Storage heaters

miss notax

Hello

As well as life being generally very sh!t at the moment I am also doing battle with seemingly the worlds most stupid heating system :roll:

Can anyone explain to me how to set up storage heaters so that they are hot when I get home from work? All that seems to be happening at the moment is they heat up at night (isn't that how they are meant to work, with cheap electricity?) making the house nice and toasty warm all day when i'm at work By the time I sit down to have dinner / watch tv in the evening they are pretty much cool....

I have tried messing around with the two dials on them 'boost' and 'input control' to no avail. I even tried reading the instructions but I must be really thick as it made no sense what-so-ever.

I'm only renting this house - possibly with a view to buying - so i'm not in a position to change anything at the moment. If I do buy it I will take great satisfaction in ripping out all the damn heaters and getting a nice functioning central heating system instead!

Thanks for any help

anj132

miss notax wrote:

All that seems to be happening at the moment is they heat up at nightmaking the house nice and toasty warm all day when i'm at work

This pretty much sums them up

Input is for how much electric it takes during the night to warm up.

Output/boost basically moves a flap in them to allow so much heat out. In theory you set it to nothing during the day and then open it when you get home. I find it makes little difference.

Anyway, heating at this time of the year, it's still BST! MTFU or get a jumper

miss notax

I currently have the input set quite low - basically to see how much the damn things are going to cost me. So if I leave the input on 1 but move the boost up high when I get in from work that should cost the same (ie the minimum) but mean they might make it a bit warmer in the evening? Altering the boost / output won't cost anymore?

I am not being a tight-wad by the way - i've just never used these before so wanted a 'control' to see how much they are costing before I started to whack everything up!!

Thanks for the advice

anj132

Yeah that's right moving the boost doesn't cost anything but I found 1 was a bit low for anything and the boost didn't really do much.

Yeah sounds like a good plan, we usually put ours on 3 (out of 6) and try and hold off putting them up. Sorry if I sound a bit cynical of them but I miss mother's good old central heating, especially as I'm paying for it! Perhaps ours are old and crap.

allthegearnoidea

they are pretty much the worst type of heating, we've 6 of them in our bungallow, when we rebuilt it mother inlaw 'researched' gas in the village and claimed there was none, - turns out the pipe runs right across the front, only found out when we'd had the floors all redone and relaid!
all your effectively doing is Heating up blocks in side the heater, theyve a foil padded lining to keep the heat in the compartment which is what your boost dial sort of controlls! for most people on economy 7 they dont work very well, fine in the morning but the rest of the time cooling down, and as youve found, when you really want it warm they've lost most of the heat! ours are generally set at 3-4 on both dials, and due to the extra insulation we put in on the outside walls keep the place reletively warm.

if possible, worth looking at wether they are on internal or External walls?? we moved all ours to internal when we redid the place, saves heating up the outside walls! for a while, we did supliment the main lounge one with an oil fired radiator behind the sofa for the Colder months, just set on low, but did a good little job of taking the chill off,

in comparison to Central heating, they are Rubbish though!!

miss notax

Thanks guys, thats helpful.

The house is nice and warm (ish) in the morning, but by the evening it's pretty chilly Off to get some coal and logs tonight and will have to resort to old-fashioned open fires then to keep the lounge warm!

One more question though - how is the hot water heated up? Is it heated up using this elusive 'cheap' electricity at night then?! Maybe that explains why the hot water really isn't that hot either :? In the electrical box the swtich sayd that the hot water is timed - how the hell is this timed!?! I can't find a timer anywhere..... Might post a piccie of all these dials later o see if it makes sense to any of you storage heater experts as I am starting to lose my sense of humour with it all :evil:

allthegearnoidea

Yeah chances are they are on a timer withj an emmersion override switch (close to the tank normally), the temp is done by a thermostat On the tank, or two, one lower one higher, Normally held on by a small nut, take the outer cover off and there may be a dial you can adjust to raise the temp up! Ours went a while back and we had Boiling water coming out the taps, or quite often just Steam!! :shock:

miss notax

Steam??! :shock:

Crikey, that sounds complicated.... I'll have a hunt about then. It would be good if there was an immersion overide switch - I hope I haven't unwittingly had it switched on for the last 4 weeks :?

I am starting to wonder whether this whole storage heater thing is just an elaborate joke..... :evil: :roll:

t0pc4t

we had storage heaters in our first flat, the theory is that there is a period during the night off peak when you get cheap electricity, during that time your water tank is heated and your storage heaters are 'charged up'

so input should be set to maximum so they take in as much as possible during the charging period. Then have boost set to minimum unless you happen to be in that room in which case turn it up. TBH they're pretty useless though. If you have an open fire use that as well.

