Cheapest way to heat

mrsyardbroom

I've just read an article on the BBC news website that says storage heaters are outdated and were used mainly in the sixties and seventies. I use an electric storage combi heater that was installed just over a year ago, and an electric heater in my bedroom. I'm a pensioner and I don't have mush income. I can't really afford the resulting £300 a month bill for electricity. I use the bedroom heater overnight but it's a very expensive form of heating. The heaters were installed with a government grant. Is there any cheaper way to heat these two rooms in my house? I don't have gas and I can't have oil fired central heating or lpg. I do have a multifuel stove but the cost of solid fuel is more than the electricity.

MattMattMattUK

mrsyardbroom said:

I've just read an article on the BBC news website that says storage heaters are outdated and were used mainly in the sixties and seventies. 

Is that actually what it says? Even if it does say that it is wrong. They are not an outdated technology for the situations where they are used correctly, although other technologies might be better in situations where they can be installed, but they are not suitable for everywhere.

mrsyardbroom said:

I use an electric storage combi heater that was installed just over a year ago, and an electric heater in my bedroom. I'm a pensioner and I don't have mush income. I can't really afford the resulting £300 a month bill for electricity. I use the bedroom heater overnight but it's a very expensive form of heating. 

Are you on E7 or SVR? Storage heaters used with E7 can be reasonably economical, though not as cheap as gas for example. Can you post a picture of your storage heater? Do you know how to use it properly, eg. charge overnight, use the heat as required during the day.

mrsyardbroom said:

The heaters were installed with a government grant. Is there any cheaper way to heat these two rooms in my house? I don't have gas and I can't have oil fired central heating or lpg. I do have a multifuel stove but the cost of solid fuel is more than the electricity.

Unless you can install a heat pump and have a well insulated property then there is probably not much you could do beyond an ideal case with E7 and storage heaters, a heat pump could cost around £10k to install so that probably is not viable based on what you have said. Multifuel stoves seem to work best where people have access to cheap or free wood, although per kWh smokeless fuels should be cheaper than peak or SVR electricity, but more expensive than E7 off peak rate.

pochase

And and again one of those educated BBC articles...

You have answered your question yourself already, if you are unable to get gas or a a heat pump. storage heater will be the cheapest solution for you. You have a modern storage heater that is much better than those from the sixties.

Are you on an E7 tariff? No idea how you get to the £300 for heating? Even with single rate that would be 850Kwh, that is over 27KWh per day, double that if you are on a reasonable E7 tariff, or 4 to 6 times on the really good E7 tariffs,

mrsyardbroom

This is what the article actually says. While it doesn't say storage heaters are outdated it gives that impression. journalism is always angled to give a certain point of view, and this is most likely to be the point of view of the journalist. She can probably afford a heat pump.

'Economy 7 tariffs became common in the 1960s and 1970s when storage heaters grew in popularity.They were supposed to encourage people to use electricity off-peak much more cheaply, refill storage heaters overnight, which then heat the property gradually in the day. Storage heaters were often used in high-rise flats, in council or social housing, and in rural areas off mains gas. But they became inefficient technology, as although the electricity to fill them up was cheap, they were often a slower way of heating a home.Of the 2.5 million households who still have an Economy 7 meter, the regulator is unsure how many still have storage heaters in place, and how many are on those contracts as a hangover from a previous homeowner or tenant.'

I am on E7 and yes, the heater is set correctly for the E7 charging period. During the day I usually set it to 19C and I turn that down to 17C if I go out. I think it's the bedroom heater that's costing the money. They wouldn't install a storage heater upstairs. I may try using my infrared heater instead and see if that makes a difference. The BBC article is suggesting that it may be cheaper to switch back to the daily rate instead of E7. I shall see how many units I use during the day and during the night so that I can work out whether this would be cheaper for me. I think that's the only way to do it. I'll look at halogen heaters as well and get some specifications just to see if they might be cheaper. I don't know until I look. The cost of solid fuel has doubled. I tried using but it was so expensive I could only light a fire in the evening and go cold for the rest of the day. I live in a granite cottage high up on hill and it catches all the wind. Everyone says it's the coldest place in the village. People told me it was an overcoat colder and there were polar bears up here. I haven't seen any yet!

