Elnur Gabarron Heaters

Tomo123456

Do you have anymore update on your heater issues? We have just had 6 of these Elnur  storage heaters fitted under a grant scheme and the cost to run them is high! Approx 16 pounds a day sometimes less sometimes more before even making a cup of tea!) This is not sustainable for us and were wondering if there is any update from the installer or Elnur?

Billfoster

Tomo123456 said:

Do you have anymore update on your heater issues? We have just had 6 of these Elnur  storage heaters fitted under a grant scheme and the cost to run them is high! Approx 16 pounds a day sometimes less sometimes more before even making a cup of tea!) This is not sustainable for us and were wondering if there is any update from the installer or Elnur?

Hi Tomo123456...We have just had our 17 year old Creda night storage heaters replaced by Warmer Home Grants. We now have 2 Elnur Gabarron storage heaters, ECHHR20 and 40.
Only been in for a couple of weeks, but I was hopeful when I checked our consumption for February that it might be a bit lower than January.
No such luck.
Our overnight consumption is up by a third. The only difference to usage overnight is the new heaters.
Everything else is as before....absolutely.
We are all electric, and our December bill was £195, so we looked at trying to save.
The ancient 'inefficient' heaters worked fine...they only used cheaper Economy 7 power to store heat, and then cost nothing all day to release the heat. We were only persuaded to change them to 'save electricity'.
Now, these new heaters store heat overnight, but use fans during the day to come on and off as they see fit. Instead of the stored heat bleeding out all the time, the fans are on and off as the eco programme dictates. We are home all day, both 75 plus, and we are on the preset eco setting of 21 in the day, 18 at night.
The room is just about tolerable. With the old heaters I was in shirtsleeves all day. Now I'm in a sweater.
No way am I going to tolerate using more electricity to be colder during the day.
I know it's early days, but I don't have a good feeling about this change.
And reading the other comments, I think there's more to this.
Do let me know how it goes.
My initial mail to Elnur got only the standard blah-blah response. I shall check my usage, as I do every month, at the end of March, and take things from there.

Billfoster

sweetgirl2015 said:

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? 

Hello.

Have you as yet reached any resolution to your problem?
We have what looks like the same complaint.
We were persuaded to replace 17 year old Creda night storage heaters with Elnur Gabarron heaters, ECHHR20 and 40.
Although they have only been fitted for a couple of weeks, our February Economy 7 usage is up 30% on January, the only change being the new night storage heaters.
We have ended up with a colder house and what threatens to be even bigger electricity consumption.

DP70sgal

Feeling worried reading these posts as I feel like I’m in a similar situation here, although to be fair it’s only the recent massive hikes in energy pricing that has made me look into this !! I had an old Dimplex night storage heater replaced under a grant a few years ago, they replace the old one with 2 x Elnur Gabarron storage heaters, ECHHR40 as they said this was what would be needed to heat my small two bedroom house. my monthly electricity bills seem to be ludicrous for a tiny two bedroom mid terrace house. I’m told I’m looking at a monthly bill of £230 based on my usage! There’s just me and my son in the property and we are both out most of the day. I’m on an economy seven tariff and try to always run my washing machine and dishwasher overnight on timers. I actually spoke to Elnur last week to ask them about how these heaters work after reading this post. They confirmed that they charge up overnight whilst on the economy seven rate and then apparently the only electricity they use during the day is the fan required to output the stalled heat which is regulated by the thermostat. The woman I spoke to said this fan usage only draws about as much power as a 40 watt lightbulb. I have written to them and asked them to supply me with an indication of how much power these units draw overnight. I said on the phone if I sent them my kilowatt hour unit rates they would try and calculate an estimate of usage and cost for me. If I get anything useful back I will post. I recently had smart metres fitted only in January this year and I’m just trying to get to grips with tracking my usage and seeing why and what is causing me to use so much energy and I’m actually coming to the conclusion that it’s my hot water heating that is the main culprit and the washing machine if I ever use it during the day! Watching the spike on the smart meter when the washing machine start heating up and the hot water tank comes on on a daytime boost program is quite something! Ive become obsessed with the smart meter in-house display and trying to figure this all out as I’m really worried about the potential hike in energy prices.