If your tank has an immersion heater that's good but be careful it will really rinse your electricity and cost a lot to run. We had one but found it cheaper to just take our showers in the morning when the water was nice and hot rather than at the end of the day when it had had a day to cool down.

Make sure the boiler is well insulated and you do other stuff to keep heat in, keep curtains closed etc.

mrmonkfinger

Storage heaters are a fantastic way of making your house boiling hot at about 6am and subzero by 6pm.

Is the house quite old, and do you have a fireplace? Its the one thing I miss about our last house, being able to burn stuff, and we could usually do without any central heating while the fire was going, too.

miss notax

mrmonkfinger wrote:

Storage heaters are a fantastic way of making your house boiling hot at about 6am and subzero by 6pm.

Ha, yes, this is it exactly :roll:

Fortunately there is a real fire in the lounge and I rather like the cosiness of having a real fire going. Actually, I think I really just like burning stuff (I am the daughter of a Fireman, maybe it's something genetic!)

mrmonkfinger

Awesome, fires are great, I loved ours, I spent about a month opening up the original (closed off) fireplace and fitting a stove & chimney liner and all that jazz, time well spent. Then we cut down our fir tree hedges and burnt them. Happy days.

miss notax

Not very happy this morning :evil:

Got my first gas / elec bill and the electricity part is coming out at £200 for 2 months.... I can't see how this is right, bearing in mind I am at work all day and out 3/4 evenings a week (therefore not at home watching tele etc)! Just had a chat to the supplier who commented that they would expect this kind of bill from a family in a 4 bedroom house - I live in a 2 bedroom cottage by myself!

I don't have a dishwasher and I run the washing machine about 3 times a week tops. SO WHY IS MY ELECTRICITY BILL SO HIGH???!!

Is this normal for storage heaters? Or have I set them up wrong? They are all switched on at the plug and as I understand the timer automatically works so they switch on overnight? This makes sense as they are boiling hot in the morning and cooler when I get in from work (and cold in the evening )

So what am I doing wrong? I can't really afford to pay £100 a month in bloody electricty bills!!!!!

mrmonkfinger

You did meter readings when you moved in?
You did meter readings when they calculated the bill?


You've got a fireplace so why not get a few loads of coal/logs delivered, at least you can have some heat in the evening. This time of year seasoned wood will be a bit pricier so coal might be the easy option.

miss notax

Yes, took meter readings when I moved in (although I don't have them to hand now so will obviously check tonight!)! And yes, I took the meter readings last night so I am 100% sure they are correct.

It's just so bloody high! I am worried that I have got the storage heaters or immersion heater set up correctly

Woodmonkey

imersion heaters aren't cheap to run, our gas boiler was playing up and our bill went up by £300 over 4 months. :shock:

mrmonkfinger

miss notax wrote:

Yes, took meter readings when I moved in (although I don't have them to hand now so will obviously check tonight!)! And yes, I took the meter readings last night so I am 100% sure they are correct.

It's just so bloody high! I am worried that I have got the storage heaters or immersion heater set up correctly

Yikes, immersion heater as well. The bill sounds about right TBH.


So, moving back to a city any time soon?

Thewaylander

Sounds like you may have used the imersion heater a few times or something..

but if you need a house mate to split the bills im sure you could get volenteers

miss notax

Thanks guys - i'm slowly reaching the conclusion that the bill is probably correct.... :shock:

My shower didn't work for the first 6 weeks when I moved in, so I was having baths every day - this would have emptied out the immersion tank more, which would then refill with cold water, which would then use more electricty to heat and bring up to the right temperature, right? So now the shower is working (hooray!) I should be using a bit less electricity to heat it all back up again?

mrmonkfinger

miss notax wrote:

Thanks guys - i'm slowly reaching the conclusion that the bill is probably correct.... :shock:

My shower didn't work for the first 6 weeks when I moved in, so I was having baths every day - this would have emptied out the immersion tank more, which would then refill with cold water, which would then use more electricty to heat and bring up to the right temperature, right? So now the shower is working (hooray!) I should be using a bit less electricity to heat it all back up again?

Yeah that'd do it. Immersion heaters are horribly expensive especially if its keeping the tank warm all the time, and not just set up for an overnight operation on the nice cheap bit of E7. Electric showers are fairly cheap by comparison.

If you never have baths now I'd give some thought to just boiling a kettle whenever you want some hot water (washing up or whatever) - keeping a great big tank of water hot and ready takes a fair bit of electric.

BTW

Doing a kettle for instant hot water needs, costs about 1p to boil.

A 5 minute electric shower is around 10p.

