Total Heating Total Control

cessna

I live in an old Victorian stone house, with an open fire with back boiler and a multi fuel stove. The house was my mums but she recently passed away, I was always trying to look into heating upgrades for her but she insisted that she didn’t want the hassle of the upheaval. 

I’m also on THTC, I’ve just asked SSE for the annual usage and that was 4366 KWH Standard and 22076 KWH off peak! The unit charge is 23.79 Standard and off peak (or whatever they call it) 13.8. THTC gives a boost during the day but NEO has a unit rate of 12.99 on both standard and off peak. I’d surely be better off with that? 

In the long term I’m thinking of getting the open fire changed to a stove with boiler supplying rads and hot water OR should I go with a Angus Evo Multi Fuel Boiler. I went through 3 sacks of anthracite in 3 weeks at £19 per sack.

tim_p

Doing some quick maths you’ll be about 650 / year better off, or £12.50 / week. It’s a crippling cost whichever way you look at it though. That THTC tariff is doing you no favours. 

Gerry1

Your electricity consumption is extremely high, it's as if there was no other heating.  Check those kWh figures, use your own meter readings to work out your annual consumption.  You have been sending monthly readings, haven't you?  Never rely on projections and savings claims by others.

Why are you on THTC?  It was intended for low capacity underfloor and storage heaters back in the day when energy was cheap and storage heaters were primitive, just a box of bricks with little insulation and no clever controls or programmers.  Did you have this sort of heating and is it still in use?

If so, it might be worth considering Economy 7, perhaps in conjunction with an increase in capacity e.g. by adding an NSH or two and/or 'cascading' them.  You can then choose any supplier rather than being locked in to SSE and few (if any) others.

cessna

tim_p said:

Doing some quick maths you’ll be about 650 / year better off, or £12.50 / week. It’s a crippling cost whichever way you look at it though. That THTC tariff is doing you no favours. 

Def agree with you there Tim p 

cessna

Gerry1 said:

Your electricity consumption is extremely high, it's as if there was no other heating.  Check those kWh figures, use your own meter readings to work out your annual consumption.  You have been sending monthly readings, haven't you?  Never rely on projections and savings claims by others.

Why are you on THTC?  It was intended for low capacity underfloor and storage heaters back in the day when energy was cheap and storage heaters were primitive, just a box of bricks with little insulation and no clever controls or programmers.  Did you have this sort of heating and is it still in use?

If so, it might be worth considering Economy 7, perhaps in conjunction with an increase in capacity e.g. by adding an NSH or two and/or 'cascading' them.  You can then choose any supplier rather than being locked in to SSE and few (if any) others.

So I had another chat with another SSE advisor who said that the kWh figure I was given for my mothers annual use was incorrect and in fact it’s 4171 on std and 11309 on the THTC tariff. They have moved me into the variable rate which is 22p std and 16.92p THTC. My mum passed away on NY day so I’m just getting to grips with the history. She was on THTC as she’d always had storage heaters. They were changed a good few years ago, to Dimplex 1.7kw heaters. She only used 4 out of 7 of them - due to cost. The THTC has that boost during the day but the rate is higher than the other me I posted earlier (12.99p) so doesn’t make sense as if I need to boost them and was on that tariff  then is still be better off surely? 

Not sure I get what you mean ref increase in capacity and NSH...? Sorry brain is all over the place atm. 

Really appreciate everyone’s comments ;-)

Gerry1

cessna said:

Gerry1 said:

Your electricity consumption is extremely high, it's as if there was no other heating.  Check those kWh figures, use your own meter readings to work out your annual consumption.  You have been sending monthly readings, haven't you?  Never rely on projections and savings claims by others.

Why are you on THTC?  It was intended for low capacity underfloor and storage heaters back in the day when energy was cheap and storage heaters were primitive, just a box of bricks with little insulation and no clever controls or programmers.  Did you have this sort of heating and is it still in use?

If so, it might be worth considering Economy 7, perhaps in conjunction with an increase in capacity e.g. by adding an NSH or two and/or 'cascading' them.  You can then choose any supplier rather than being locked in to SSE and few (if any) others.

