ELNUR GABARRON STORAGE HEATERS

Billfoster

Looking for reactions and comments from anyone who has replaced old night storage heaters with more modern 'smart' storage heaters, hoping to cut down on electricity consumption.
We have the Elnur Gabarron units. Other heaters using the same 'smart' technology exist...I'd like to hear any 

QrizB

Dimplex Quantum get a lot of press here, most of it positive.

If you use the forum search funstion it should turn up as few threads.

Alternatively, I think @EssexHebridean has one?

EssexHebridean

I do indeed have a Quantum - and it's been quite a good comparison for us as we run that alongside a couple of "mid age" older style XLS ones, and one ancient Creda - model unknown.  (Although this winter has been mild enough that we've not needed to turn on the smaller XLS OR the Creda at all). 

The quantum takes some getting used to - and some learning about how it works best as well. First thing for us was getting to grips with the fact that the output temperature is NOT the same as the room temperature achieved - there's a good few degrees difference. We aim for a room temp of 19 - 20 degrees in the centre of the building, and an output temperature of 22 - 23 degrees achieves that easily enough. It retains FAR more heat through the day than the XLS does - although there is still some heat loss as it's charging, but that just means we get away with running it for less time in the morning - it is set to kick in immediately the charging period ends. 

Best thing about it so far as I'm concerned is that it's not the same as the "flat amount" charging that the older ones use - it adjusts itself in relation to the core temperature it starts from, and also takes into account both the existing room temp and the desired temp that that's set for the following day. If you get an unexpectedly warm day, it will charge less to take account of that, which is far more economical. If you DO find you need some additional heat from it during the day, the boost function is easy to use and - for short periods of occasional use - not horrifically expensive. (And if you were finding you were needing to use that function regularly, it would suggest that the day-to-day settings were wrong, and need tweaking. 

I'm trying to think of any downsides with it in comparison to the older ones....and the ONLY thing I can really come up with is that it does produce a low-level hum when the fan is running. For us, it's definitely not intrusive in any way, even if it was in our main living area I think we would have got used to the noise to be honest, as it really is fairly insignificant. I guess the only other thing is that they're not cheap  - BUT with the way fuel prices are going, the money-saving of it actually being able to be set to give the heat when you need it rather than so much of it dissipating over the charging period would offset that over a relatively short period I suspect. 

While in simple terms of "power in/heat out" there is often much said about one storage heater being much the same as another, the controllability of the newer ones, combined with their "intelligence" in relation to knowing how much charge to actually take in, definitely does make a saving.