MattMattMattUK

mrsyardbroom said:

This is what the article actually says. While it doesn't say storage heaters are outdated it gives that impression. journalism is always angled to give a certain point of view, and this is most likely to be the point of view of the journalist. She can probably afford a heat pump.

'Economy 7 tariffs became common in the 1960s and 1970s when storage heaters grew in popularity.They were supposed to encourage people to use electricity off-peak much more cheaply, refill storage heaters overnight, which then heat the property gradually in the day. Storage heaters were often used in high-rise flats, in council or social housing, and in rural areas off mains gas. But they became inefficient technology, as although the electricity to fill them up was cheap, they were often a slower way of heating a home.Of the 2.5 million households who still have an Economy 7 meter, the regulator is unsure how many still have storage heaters in place, and how many are on those contracts as a hangover from a previous homeowner or tenant.'

At this point I would say you need to ignore the BBC article, at best it appears to be inaccurate, it could even be regarded as deliberately misleading.

mrsyardbroom said:

I am on E7 and yes, the heater is set correctly for the E7 charging period. During the day I usually set it to 19C and I turn that down to 17C if I go out. I think it's the bedroom heater that's costing the money. They wouldn't install a storage heater upstairs. 

What is the basis that you are running the bedroom heater, all night, only on the E7 off peak period? What kind of temperature? Storage heaters are not usually recommended for bedrooms as by the following evening a lot of the heat will have dissipated anyway.

mrsyardbroom said:

I may try using my infrared heater instead and see if that makes a difference. 

All resistive electric heating is 100% efficient, a fan heater, flat panel, storage hater or infrared heater will generate exactly the same amount of heat per kWh of electricity used.

mrsyardbroom said:

The BBC article is suggesting that it may be cheaper to switch back to the daily rate instead of E7. I shall see how many units I use during the day and during the night so that I can work out whether this would be cheaper for me. I think that's the only way to do it. 

These will be in your bill, your annual usage figures, but if you are using storage heaters it is unlikely that you would save money by going onto the SVR, you could however save significant amounts by changing suppliers as E7 splits vary quite significantly between different suppliers. Who are you currently with and what region are you in?

mrsyardbroom said:

I'll look at halogen heaters as well and get some specifications just to see if they might be cheaper. I don't know until I look. The cost of solid fuel has doubled. I tried using but it was so expensive I could only light a fire in the evening and go cold for the rest of the day. I live in a granite cottage high up on hill and it catches all the wind. Everyone says it's the coldest place in the village. People told me it was an overcoat colder and there were polar bears up here. I haven't seen any yet!

Halogen heaters will not be any cheaper and if you use them during the day then even more expensive as they will use peak rate electricity. 

mrsyardbroom

The heater that was installed as a storage heater is described as a combi heater. I believe its working as a fan heater during the evening as the outside temperature gets colder. I went through the local council to get the heating installed with a grant. They asked me to go through their energy advisor and they advised which company to use. The advisor contacted them for me. The heating that was installed wasn't what the company told me I would get. I was supposed to have a small 400W heater in the bedroom that I could control with an app, but they installed a programmable 1200W electric fire. This is switched on at around 10.15pm at 19C. At 11.30 it runs overnight at 17C until about 8am. The storage heater is an Elnur Gabbaron which everyone says is rubbish and expensive to run. I was supposed to have the most efficient storage heater that would be programmable through an app. This heater has to be programmed manually. The installers said other people had made similar complaints. I was using an infrared heater downstairs and this seemed to be cheaper to run than the oil free radiator I used before.

