Electric storage heaters

My only experience of night storage heaters was in a Victorian converted flat in the early 90s which had very high ceilings, large rooms and no double glazing. Suffice it to say I froze to death and I can remember going to bed one night in a bobble hat and gloves! ?

I'm sure somebody will have a more up-to-date experience for you and it may be that newer models work more efficiently.

My only experience of night storage heaters was in a Victorian converted flat in the early 90s which had very high ceilings, large rooms and no double glazing. Suffice it to say I froze to death and I can remember going to bed one night in a bobble hat and gloves! ?

I'm sure somebody will have a more up-to-date experience for you and it may be that newer models work more efficiently.

Sorry, but they are pretty crap ? I have them in my flat I'm just leaving. You put them on about 10pm at night to heat up during the night on the cheaper electricity rate, so they can release heat during the next day. As the heat is really hard to regulate - even if you have them turned right down, they still leak heat - often they're boiling during the day and have run out of heat by the evening, when you actually need it. They're also quite expensive to run, and of course there's the convenience issues - you have to decide the day before if you're going to need heating the next day (not always possible!) and if you've been away, you're subject to one chillly day before they heat up again.

I'd really say look into getting a proper central heating system as soon as you can afford it - much more efficient to run, simpler to manage and the temperature can be regulated properly.

My new flat has them too. I've not slept there yet as i'm living with my OH until i go back to uni so i'll watch this thread! The people we bought the flat off said that they were fine, heater up during the day, not too expensive, they did say they got a bit cold late at night, but they bought some of the new style oil radiators which plug in and are pretty fuel efficient (they we're lovely and left us these!) x

Hmm - what I feared! We can obviously get a few stand-alone heaters for baby's room/late at night. They're also really quite bulky. The hob is electric and I am actually wondering if the flat is even connected to the gas supply and therefore not much chance of changing the heating system. Is that very stupid or a possibility?

That's a possibility that it doesn't have a current gas supply - my flat is all electric. However, other flats in the building have been converted to gas central heating, so if this is the same as yours, it shouldn't incur much extra cost to get it run to your flat as well.

Hi

Our whole road is electric only so we are stuck with the stupid things!

they are ok in the winter, unless its snowing, in which case we have the oil heater on too. Our front door opens into our living room which doesn't help keep the heat in. Also, we get up early and home late so the cats are nice and snug all day and we have to plug the extra heaters in later.

We pay about £60 a month on electric (averaged out over the year) to cover our heating, cooking, water heating, lights etc etc. Our biggest bill this winter was £220 for 3 months

hope that helps

xx

Thank you all for your replies - very informative. We will get settled in, look at the bills and whether there is a gas supply and take it from there!

?

We're in a modern flat (5 years old) that's all electric. We have a convector heating in bedroom 2, a combined storage/convector in the lounge and a storage in bedroom one. The convector in bedroom 2 is the only one with a timer. That one and the lounge one have been fine (and not really overly expensive either, compared to what we paid for combined gas/electric in our previous place) but the storage in the bedroom has never worked properly. It was cold all the time and we couldn't figure out why. Eventually I got up in the night one time and discovered it was kicking out heat at 2am. We've followed all the instructions we were given, but it won't kick out when we actually want it to (i.e. evenings, before we go to bed) so we went to Argos and bought a small £20 convector heater and a timer socket and plugged that in. Not had the storage heater turned on since.

Thank heavens we move into a house with GCH on Monday!

We lived in a flat with night store heaters for about 4 years. They did chuck out a decent amount of heat but not necessarily when you wanted them to. The problem is you have to decide if you're going to be cold the day before and act accordingly. The thing I love the most about the gas central heating that we've got in our current house is that if it's a chilly day I can stick the heating on for an hour or so and warm the place through, sadly it's not as easy to do that with the night stores.

Just seems crazy that anyone would think that a heating system where you can't control WHEN the house is heated would be a good idea! I am one of those people who are always cold and can't bear the thought that I won;t be able to just stick the heating on for a couple of hours. ? Think we'll have to look into converting!

Thanks for your replies.

If you dont have gas there are some new systems that work differently to storage heaters that you can get heat out of when you want it. We use the economy 10 rather than the 7 feature from Scottish Power I think which gives you some cheap hours in the evening and afternoon as well as at night. - do your washing and dishwasher over night to take advantage of the full tariff. The heating we have is from Kalirel - which uses a big element and thick thermodynamic fluid to conduct the heat. We have the whole system on radio controlled timers and it has holiday modes etc as well.

France uses all electric and have been perfecting new electric systems - you can also have an electric boiler fitted and a wet system put in but this is probably quite expensive to run - but worth looking into both types of systems.

We lived in an old house with night storage heaters for almost 5 years and we were toasty warm. I kept them on 24/7 during the winter and turned them off during the summer, however all the rooms were pretty small. We had no heating in the bathroom so having a shower on cold winters morning was a surefire way of waking you up :o)

I had no problem with them all and tbh I am finding that the GSH in the place we;re in now is more expensive