Immersion heaters cost around 30p per hour (daytime). That's probably running for at least couple of hours to replace your bath. Plus some time to keep the tank warm. Probably £1/day.

Some geeky comparison tables here http://www.confusedaboutenergy.co.uk/in ... /hot-water

miss notax

Interesting - thank you

I don't have an electric shower - I believe that the water just comes from the immersion tank as usual (again, the difference between how hot the water is in the morning / evening confirms this!).

Not quite sure what the answer is.... Any idea how I can to see whether the immersion is on literally all the time or only during the night (ie cheap elec)? There appears to be a hot water timer in with all the meters - might try and take a photo tonight to see if anyone here can identify what the hell is going on!

And thanks everyone for your advice

Ok - this is the timer thing to do with the hot water... (amazing what images you can find on-line!)

mrmonkfinger

If its run off that thing, then it'll be fixed to run during the night only. I think you can change the length of time its on, but its fixed to be at night time.

Plus you can twiddle the "boost" dial which turns it on again, for a bit.

neilrosser

I'm in the central heating game and all my work is for housing associations, all I ever seem to do these days is take all that crappy leccy shite out, and install proper gas central heating. But I presume you don't have gas to the property and your renting which to be honest is double trouble, unless you have a really great landlord who is willing to update the system then it will never be cheap/economical. Is the hot water cylinder old? (the immersion as you call it, technically the immersions are the heaters that poke into the water,like a long kettle element) if it's old, for a start you are paying to heat up the lime scale inside the cylinder, before you even start to heat the water. As for your shower it would normally be electric aswell on this type of system. The best way to tell, do you have to pull a cord (usually inside bathroom door) or flick a switch(usually outside bathroom door)before you can use the shower, also if it's an electric shower it should have it's own main switch on consumer unit(fuse board to you). Just a few thing that might help you work things out.

Neil

miss notax

Hi Neil - thanks for the advice!

I don't think it is an electric shower - there is no cord etc, although there is a seperate pump as the water pressure in the house is rubbish! Good point about the age of the hot water cylinder. I do also actually have mains gas, but I don't think the landlady would be interested in contributing to any improvements....

I am interested in buying the house though if I get the chance (I suspect the landlady would be keen on this) - i've renovated a few houses and getting a boiler / central heating installed doesn't worry me!

Thanks very much!

mrmonkfinger

miss notax wrote:

Good point about the age of the hot water cylinder.

Might be worth getting one of those £10 cylinder jackets from B&Q?

Made quite a difference to the 1970's cylinder in our last house.

miss notax

Hmmm, thanks, will look into that

BigJimmyB

Get the immersion element replaced too. They get caked in hard water areas and can cost heaps to run.

Fairly inexpensive and better if you get the part yourself. Try http://www.espares.co.uk/parts?k=immersion or have a poke around on the internet.

Think of the immersion as a big tea urn, constantly keeping the temperature up. If you can sort it to heat on E7 overnight, so much the better.

mrmonkfinger

miss notax wrote:

Hmmm, thanks, will look into that

another cheapy thing you can do is secondary glazing film - clear plastic sheets that you literally sticky tape on to the windows.

looks completely crap, but works just like having double glazing.

only works on windows you don't open but its pretty effective if you're stuck with leaky single glazed windows from the 1900's (especially if they are drafty and letting air in/out).


my parents place always used to have a sausage dog stuck by the front door to stop the draft there, too.

yes, with ears.

miss notax

I'm sure I remember a previous incarnation of that plastic stuff.... It was like cling film that you 'fixed' by using a hairdyrer to heat it up around the edges?!! I distinctly remember my Mum doing that with all the windows in our old house (pre double glazing) when I was little

My cottage is already like one of these 'back in history' programmes, I have draft excluders and blankets everywhere with tonnes of wood and coal in the corner of the lounge. I have to add candles into the mix now too after a 2 hour power cut the other night. Who would live in the country eh :roll:

hopper1

miss notax wrote:

I'm sure I remember a previous incarnation of that plastic stuff.... It was like cling film that you 'fixed' by using a hairdyrer to heat it up around the edges?!! I distinctly remember my Mum doing that with all the windows in our old house (pre double glazing) when I was little

My cottage is already like one of these 'back in history' programmes, I have draft excluders and blankets everywhere with tonnes of wood and coal in the corner of the lounge. I have to add candles into the mix now too after a 2 hour power cut the other night. Who would live in the country eh :roll:

Added benefit of heat as well as providing light

mrmonkfinger

miss notax wrote:

It was like cling film that you 'fixed' by using a hairdyrer to heat it up around the edges?!! I distinctly remember my Mum doing that with all the windows in our old house (pre double glazing) when I was little

Yup, that's the stuff.