Rented house with Night Storage Heaters

chuckie851

I'm thinking of renting a house with NSHs and hope to use Octopus Snug or similar.  What should I look for in the meter cupboard?  It looks as though an old person lived there, with no signs of modernisation this century.

Keep_pedalling

A smart meter will be required for that tariff so that is the first thing to look for. I would hope the landlord has had those electrics looked in a bit more recently than the last century, so you need to have prooof that a safety check has been carried out in the previous 5 years. 

WiserMiser

Which type of NSHs?  If they're the old Box of Bricks type (two knobs, no digital screen, no fan) that's a bit of a NoNo unless you're at home all day.  They'll be leaking heat through the night and in the middle of the day but be coolest in the late evening just when you need them most.

Ms_Chocaholic

Maybe post a pic of the NSHs before you sign the tenancy agreement

chuckie851

WiserMiser said:

Which type of NSHs?  If they're the old Box of Bricks type (two knobs, no digital screen, no fan) that's a bit of a NoNo unless you're at home all day.  They'll be leaking heat through the night and in the middle of the day but be coolest in the late evening just when you need them most.

That's the sort I had in the seventies.  I had the slimline sort later.  They were just as useless, until Economy 10 came along.
These look like the slimline sort from the photos.
Maybe I should post this seperately, but how much solid fuel or logs would I burn over 8 hours. It's an open fire with a back boiler. (I said it was pretty much unmodernised.)

Swipe

I get on well with my boxes of bricks but I'm retired and home all day and normally in bed by 10pm when the living room has dropped to around 16C. I'm always up early to make the most of the last couple of hours of cheap rate electric. As stated, unless you are home all day, run a mile if you can't stand the cold and big heating bills. Solid fuel doubled since the Ukraine war and logs are no longer cheap which is why I haven't lit my stove since then, and can honestly say I don't miss the work and mess.

vic_sf49

chuckie851 said:

WiserMiser said:

Which type of NSHs?  If they're the old Box of Bricks type (two knobs, no digital screen, no fan) that's a bit of a NoNo unless you're at home all day.  They'll be leaking heat through the night and in the middle of the day but be coolest in the late evening just when you need them most.

That's the sort I had in the seventies.  I had the slimline sort later.  They were just as useless, until Economy 10 came along.
These look like the slimline sort from the photos.
Maybe I should post this seperately, but how much solid fuel or logs would I burn over 8 hours. It's an open fire with a back boiler. (I said it was pretty much unmodernised.)

Are you sure they're night storage heaters, and not just a "normal" electric radiator / panel heater, or whatever they're called? 

They can get installed if the landlord replaces failing NSH on the cheap, or never paid the higher price for NSH in the first place.  

EssexHebridean

chuckie851 said:

WiserMiser said:

Which type of NSHs?  If they're the old Box of Bricks type (two knobs, no digital screen, no fan) that's a bit of a NoNo unless you're at home all day.  They'll be leaking heat through the night and in the middle of the day but be coolest in the late evening just when you need them most.

That's the sort I had in the seventies.  I had the slimline sort later.  They were just as useless, until Economy 10 came along.
These look like the slimline sort from the photos.
Maybe I should post this seperately, but how much solid fuel or logs would I burn over 8 hours. It's an open fire with a back boiler. (I said it was pretty much unmodernised.)

It's not whether they're slimline style or not that's the issue - it's whether they are High Heat Retention models that would make a significant difference.

We use an open fire - and in the course of an evening (usually 6pm - 10pm when we stop feeding it) we probably use around a quarter of a scuttle of solid fuel and probably about 10 - 12 logs, depending on size. We also supplement with home-made compressed paper bricks, but usually only use at most a couple of those in an evening. It definitely works out more expensive than using the gas heating, but as a rule once the fire is lit the heating gets turned off in any event so at least we're not using both. 

I'd definitely get the model details of the heaters if I were you. I wouldn't worry too much about whether or not there is a modern meter as you'd be able to get one installed pretty swiftly after moving in anyway, if all went well. In the meantime, check that any old style meter has the five leads that indicate it is definitely an E7 one. 

RedFraggle

Is the back boiler the only way of heating water or is there an immersion heater? 
Coal fired hot water isn't fun in the morning.