Fischer Storage Heaters

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

Your defence of their product as a user is fine with me, but its based on the same drivel they post - you read - you then reassert with no supporting evidence whatsoever. BTW I assume from the figure of 45/50% split you are retired and at home all day with a room whole house temp of 20C. If your not in the house on an all day basis there is something wrong with your E7 usage.

I was only responding to the initial request on the thread, asking if anyone had experience of using Fischer heaters and as somebody who has used both old night storage in the past, which were not satisfactory and having changed to Fischer, found them to be very controllable and cheaper to run, just as they claim. Now this is my personal experience of actually using the heaters, have you used these heaters? I don't need any "evidence", the proof is in the great heating I've had for the past year.
By the way, the greatest advantage here is that when I'm not at home I'm actually able to turn my room thermostat down and therefore not waste energy. Something I could never do with an E7 old night storage heater. Surely saving energy and paying less is the way forward. That's energy efficiency.
Also may I add that the engineer who visited me was very informative and their selling methods were very acceptable. Again, I don't believe you have any experience of this either.

Yet another first post!

MAJS65 wrote: »

Let me give you an example, if your analogy is true, then surely if I placed 2 electric irons, 1kW each, on each side of a room, are you suggesting that it would heat the room in the same way as an efficient well designed storage heater like Fischer or similar others?
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I didn't say or imply they'd heat in the same way - I said they'd both supply the same amount of heat. A 2kw £2000 heater filled with aluminium granules and pink jelly will supply the same amount of heat as 2xikw irons, or even 20x100w lightbulbs. The only differences will be each supplies a different ratio of radiant heat to convective heat, and possible a variable amount of delayed heat release. If you want mainly radiant heat, there are cheap heaters to do that. If you want mainly convected heat, there are cheap heaters to do that too. If you want a time delay, there are cheap heaters combined wit5h timers to do that too. There is absolutely nothing special about the particular ratio of radiant heat to convective heat, nor the time delay of these Fischer heaters. And even if there were, the main point is the amount of heat produced, and not the method, so the point is mainly moot anyway.

The average night storage heater at 3.5kW running for 1 hour at the so called "cheap rate" at night will cost you 21p per hour yet the low input storage heaters at 1.5kW running for 1 hour even at the higher rate of 10p will only cost you 15p an hour.

OMG! My new led costs about 1p for 10 hours. But it doesn't supply as much heat as something rated at 1.5kw, which in turn doesn't supply as much heat as something rated at 3.5kw.

I hope I have enlightened the debate with some actual facts

No you haven't. You have just demonstrated that you can fit heaters for 15 years without knowing much of the physics involved.

MAJS65 wrote: »

I've just come across this thread and had to make a comment. I have been in the electrical heating business for 15 years and one thing is very clear, 1kW does produce 1kW of heat, however it's also very clear how each kW of heat is delivered from source into the room is extremely important to determine the efficiency and comfort of the heating in the room. So to make a suggestion that a £5 heater would heat a room in the same way as a well engineered storage heater is nonsense.

Let me give you an example, if your analogy is true, then surely if I placed 2 electric irons, 1kW each, on each side of a room, are you suggesting that it would heat the room in the same way as an efficient well designed storage heater like Fischer or similar others? Because I have personally come across these heaters and believe they are the way forward, considering in the past most people who had night storage heaters used to get rid of them as they never delivered the heat when you needed it, what good is that for anyone? I certainly believe the control system, the heat distribution from the heater into the room will reduce consumption, as the heat is delivered when you need it, where you need it. By doing so we can all use less energy and become more energy efficient. And taking up your point about heat pumps, surely the distribution of heat is important as they only work more efficiently if used in underfloor heating. Why? Because the heat is distributed evenly throughout the whole house. Try doing that with ordinary central heating radiators and tell me how efficient your heat pump will be.

I write out of great experience in this field and I see all the problems associated with wrong type of systems in different locations. The average night storage heater at 3.5kW running for 1 hour at the so called "cheap rate" at night will cost you 21p per hour yet the low input storage heaters at 1.5kW running for 1 hour even at the higher rate of 10p will only cost you 15p an hour. However another factor is these low input heaters do not waste any heat, because they have a room thermostat and therefore you can deliver the heat in the room when you need it. However the storage heaters heat a room at times of the day when nobody's in it. Surely that's not efficient.

So I personally think these low input storage heaters are far better than the old night storage heaters and I do know people who have personal experience of these heaters and have been very pleased. I hope I have enlightened the debate with some actual facts.

""" just come across this thread """ - that's not true, you last posted Today @ 9:27 PM using the nym peacock17. Now considering you claim to be a different poster you are making identical but still unsubstantiated emotional claims that peacock17 made days ago, you don't even have the intellect to find a different way to make your point.

[text deleted by MSE Forum Team]

""" the engineer who visited me was very informative """ - about what ?, both yourself and your very close and intimate friend and constant companion use tectonic repetition to say the same things, but tell this group nothing factual.

Its simple junior school maths, if 50-60% could be saved on electricity the continents of the globe that were temperate or cold could and would change to using them. By that same school maths the up front extortionate cost of replacing E7 or E10 night store systems would be able to reach break even point .. .. and then a 50-60% profit so quickly the whole world would be using them.