A year ago I was paying around £100 a month for my energy and now it’s forecast to be around £230! As a single mum on a single low income this is pretty scary! 

[Deleted User]

All forms of electric heating are 100% efficient regardless of whether you are using a 20 year old heater or this years newest model in that the electricity going into the heater gives exactly the same amount of heat energy output.

As for that 40 watt fan used in the daytime in modern storage heaters - exactly 40 watts of heat energy is given off so it is not wasted. The only issue is that it will be using peak electricity tariff, but unit for unit, will not cause you to use more energy to attain the same room temperature.

The problems that make storage heaters cost more or less to run are all down to having the correct size and how they are programmed and used, all of which is down to the user and not the science of energy efficiency.

The main factors in getting the best out of storage heaters are:

1. Sizing correctly for the room. Too small and they will need to supplement heat with the daytime tariff. Too large and you will be wasting money on buying an oversized heater.

2. Correct overnight charging. Put too much overnight charge in and that will seep away overnight when you don't require heating, wasting energy. Put too little in and you will need daytime tariff to make up the shortfall. This is the biggest factor and is generally easier to get right on modern storage heaters as they have some logic built in to help optimise this.

Modern storage heaters have better insulation, so overnight charging losses should be less than older heaters.

Regardless of the above factors, you are still getting 100% of the electrical energy turned to heat regardless of what model / brand / age of electrical heater you buy, the difference is that you might be getting that heat energy at the wrong time of the day and/or using the higher priced tariff.

Concentrate your efforts on optimising the overnight storage settings to get the best out of electrical storage heaters.

cx6

Old 'night storage' heaters use only offpeak electricity - they heat up and store heat overnight in a big 'concrete' blocks and slowly release this heat during the day as the blocks cool down. They do not use daytime (peak) electricity for heating.

These modern ones do not have as much storage facility, so use daytime units to keep the house warm (rather than slowly releasing what they have stored overnight).

This is why they are considerably more expensive to run as you have found out.

There is no solution, other than ripping them out and replacing them with proper 'storage' heaters.

RobsMSEUsername

sweetgirl2015 said:

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? 

Hi. 

We have excactly the same scenario, and I suspect with the same well know company. Since having our old system 'upgraded' (!) we have been hemorrhaging cash to our electric provider. Actually contemplating a disconnection and moving towards something far less complicated. 

Good luck 

worlestone

Has anyone here complaining of the increased cost monitored the daily kWh before and after installation? Given the price increase of electricity this may just be the factor?

Posting as we're thinking of changing some of our 40 year old NSHs with these new Lot 20 heaters

Llewellyn_01

In March 2022 I had replaced under the government grant 3 Dimplex Storage heaters with 2 Elnur Gabarron heaters. One ECOHHR30 and one ECOHHR20. I was perfectly happy with the old units although they were over 20 years old and having a mechanical control I could regulate the heat as required. Having these new MODERN units fitted was a BIG mistake. Not only am I using the same amount in Kwh for the HHR30 as I was for 2 of the older units but I am on a dedicated E7 line. By that I mean there is no electric power to the units outside of the E7 hours, and so, if I am understanding DP70sgal (11-Mar) comment correctly the fans are not able to operate during the day to release the stored heat. The units remain hot but the heat doesn't get to heat the rooms and I am left to supplement with convector heaters during the evening. I intend to contact Elnur to get a better understanding on this. If it is the case that a 24 hours supply was required for these units then I should not have been offered these units in the first place.

Le_Kirk

Did your installer connect a separate 240 volt supply which is permanently on as well as your E7 supply?