless you're confident in what you're doing).

Richie-from-the-Boro

Either under specified Dimplex (or any brand) or learn how to use night store heating. What model of Dimplex?

It's a tin full of bricks, cheaper storing of cheaper heat output depends on 'how many bricks'  and of course tariff. Tell the group the model and we may be able to help. Essentially 70% radiated storage and (30%) minimum convection is the secret. Best of luck.

Let the group know, you're off-gas like millions in the UK.

fletcher75

Thanks so much everyone for your advice. We are not able to get has as we live in quite a small village where gas is not supplied. We don't want to go oil as we want to use green energy.
The Dimplex models we have are xt18 series g 1984.
We compared our electric tariff and to go E7 it would actually have been much more expensive. However, as we have only been here a month, these projections are based on the last owners' usage so we will reassess this soon.
We understand that we will have to pay more for electric than gas and have come to terms with this but we just cannot afford to keep paying £160 a month. Thanks once again for your help.

fletcher75

stewie_griffin said:

If the house is cold when you get home from work you've either got the input turned too low, the output turned too high, they're not big enough for the room or not all the elements are working any more due to the age.

When I moved in to my home about 10 years ago there was one of the original storage heaters, which was nearly 40 years old. After the first winter I replaced it with a very basic new storage heater and my home has never been cold since. It cost me less than £300 at the time and I fitted it myself (I wouldn't recommend this unless you're confident in what you're doing).

Thank you. Did your energy bill go down as this is another factor for us...heat loss and expensive bills.

Norman_Castle

Upgading your homes insulation where possible is where I'd start.

fletcher75

Norman_Castle said:

Upgading your homes insulation where possible is where I'd start.

Totally agree. We are going to further insulate the loft and of possible, the walls.

Talldave

What unit rate are you paying?  I'm paying 11.45p.  With storage heaters and overnight heating of water, the bulk of your consumption will be overnight, so there should be an E7 tariff that works out cheaper for you.

I totally agree with @stewie_griffin above if you're coming home to a cold house.  Fix the insulation and make sure the heaters are the right size for the space and fully working.  You don't need anything more than a storage heater, which don't come with any stupid advertising claims about magic dust or ceramic this and that.  As @Richie-from-the-Boro says, it's a box of hot bricks. You just need a big enough box with the right number of bricks, that are all getting heated!

If you're planning on staying in your house for a very (very) long time, then heat pumps might be the way forward (ground or air), but they are a bit of a black art and can gobble silly amounts of electricity if incorrectly specified/installed/configured.  If I owned a house (I don't) and was planning to stay, I'd be looking at ground source heat pump, solar panels and a powerwall - it's the closest to the self-sufficient Good Life you can get.

matelodave

As said, electric heating is expensive but by far the cheapest way to do it is with storage heaters but they have to be of the correct size and used correctly to get maximum benefit from them. Replacing them with panel heaters will cost a lot more to run. Again insulation is the key, you want to keep as much heat indoor as you can.

As you are now out of the heating season, try to get as much sorted out now as you can. If necessary get the heaters checked to ensure that all the elements are working correctly (as Richie says, they a re just a box of bricks with heating elements and a thermostat, so there's not a lot to go wrong). Learn how to use them properly, ideally keep the output control to zero and only increase it a bit in the evenings if necessary but shut right down overnight to get the maximum charge. 

Make sure you hot water tank is well insulated, even a foam sprayed one will benefit from an extra insulation jacket and even insulate the pipework at the top of the tank to reduce heat loss
Ensure that your hot water is only heated during the off peak period and avoid using the booster element because that uses peak rate leccy - dont waste hot water. With a bit of effort you should be able to make the tankful last a whole day.

See if you could use the washing machine, dryer and dishwasher etc overnight during the off peak period to make the most of cheaper leccy and avoid using supplementary heating as it will use peak rate leccy. Change your light bulbs to LEDs to save 90% of your lighting bill (especially if you've got halogen spots). Turn stuff off when it's not being used and ideally don't leave stuff on standby unless really necessary (like the SKY box)

Get yourselves on the best tariff, so explore the market - if you are using a lot of leccy then a penny a unit makes a lot of difference (we use 7000kwh a year so just 1p cost £70 a year)

Last but not least, monitor your consumption by getting into the habit of reading your meters yourself at least once a month , send the readings into your supplier and CHECK your bills to make sure that they are correctly using your readings and not estimates. (make sure you know which is the day and night registers on the meter and check that the bills are correctly using them - a  lot of queries relate to transposed day/night readings)

If you set up a spreadsheet and monitor it yourself rather than waiting for the bill to come in you'll be able to control your consumption because you'll learn what's using it, when you are using and and how much it costs and be able to optimise your day/night