Electric Heating

Marky

Marky

Marky

Soldato
Joined
16 Apr 2007
Posts
23,439
Location
UK
Hey all!

I've recently moved into my first property, which is a first floor Maisonette.

It has no Gas, so all the heating is electric. When I first got into the property, it had two storage heaters; one small one in the living room, and another bigger one in the hallway.

One of the first things I did was remove them as they were ugly as all hell, and wanted to upgrade the heating at some point.

With Winter coming, I'm looking at different options, and I wanted to know what everyone else uses in terms of Electric Heating...

I'm currently on an electric plan called "Economy 7", which is basically cheap electric from between 1AM - 7AM. It's meant to be good for Storage Heaters, as they'll heat up during the night and then use the heat during the day. However, I've heard they can be overwhelmingly hot during the day.

I'm completely new to this sort of thing - I've always been fortunate enough to live in a house with Central Heating :p - If you live in a property with Electric Heating, what do you use? And what has been your experience?

Thanks,

Marky
 
My house when I bought it didn't have gas heating (storage heaters, or gas heaters). In general I'm not a fan of them (all replaced with gas central heating now), but they do work reasonably well if they're decent & operated correctly. The ones I had were around 20 years old, so only had 2 controls, one to change how much the heater warmed up, and the other to change how open the vent was (how much warm air to let out). Some of the newer ones I've seen have more complex controls including timers etc.

Essentially if electric is your only option for heating, & biomass or heat pumps are not a viable option (due to cost, or suitability etc), then storage heaters are what you'll need (otherwise it'll cost you a fortune to heat). If setup correctly, you can get the amount of heat you want, when you want it, but it might take you a few weeks to get all the settings tweaked to give you what you need.
 
R.C Anderson has pretty much nailed it.

Storage heaters get a bit of a bad rep as most people's experience of them is when they rent property that have really old heaters and how they work is not explained.

When we moved into our first house it had no heating and no gas supply. My partner stupidly concluded that as it was mid terraced we wouldn't need any heating. Suffice to say first winter we went out and brought brand new storage heaters.

For those that are not aware they should be used with economy seven. During the night when your electricity price is lower the heaters heat ceramic (or similar) blocks inside the heater which then release heat during the day. The idea is that in the ideal scenario the radiator will be cold when you go to bed so that you have "charged" them up enough, it can take some time to learn how they work so that you are adding enough heat during the night so that you have enough retained during the day.

They will often have a vent that you can open (typically named output) to release more of the heat, but obviulsy they will "drain" quicker doing this.

We lived in that house for seven years and whilst central gas heating would have been better the heaters worked fine as we understood how they worked, the house was always warm. You do need to keep an eye on the weather though, particularly in autumn/spring when you can get big jumps in temperature between days. Unlike gas central heating you n eed to put a bit of planning in.
 
Heatpumps are the 'best' electric heaters as they're upwards of 400% efficient (compared to a maximum of 100% for storage or other conventional electric heaters) so big savings to be had with them over any other type of electric heating but it really depends on your property if you could go down that route.

I imagine as it's already October you're in for a few cold months as unless you just throw in some new storage heaters yourself.
 
heat pumps though provide a small constant amount of heat rather than large amounts when needed. also have large start up costs. but pay you back over time.

so it's nowhere near efficient as that unless you need heat 24/7.

as in if you went away on holiday and needed heating. it could take the heat pump days to make the whole house warm whereas gas or electric could do it within say 3-5 hours.

i think your best options are look into insulating wherever you can to stop heat loss. then only heat the rooms you use when you use them.
 
We had 2 different heatpumps in NZ and if it got too cold (only about 0) they'd stop for about 10 minutes to cyclec through to prevent frost. By the time they started again the room was cold.

Mind you insulation is a rare thing over there so I imagine they may work better here.

Like has been said though, it's a constant warmish supply rathet than a blast of heat.
 
I live in a house with no gas supply and an economy 7 meter with storage heaters. I have yet to use the storage heaters but as they are quite old I don’t hold much hope for them, so like you I have been looking at alternatives.

The most interesting to me are infrared panel heaters.