So I had another chat with another SSE advisor who said that the kWh figure I was given for my mothers annual use was incorrect and in fact it’s 4171 on std and 11309 on the THTC tariff. They have moved me into the variable rate which is 22p std and 16.92p THTC. My mum passed away on NY day so I’m just getting to grips with the history. She was on THTC as she’d always had storage heaters. They were changed a good few years ago, to Dimplex 1.7kw heaters. She only used 4 out of 7 of them - due to cost. The THTC has that boost during the day but the rate is higher than the other me I posted earlier (12.99p) so doesn’t make sense as if I need to boost them and was on that tariff  then is still be better off surely? 

Not sure I get what you mean ref increase in capacity and NSH...? Sorry brain is all over the place atm. 

Really appreciate everyone’s comments ;-)

If the Dimplex 1.7kw heaters are panel ones (light enough to pick up) then you need to be on a single rate tariff (probably about 13 - 14p/kWh all the time) because they will need to be on in the daytime.  If they are heavy storage heaters then you'd be better off on E7 from the cheapest supplier.

However, the risk can be that if the NSHs were chosen for THTC with its afternoon boost they may be under dimensioned by today's E7 standards and may get cool by the evening.  In this situation the answer is to increase the capacity, e.g. buy one big NSH for the living room, move an existing one to another area etc and mothball or get rid of the smallest one, rather like passing down children's clothes from the oldest to the youngest.  But as you have seven, you may be already able to juggle them around.

cessna

Gerry1 said:

cessna said:

Gerry1 said:

Your electricity consumption is extremely high, it's as if there was no other heating.  Check those kWh figures, use your own meter readings to work out your annual consumption.  You have been sending monthly readings, haven't you?  Never rely on projections and savings claims by others.

Why are you on THTC?  It was intended for low capacity underfloor and storage heaters back in the day when energy was cheap and storage heaters were primitive, just a box of bricks with little insulation and no clever controls or programmers.  Did you have this sort of heating and is it still in use?

If so, it might be worth considering Economy 7, perhaps in conjunction with an increase in capacity e.g. by adding an NSH or two and/or 'cascading' them.  You can then choose any supplier rather than being locked in to SSE and few (if any) others.

So I had another chat with another SSE advisor who said that the kWh figure I was given for my mothers annual use was incorrect and in fact it’s 4171 on std and 11309 on the THTC tariff. They have moved me into the variable rate which is 22p std and 16.92p THTC. My mum passed away on NY day so I’m just getting to grips with the history. She was on THTC as she’d always had storage heaters. They were changed a good few years ago, to Dimplex 1.7kw heaters. She only used 4 out of 7 of them - due to cost. The THTC has that boost during the day but the rate is higher than the other me I posted earlier (12.99p) so doesn’t make sense as if I need to boost them and was on that tariff  then is still be better off surely? 

Not sure I get what you mean ref increase in capacity and NSH...? Sorry brain is all over the place atm. 

Really appreciate everyone’s comments ;-)

If the Dimplex 1.7kw heaters are panel ones (light enough to pick up) then you need to be on a single rate tariff (probably about 13 - 14p/kWh all the time) because they will need to be on in the daytime.  If they are heavy storage heaters then you'd be better off on E7 from the cheapest supplier.

However, the risk can be that if the NSHs were chosen for THTC with its afternoon boost they may be under dimensioned by today's E7 standards and may get cool by the evening.  In this situation the answer is to increase the capacity, e.g. buy one big NSH for the living room, move an existing one to another area etc and mothball or get rid of the smallest one, rather like passing down children's clothes from the oldest to the youngest.  But as you have seven, you may be already able to juggle them around.

They definitely ain’t the light ones.
One other thing SSE said the second time I called today was that I couldn’t get another tariff due to the fact that I had the THTC meters. So I asked them how I can change them and they said they could if I were to choose one of their other tariffs. Don’t know if the new (12.99 p) supplier would change the meters. Doesn’t seem fair tbh. 

I see what you mean by capacity but that still means a high bill. 

I wonder what the best solution is for a house like this. 

Gerry1

In the short term your best bet is likely to be a switch to E7 and then changing to a cheaper supplier, possibly increasing storage capacity by adding some NSHs and / or moving them around if the evenings are cool.

Turn the output control down before going to bed and up in the evening if it's too cool.

Make sure any immersion heater isn't using daytime electricity.