Rayburn to electric

[skye16]

Hi.
I've got an old Rayburn Royal that costs a fortune in oil to run, and it's only going to get more expensive. I'm thinking of changing it to solid fuel. But before I do, does anyone know if you can convert them to just electric? I'm on Economy 7.
Thanks for any advice.

 

[digdilem]

Er, you want to convert the rayburn to electric?

Why?

If you have economy7 already at the premisis, each heater would be wired direct to that, and often an immersion element too. Rayburn would not be a part of it. At all. Unless you're trying to address the failings of economy7 by running the rayburn in the evening when the e7 has run out and you want heat the most.

As for de-converting the rayburn; if you have free logs and time to keep it fed, great. If you want only an occasional heat when you have time, great. But solid fuel is not a like for like replacement.

Give how horrid and inefficient the rayburn oil conversions are (and smelly!) I have sympathy, but not sure exactly what you want as an end result. If you have a tank and want more efficiency, look at a modern boiler as a replacement. Rayburn will be worth 500-1000 second hand to some unfortunate soul who values looks more than practicality and could go some way to funding a replacement.

 

[skye16]

Hi
Thanks for your reply.
I have Economy 7 radiators, but not in the kitchen, where I have the Rayburn. It does heat my water and the room. But the old Rayburn Royal model I've got is very inefficient and is really getting too expensive to run.
I just thought that if I could put some sort of electric heater element where the burner is, it would heat the water and the room, and be much cheaper. I suppose the other option is to buy a storage heater.

 

[digdilem]

I've not heard of such a thing, although it does sound possible.

Personally I'd sling another storage heater in there if you've got wallspace.

 

[tayldani]

Hi New to the site but been looking at a rayburn regent conversion to electric, we moved into our house and it had a oil converted rayburn (originally wood), we had great problems finding anyone who knew what they are doing to service it in the end found a oil boiler engineer who so called serviced it (think he only did a basic check on it) the rayburn would never get hot enough to be of much use other than heating the room a little, so clearly wasn't working correctly, so started looking at options,

1) convert back to wood - cheap to run but would need topping up etc and I'm out at work most the day,

2) keep trying to find someone that would service it and get it working,

3) try and convert to electric,

I then looked at the oil controller and saw how much oil it uses on min setting based at .67p per litre it would £3.85 per day on max £12.54 per day! so assuming low over night and high for a few hours cooking your going to pay about £6.00 per day.

So electric I wondered how much electric it would need to heat it up to the same temperature that the min setting was, so I drained out the oil in it and turned all that off, blocked up the chimney temporally with some foil and installed 2 low powered straight oven elements from a old £30 electric caravan type oven, and put these in the rayburn fire pit, the power being used is reading at 660-680w I left it to see if it got hot, after about 3-4 hours the top hot plate was reading 149 degrees c, (measured with infra red thermometer) and the oven using the door gauge was saying 100dc, while this isn't hot enough to cook on it was enough to heat the room up, cook toast, dry clothing and help keep the water warm,

So I feel thats a success, the next stage I've ordered a 1300w oven element (£3.50 on amazon) and going to try seeing how that works, my plan is to keep the 2 small elements in on 24/7 then use the larger element on a thermostat and switch to boost the heat when ready to cook just the same as you would turn the rayburn up when wanting to cook, I also have a 2.3kw element here and a oven fan that I may try to see what results I can get.

Of course if converting to electric must make sure there is a very good breaker and good earth on it,

any questions let me know,

 

[knightmail]

I would be very intetested to hear more about your DIY Rayburn electic conversion experiment.

 

[tayldani]

having had a son since then weighed up all the options and while I liked the old rayburn when I worked out its uses etc opted to take it out and put new a rated cooker in + a air source heat pump to heat the house uses less power that the rayburn would have used and heats the whole house, Sad to go but lot safer kitchen now!