Elnur Gabarron Heaters
sweetgirl2015
Forumite 163 Posts
Hi, not sure if anyone can help, but I want to share this experience anyway to see if anyone else has has simular problems.
We had a grant passed late last year to have all our night storage heaters to be replaced with new modern ones.
The heaters they fitted are made by a company called Elnur Gabarron, but for security reasons I won't mention the company behind who actually fitted them.
Our problem with the heaters are running costs which is far higher compared to our old storage heaters.
On average to run all 4 of the new ones our smart meter tells us our electric usage per day was at worst £8 a day, at best was £7.
As you can see that would cost a wopping £240 a month, compared to when we had our old heaters our electric would cost at best £90 a month, at worst £100.
I have contacted the company who waa behind the grant and who installed them, and they have been out now 3 times to try and adjust them to see if they can cut the costs, they even added us to new loft insulation and installed that on top of what we already had, but even that hasent worked.
We tried isolating certain heaters thinking it might have been a faulty one, but it wasent that.
With only one on our electric is costing roughly the same as our old ones all on.
So where do we stand now because the grant and new heaters was meant to save us money, yet has cost us a fortune, we now have an outstanding bill of nearly £300 because our payments were set to £90 from previous years. So we have had to increase the payments to £130 a month to try and catch up.
Basically we have lost the heaters which were ok, but been given ones that were supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread, yet they are far from that, can we request to have them removed and ones fitted simular to our old ones? Failing that we will be stuck with high winter bills.
Any ideas on what we should push for?
We had a grant passed late last year to have all our night storage heaters to be replaced with new modern ones.
The heaters they fitted are made by a company called Elnur Gabarron, but for security reasons I won't mention the company behind who actually fitted them.
Our problem with the heaters are running costs which is far higher compared to our old storage heaters.
On average to run all 4 of the new ones our smart meter tells us our electric usage per day was at worst £8 a day, at best was £7.
As you can see that would cost a wopping £240 a month, compared to when we had our old heaters our electric would cost at best £90 a month, at worst £100.
I have contacted the company who waa behind the grant and who installed them, and they have been out now 3 times to try and adjust them to see if they can cut the costs, they even added us to new loft insulation and installed that on top of what we already had, but even that hasent worked.
We tried isolating certain heaters thinking it might have been a faulty one, but it wasent that.
With only one on our electric is costing roughly the same as our old ones all on.
So where do we stand now because the grant and new heaters was meant to save us money, yet has cost us a fortune, we now have an outstanding bill of nearly £300 because our payments were set to £90 from previous years. So we have had to increase the payments to £130 a month to try and catch up.
Basically we have lost the heaters which were ok, but been given ones that were supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread, yet they are far from that, can we request to have them removed and ones fitted simular to our old ones? Failing that we will be stuck with high winter bills.
Any ideas on what we should push for?
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Replies
Also all electric heaters are roughly 99.9% efficient, so it is very hard for a change to mean you use more electricity, however changes in usage patterns can make a difference. Also check your smart meter display is set up properly (eg the unit rates could be wrong on the display), it might not be and it would be worth verifying your actual usage on the meter vs previous usage to see if you are using more energy.
Elnur’s website does state the storage heaters need a 24hr supply, whereas I recall 1970/80’s were only powered at night on E7. Nothing wrong with the heaters but you need to make sure the heating elements are not powered during the day.
We argued the case that they are recharging during the day, but they just said that they are designed to do that.
They are meant to be emailing me back with the next steps to do because we said we are not happy with the current situation as we are paying nearly 4 times as much towards our heating, and they basically admitted sonething isnt right.
My thinking is surely if they are rolling out these heaters all over the country surely we can't be the only ones with the higher usage rates.
I checked the smart meter with Octopus and they said its accurate as they too can connect to it, and sure enough just since January which is when the heaters were fitted we have already spent £291 more than last year, baring in mind its still only March.
I was just wondering do I have a case to get these ripped out and get them replaced with old style ones?
Our monthly payments were set at £85, but since January we have had an over spend of £291 but thats never happened before.
Besides the company has admitted the new heaters are running way too expensive, and they promised to let me know what their next step is.
I asked them are other customers suffering the same thing, but they keep dodging my question about that. Perhaps they are not allowed to discuss other people's business.
The £85 is probably a year around figure - quite possibly £150 in winter / £20 in summer.
I suggest you forget about £££'s and focus on your actual kWh usage from your bills: has your day rate usage and night rate usage gone up and down respectively? What accounts for the increase in your bills?
Are the new heaters higher rated than the old? If so, they will of course draw more power.