I wonder which new nym will make a first post saying """ just come across this thread """ but until then I leave both yourself and your alter ego with a nice picture - I'm sure you will like it.



The pic under you nym [ newbies ] says we should give you a chance, something most of the people here support. However the board is also on record as saying ' Now to trolling as a concept. .... Personally, I've always found it a little sad that people choose to spend such a large proportion of their lives in this way but they do, and we have to deal with it." - MSE Forum '

You are not I think a Troll, but I'm convinced you [ both the same person, maybe three counting the O/P Hotspot44 ] are 1st post spammers and that's also against board rules.

Tell the people here how they are cheaper by 50-60% than E7, they are not even cheaper in spring & autumn when most E7 are switched off and people use supplementary heating anyway.

There are some differences to the human perception to the heat produced by different electric / space heaters and this is often confused with how efficient they are.

For example, radiant or halogen heaters pointed at 'you' will heat 'you' faster and more directly than a space or storage heater which first has to warm the air between you and it, before it begins to heat you. Obviously one will heat you quicker than the other. A Storage heater will first have to warm the internal bricks, then the air and then you, so an even slower effect, but the energy consumed and the heat eventually given out in respect of that initial energy consumption is essentially exactly the same across all of the examples

Another example, last night I managed to heat myself using one bar of a Halogen Heater consuming approx 600W. However had that 600W heater have been positioned at the far end of the room, then I would have felt little, if any benefit from it whatsoever, as 600W was not enough output to heat the AIR in the room and then ME, but it was adequate enough to heat just me at a comfortable level (when sat 4 foot away from it) without first warming the air in the entire room in order to do it.

This is also why you can sit outside a pub an a cold night and still feel the heat from the outside quartz heaters, because they are designed to heat people and not the air inbetween, but place a similarily rated convector heater in the beer garden and see how warm you get!, but the consumption of both convector and quartz heater is the same, its just down to the design of the heater, its intended application and the perception of the heat delivery in that application which differs.

In short, the only thing that varies in relation to different types of heaters is the speed of delivery and your preception to how the heat feels on your body, depending on the design and how the heat is applied in a particular application, and whether the application intends on works on heating a person or the entire room as well as the person!.

There are various detailed calculations which can be done which will work out how many KW of heat is required to heat a certain size of room from 12c ambient to 20c ambient. So if 6KW is required to heat a large room it will need heating appliances of 6KW output to do it, whether they are oil rads, storage heaters, wet radiators or a 3 x 2kw convectors. The physics of that wont change nor the room shrink just because you have a certain type of heater.

For every 1000W taken from the mains, you will get 1000W out as heat. I dont know of anything which can create something from out of nothing......apart from my G/F

Regular storage heaters may be charging up with lots of electric and dumping it out too fast so are cold by the time you get home, meaning you've paid for something you're not using, but if your problem is that the heat is lost while you're out, you can just get a regular electric heater and use that at any time of day and turn off the storage heater or have it charge for less time

I only really benefit personally from storage heaters at the Weekends and during holiday periods when i'm home from work. However I dont wish my property to get a damp problem from being left unheated or suffer burst pipes during the below minus days which have been common over the past two winters. In this effect, the background heat from the storage heaters 'charged' from cheap rate Electricity is useful in this respect, and far cheaper (and safer) than leaving an unattended electrical heater switched on at daytime rates.

I currently pay 4.9p / kwh for offpeak electricity and 17.5p / kwh for Peak Electricity from Npower. Or at least I did before the 1st October increases, now I suspect I pay closer to 19p / kwh for peak and 5.5p / kwh for offpeak rate. Either way, I get just over 3 KW/H's of 'charged' E7 heat for the same cost of every 1 KW/h of peak heat, any heater running outside of E7 periods would have to be damn efficient to match that difference toe-to-toe.

Proper use of the 'damper' control during charge periods and upon return also ensure that the stored heat from storage heaters is used to maximum efficiency. Whilst I agree that SH is not as controllable as 'real time' heat from GCH or a running electrical / gas/ paraffin heater, there are some people who make this even less so by leaving the damper open all night so most of the heat goes into the room, rather than the storage bricks, meaning less stored heat and so less output for later in the day!.

I've yet to find any Electric heater which can match the cost of natural gas in running costs, but in an all Electric property that is, sadly, not an option.

In an all electric property there are other options to be explored though, and I've found a happy medium by using paraffin to supplement the E7 heating during very cold periods, and now use a modern, safety standards approved paraffin 'fan' heater. The real cost of this is around 7p per KW, only slightly more than E7 and far less than Peak rate Electricity running ANY electric heater.

Plus I buy paraffin in bulk, to maintain that 7p throughout the winter, largely making it immune from the hikes which we all know the energy suppliers will be inflicting on us again before spring.

The heater also cost less to buy than most of these amazing pieces of electric heating technology you see appearing. Like I said before on other threads, this 'old fashioned' approach bringing back memories of heating used by generations before us, will, no doubt, only appeal to a small minority of people and I dont expect it to be embraced by a plug 'n' play society, but a combination of E7 for background heat and a 3.2KW Paraffin fueled fan heater for very cold nights rapidly suited me just fine, as did the reduction in consumption of peak rate electricity units.