Infrared heaters run on a different principle to most radiant heaters. They give out infrared waves that heat the objects around them, much like the sun's rays. To get real benefit you have to keep the space in front of them completely clear. The information on them is conflicting. Some people say they're as expensive to run as resistive heaters and others say they're 50% cheaper to run. If I can find out which is true I may consider that, or I could try using the infrared heater in the bedroom and not use the fire at all. I should be able to tell if it's cheaper.

breaking_free

I too am wondering why you're keeping a heater on at night. I sleep with an electric blanket turned up to high before I get into bed and then turned down afterwards. I keep it on all night and it costs pennies to run. The blanket heats me, not the room. If you're asleep when the heating is on you're heating the room unnecessarily.

mrsyardbroom

I can't sleep in a cold room. I've tried but my head gets cold and I feel cold and I just can't sleep. The room temperature drops to around 12C at night and it feels really cold.

markin

mrsyardbroom said:

I can't sleep in a cold room. I've tried but my head gets cold and I feel cold and I just can't sleep. The room temperature drops to around 12C at night and it feels really cold.

An an electric blanket would keep your feet warm and then maybe you can ditch the hr at 19c 10:30 and just start at 16-17c

Gerry1

mrsyardbroom said:

they installed a programmable 1200W electric fire. This is switched on at around 10.15pm at 19C. At 11.30 it runs overnight at 17C until about 8am.

Seems doubly wasteful.  At 10:15pm it's probably going full pelt on the expensive day rate until E7 kicks in later on.

Probably better to switch on a 3kW fan heater for just a few minutes as you go to bed and again as you get up.  You may manage to have least one of these on the E7 rate.  People in the South East can 'double dip' because their E7 rates have a two-hour gap in the middle.

To keep warm through the night, a clever full size electric blanket such as the Dreamland Scandi Sherpa Intelliheat would be a much better bet.

mrsyardbroom said:

The storage heater is an Elnur Gabbaron which everyone says is rubbish and expensive to run. I was supposed to have the most efficient storage heater that would be programmable through an app. This heater has to be programmed manually. The installers said other people had made similar complaints.

What's the exact model?  It's likely to be a High Heat Retention night storage heater which would be a very good solution, and certainly not rubbish.  Forget the lack of an app, it's just a frill.  However, there are several pitfalls if the Elnur is not dimensioned and programmed optimally.

Ideally, it should have two separate supplies, a 24h circuit and an overnight E7 circuit that's switched by the meter.  If that's the case then it's not a problem, but things can go wrong if they only have a single 24h supply.  The heater can be slaved to the E7 times, but it's highly likely that it hasn't been programmed properly because the installer won't have been present around midnight or around 7am.  At best, a good installer may have set it to the default times in your area, but what counts is when your meter actually switches, and that can only by observing when it changes over and back.  There's no substitute for this: don't rely on anyone telling you what the times are supposed to be.

If your Elnur has only a single circuit then any variance between the programmed E7 times and your meter's actual times will mean that sometimes it's charging up at expensive day rates, so it's imperative to (i) observe the meter's switching times and (ii) program your Elnur accordingly.

mrsyardbroom said:

The heater that was installed as a storage heater is described as a combi heater. I believe its working as a fan heater during the evening as the outside temperature gets colder.

There can be a problem if penny pinching resulted in your Elnur not being big enough.  If it starts to run out of stored heat in the afternoon it can automatically switch on an internal fan heater, but this will be at expensive daytime rates.  This ability can be useful, e.g. if you've been away on holiday or there's a sudden cold snap, but it should be strictly for emergency use only, not something that kicks in most afternoons or evenings.  Read the instruction manual and strictly limit the number of hours that the backup heater can operate, otherwise your bills will be unnecessarily high.

km1500

mrsyardbroom said:

I can't sleep in a cold room. I've tried but my head gets cold and I feel cold and I just can't sleep. The room temperature drops to around 12C at night and it feels really cold.

This may sound silly but isn't. Wear a wool hat in bed  - pulled down over the ears - you will be amazed at how warm you feel.