Insane electricity cost in 1 bed house

rero71

Hello everyone,

I posted 2 years ago in regards to the 1bed house in North London where I am still living with my partner.
Problem at the time was wrong choice of new heaters for the house from the landlady.

We are still living here for many reasons but just wanted to ask something in regards to the heaters we currently have:

We have Economy7 tariff (Octopus) and use only 2 heaters in the living room, one Elnur Ecombi ECOHHR40 storage heater and one oil filled Elnur RD12w, 1.5kW/h.

It's a one bed house EPC D and we are paying up to £600 a month (£20 a day) in winter months, when it's 0-5 degrees celsius where you need 2 heaters on.
We work from home so this insane cost of electricity is to keep the house to a temperature of 20/21 degrees as it doesn't seem to warm more and I guess it's not well insulated. (last winter we left for 3 days and when back, found the living room at 8 degrees).

Problems are:
- insane cost of electricity, due mostly to the 2nd oil filled radiator, that makes £10 of the £20 a day, if not more.
In a month like this instead (April), with only the storage heater on, we are around £6/10 a day.

- this Elnur storage heater is fan assisted and I didn't know it up until it was delivered and it's driving us crazy the noise constantly on.
We have to keep it on as the moment the living room gets to 21 degrees, if the heater turns off, in a matter of minutes the room gets cold again, and this storage heater is anyway cheaper than the oil filled one. So I set the heater to 25 degrees, that are never reached in the room.
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My questions:
1) is this new fan assisted technology present in all new models of storage heaters?
I'm still regretting the day the old storage heaters were replaced as they were cheaper and yes it was cold at night but I guess if I compensated with a portable heater that would still be cheaper than what we pay now.

2) Considering the insane cost of winter (for a 1 bed house!), if there was a NON fan assisted storage heater, I'd buy it on my own, as I guess at the end of next season, if we are still here, it would be cheaper than doing another winter season.
And maybe I could feel less guilty to keep them both on, considering hopefully we should spend less than the oil filled radiator.

3) Are these costs and choices of heaters the standard for a property that doesn't have gas?
What's the new technology of new houses? Is gas still a thing?
Or if only electricity, what are the options?

I just want to get informed for the next house we will be moving in the future as if I knew what it meant to move to an only electricity house, I would have thought it twice.

Any advice would be massively appreciated,
Many thanks

grandadgolfer

Gas is still king and about 3 times cheaper

lisyloo

Why do you need to keep the place at 20/21 degrees?

BUFF

No, but for High Heat Retention models it generally is. HHR are more highly insulated so use a fan to disperse the heat when  required. Properly used HHR should be noticeably cheaper to run than non-HHR.

The new technology for new houses would be heat pumps. New houses also benefit from better insulation.
Gas is still a thing but won't be for new houses from 2025 (existing will be fine though for probably another 20 years or so).

could you drop your room temp to 18c & wear another layer?

markin

With large oil heater day usage, And 2 computers, should you be on single rate elec? What was the day/nigh units for each month? And the rates?

Scot_39

1)  The fan is in order to compensate for the inherent heat retention in the body design.

Many in Elnur, Dimplex HHR - use fans - even some non HHR certified models - like "Dimplexs ssister" Creda TSRE have fans these days.

Others with these devices - claim it just fades into the background.

If the fan is really noisy - perhaps the installation / build needs rechecking.

2)  Anyone reliant on a peak rate on E7 tariffs higher than SR day rates - for a lot of their heat - is doomed to high bills.

21 is actually pretty hot for a house - if no good medical or age reason - 18 is more typical suggestion for healthy adults etc.

Could you and your partner live with 18/19/20 ?

Why lower temp - well - before prices shot up - the often quoted figure was for a typical home "£100 pa per degree C"

And that was probably using gas, when gas was sub 5p/kWh - not the current 10p - and you could be paying as much as 45-50p+ for peak rate electric for some of that heat.

Layered for winter (3 upper body - tshirt/shirt/cardigan - 2 lower body - long johns / trousers) - and 18 has me almost sweating.  Note that's not dressed for skiing or winter hill walking - just not thinking you can live in a t-shirt and shorts all year round - without a significant cost penalty.  Not for all - but given my E10 off-peak was 22.6 - it's too expensive to waste.

There are some cheap things you can do - like thermal curtains, draft excluders etc - but as renting - the heavy lifting unless short payback - down to landlord.

