Electric Central Heating Boilers

[Cyber1]

What are these like? How do the running costs compare with gas? It is to go in a 2 bed end terraced house. No central heating currently. Upfront costs seem attractive given I could do most of the work myself.

 

[ericmark]

There are two types storage and non storage the storage heats up a tank of water during the night and circulates it when heat is required the second is just a water heater first is cheapest to run second cheapest to install neither are as good as gas and both have limited output and can only be used in small well insulated houses.
The tanks of water come in two types pressurised (Mains pressure) and non pressurised (Header tank pressure) the storage type is better than old storage radiators which were not really central heating but with a max of around 9kW compared with 27kW for gas boilers it has to be a really small house.
Eric

 

[hairyben]

Running costs would be horrific compared to gas I'd imagine.

Can't the point of them myself, why not fit electric heating to the rooms? Unless you're retro fitting to an existing wet sys, but evan as a sparks I'd be inclined to fit a new gas boiler.

 

[trey]

I've just had a Dimplex Ascari boiler fitted. It's a 12kw electric system. It seems quite good so far. Uses full power (10kw in my case) to get water hot and then modulates down to anything from 8 to 4 kw to maintain water temp.

It was an upgrade from wood burning stove (which we kept on 1 radiator and hot water cylinder). We have no gas here so it was electric (£800 for boiler, £30 for electrician, £1000 for plumber to repipe old system) or oil (~£5000). At the worst case I'm expecting the electric to cost £150/month during cold months (total including cooking, electric shower, tv, lighting, etc). Which stacks up quite favourable against cost of logs / coal which only work when you're there to add them to the fire.

We've only had it for 2 weeks, but watching the usage it's been 30-40 units a day for the last 4 days. Our normal usage is 10 units for shower/hot water/cooking. The house is a 1960s 3 bedroom end terrace.

 

[gas4you]

Only ever fitted one, am Amptec 6Kw. Cost the customer approx £500/quarter to run about 3 years ago

 

[trey]

There are tariffs designed for "wet" electric systems. Unlike the radio switched tariffs for storage heaters, Souther Electric have Economy 10 and Economy 18 tariffs. The first gives you cheap rate for 10 hours in three sections (night, afternoon and evening). The times are fixed and the whole supply is cheap (like Economy 7). The economy 18 has two circuits, the one for the boiler is cheap for all but 6 peak hours.

Economy 10 is for electric flow boilers (ie just for CH or with high recovery DHW cylinder). The economy 18 is for water storage boilers that work like a combi (ie supply water and CH "on demand").

The only thing is that Economy 10 is a killer if you use units outside of 12-5am, 1:30-4:30pm, 8-10pm. When you pay 12.5p/kw rather than 7p/kw. I've worked out that is I need a certain % outside of this time then BG's single rate tariff of 7.5p/kw for secondary units is the cheapest.