Storage heaters

Hello all

I hope this post is in the right section - it might belong better under "electrics".

We've just bought a flat as a second home which is heated by electrical storage heaters. There is no gas supply to the block. I don't know a great deal about storage heaters yet, but I do know that they are charged overnight and then discharge heat next day.

We will be using the flat often but not really on a predictable basis. Consequently it definitely wouldn't make sense to have the heaters charging every night as they lose their charge over the following day and there would be no one there quite often to benefit.

Also, because the flat might be used in the week or at weekends (although usually the latter), a timer wouldn't be ideal either. And since these things don't work unless they've been charged the night before, we're going to have a cold welcome if I don't find some way of turning them on to charge the night before they are required. Hope that makes sense!

The obvious answer is to control them via wifi somehow (or replace them with some form of direct heating, but I'm not keen on the cost implications). I've seen some plug in devices which can be controlled via the internet to turn appliances/lighting/etc off and on. However, they only seem suitable for fairly light loads. I don't actually know what load these are, but I assume it is pretty heavy and anyway these are wired directly into fused switches.

From what I understand of systems like Hive, they are great for controlling thermostats but wouldn't do what I need them to do? I may be wrong there.

If anyone has been able to understand what my problem is, I'd be grateful for some advice. If it would need an electrician to be involved that would be fine. It doesn't matter too much if it's a single control for all heaters or a set of controls for each one.

Thanks in advance.

Martyn

If it's a flat, and the rest of the block is occupied, it will not get very cold because heat will leak from your neighbours.

Establish if, during your night-time tariff, all of the electricity is at cheap rate. If so, you can get a few simple electric heaters, and turn them on when you arrive. If they have thermostats, they will stop drawing power when the flat reaches its comfortable temperature, and your usage pattern suggests it will only be for a few hours now and again. You can buy an electric heater for about £20, or spend far more if you want. The amount you pay for an electric heater has absolutely no effect on its efficiency or its running cost. This will be a lot cheaper than going for some complex remote control system.

any remote control system that can switch mains heating controls can be used to switch a contactor which would carry the whole load of your off-peak heating installation, so you could connect/disconnect the heaters from the off-peak supply remotely - assuming you are able to do so the night before so they can charge up when needed.

Alternative is fan assisted storage heaters - they are a lot more expensive to buy, and bulkier, but they don't lose nearly as much stored heat during the day and the output fan can be timer (or other remote) controlled.

http://www.hygienesuppliesdirect.com/products/prod145926-elnur-4-00-kw-white-fan-assited

However if the flat is only used intermittently then storage heating (and the associated higher peakrate cost for daytime use) might not be cost effective anyway.

I expected contactors to be in the region of £100 each, but I see some lesser brands are a lot less.

Good point about the peak rate tariff uplift.

Thanks all for the replies.

I have to say that we've found the flat noticeably warmer than our main house, so I suspect that JohnD is right and it probably won't need a lot of heating. I think I'll leave it for now, stay on Economy 7, and wait until the colder months to see how things are. I'm sure we'll need some form of heating but it may well be that some convector heaters will do the job fine. They'll certainly look a lot better than the storage heaters which are a bit of an eyesore. If we go down that route, we'll swap from Economy 7. If we find that the place takes too long to warm up when we arrive then I'll look more into installing a remote switch, although it sounds as if I will need to get in an electrician for that.

Thanks again for your help.

Me again. If I change to using convector heaters on a standard tariff, will the supply to the storage heater sockets continue to operate only at off-peak times, or will some rewiring need to be done. I've talked to my energy supplier and they've said the meter won't need changing but obviously something needs to happen if I am to use the same sockets?

The supply to the NSH points will still only be live during the E7 hours, yes

All the supplier will do, is take the number of units you've used during normal hours, and the number of units you have used during the E7 period and add them together and charge you a flat fee per unit.

If you post a picture of the consumer unit area, we can advise on how straightforward it would be to put them on the 24/7 supply..... (normally pretty straight-forward, unless there is something out of the ordinary).... however you will require an electrician to do that for you

Thanks very much. I've got enough electricity points anyway so I'll probably not use the storage heater points. But at least I know what I'm dealing with.