But fitting another Elnur - or Dimplex equivalent - might have a pay back in months - if you are spending £10/day on peak rate consistently - and planning to be their next winter. Especially if landlord contributes.

But there are potential wiring complications with fitting a new night storage heater - it's probably not just a simple swap out - even for an old existing - let alone your oil filled radiator panel.  So don't just look at the retail price - try to get a proper surveyed installation price (try phoning the company your landlord used - they might have enough info on file). Then try and negotiate with landlord.

Most now need live and off-peak feeds (but the Dimplex quantums for instance can operate off a single feed - if you program them carefully to match meter switch times - but have fan - their specs say average c20dB - that's really not noisy ). But iirc would still need that to be it's own spur back to a 20A MCB in consumer unit for a new installation - and one covered by the E7 tariffed meter. 

Looking at one sales site - https://www.heatershop.co.uk/storage-heaters

The Elnur SSH models appear on a quick check to be fanless (or at least not on wiring diagrams or parts lists in manual - if that remains an overarching concern - the fan does appear in the Ecombi HHR in those locations) - but still needs dual feed. 

You have months before next winter time to check other manufacturers / other sites etc

3) It sounds like you are in more of a flat or split home situation than a normal style home.

ASHP and smaller per room air to air equivalents (essentially reverse air conditioners for heating) can be problematic in flats - for physical location / mounting, noise and in the latter's case - needs 2 largish holes in walls for each room - many could struggle to get landlords permission to drill.

If you are sensitive to fan noise - the latter may also be noisy (think hotel room 3-4 ft x1ft wall mounted air conditioning unit style noise I guess)

ASHP etc are cheap when operate and operated efficiently - they have a COP rating range - if achieve say at low end a COP=2 that means you get 2x the effective energy out as supplied by you in terms of electric in / paid at the meter. 

So if fed from SR at 34p, COP 2 means 17p effectively - probably similar to many E7 off peak , a hopefully achievable COP of 3 means 34/3=11.3p - cheaper than many E7 off-peak, almost getting towards same as gas.

In theory you can get models that will do low temp wet at COPs over 4 - but that higher COP would almost certainly entail a wet install in a well insulated house - potentially with underfloor heating and larger than normal by GCH standards radiators - to guarantee year round - even in London - let alone much colder regions North / Scotland. 

Air to Air max typical cop ??

Gas is only being stopped for new builds for now - so will be around for decades to come I suspect.

But don't expect it to return to old prices - carbon capture tech is not cheap - nor are the potential complications of mixing higher levels of Hydrogen etc.  The current green levies on gas power stations - look increasingly likely to be moved on to domestic gas tariffs too.

retiringtoosoon

Try turning the temperature down 3 or 4 degrees….

Mstty

Realistically now you are looking at what to do next year.

What is the EPC rating of the house?

https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate

If it's low maybe you could discuss going halves on an air to air multi split heat pump system to reduce your heating bills.

As a landlord we would jump at such a request from our tenants.

InvertedVee

rero71 said:
- this Elnur storage heater is fan assisted and I didn't know it up until it was delivered and it's driving us crazy the noise constantly on.

We have to keep it on as the moment the living room gets to 21 degrees, if the heater turns off, in a matter of minutes the room gets cold again, and this storage heater is anyway cheaper than the oil filled one. So I set the heater to 25 degrees, that are never reached in the room.

According to the Elnur website "the ECOHHR also has a built-in on-peak emitter to provide temperature balance and supplement the stored heat as and when required". 

This on-peak emitter (also referred to as a balancing element) is a heating element which runs on peak rate electricity when the storage heater is unable to meet the heat demand. You've set the heater to warm the room to 25C, which means that the on-peak emitter will be running constantly. The ECOHHR40 has a 1120W balancing element. Running this element alone for 15 hours a day would cost about 1.12*15*0.45=£7.50. The storage heater component would be on top of this.

I'd suggest you get off the E7 tariff as soon as you can.

If you can persuade your landlord to improve insulation to reduce losses and fit storage heaters, then it might be worth going back to an E7 tariff. But in your shoes I would be planning a move to a new flat if the costs are too much for you.

theoretica

I find it interesting how much my sense of how warm the room is varies from what the thermometer says.  If I am sitting still working from home I need lots of layers - and love my 30/60W heated footrest.

How much of your electricity do you use at night and how much during the day?  Would standard rates work out cheaper? 

EPC D is a very blunt tool - do you know where the heat is being lost?