Infrared heating works by heating the surface area of a room, rather than the volume (as is the case the traditional convection heaters), which means they are heating considerably less to provide the same amount of heat.

In addition, you are heating solid walls or objects with infrared radiation and these have a thermal mass, which means they retain heat and help keep the home cosy. Conversely, air has no thermal mass, so in the case of traditional convection-warmed rooms, when a door is opened, the hot air will quickly escape; requiring you to reheat the room to feel warm again. One brilliant factor in favour of these panels is the ability to provide the home with a fully-zoned property. Unlike central heating systems, the panels can be switched on in individual rooms using the thermostats. This means that heating is only fully used when required. If you think how much energy is wasted in rooms that do not need to be heated, such as guest bedrooms, this is a real benefit.

Electric infrared panels also only take about 30 seconds to reach full operating temperature and therefore are much more efficient at heating a space than conventional space heating heaters. The heat is also contained in the thermal mass of the room surfaces, as opposed to the heat. This means that it stays warmer for longer and draughts do not play as large a part when compared with convection heaters.
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https://www.thegreenage.co.uk/tech/infrared-heating-panels/

I very nearly purchased a panel to tryout but in the end me and the misses decided to just buy a cheap oil free radiator which cost £50 and works surprisingly well in conjunction with the storage heaters, then look at a more permanent solution next year.
 
I spent ages fretting over electric heating and in the end my year to date spend is £411. And I work from home too so during the winter I've got the heating on for 16 hours a day. My tips are, only heat the rooms you're in, as the electric heaters can spin up rapidly and heat whatever space you want when you want in short time. Buy an electric blanket. I can't believe what a revelation having an electric blanket has been. You won't WANT the heating on with that.

I do sometimes wonder whether electric heating in an apartment is cost comparable to gas. I only say that because a boiler can set you back £2k where as the newly purchased WIFI, slim and modern looking electric heaters I've refurbished with were £150 each and I bought 4. There's no moving parts, no maintenance, etc.

I won't even put the heating on until late November so I don't expect my bill to be much above £600 which I think is great considering I get my heating, water and cooking all from that.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
heat pumps though provide a small constant amount of heat rather than large amounts when needed. also have large start up costs. but pay you back over time.

so it's nowhere near efficient as that unless you need heat 24/7.

as in if you went away on holiday and needed heating. it could take the heat pump days to make the whole house warm whereas gas or electric could do it within say 3-5 hours.

i think your best options are look into insulating wherever you can to stop heat loss. then only heat the rooms you use when you use them.
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An air con split/VRF multi split that also provides heat will heat the place up in no time with warm air - are you thinking of UFH? We spec a LOT of splits at work, often for buildings with no radiators. They are normally set by the BMS to come on max heat, max air flow about half an hour before staff arrive, and by then the place is up to temp.
 
When we were in your situation, we used electrically heated, thermostatically controlled and programmable oil filled radiators, cheap to buy, cheaper to run than panel heaters or fan heaters, not as good as heat pumps or split aircon units, but a lot cheaper to buy.

It just depends how much you want to spend in time and money and over how long you want the financials to balance.
 
Transam said:
An air con split/VRF multi split that also provides heat will heat the place up in no time with warm air - are you thinking of UFH? We spec a LOT of splits at work, often for buildings with no radiators. They are normally set by the BMS to come on max heat, max air flow about half an hour before staff arrive, and by then the place is up to temp.
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We've had split aircon units in various offices i've been in at work and they're amazing, they heat a decent size office up in no time at all, Monday morning after a weekend in winter with no heating for 2 days and after about 20 minutes the room is lovely and toasty.
 
The only problem with the splits (and we have loads of them at work) is they can be a little twitchy in very very cold weather we find. As they are basically heat exchangers they seem to struggle to take exchange the cold to very cold air.
Minor issue and can be got around with them being switched on early. Once they are topping up they work well, but when inside is very cold and they need to do a lot of work we do find they can stop start a few times.
 
That used to be a really serious problem - units would constantly be going into "defrost" in cold temperatures.
It is nowhere near as bad with modern units though - some guarantee a minimum temperature they will work at, and have a small hot air "bypass" which blows over the condenser to keep it from freezing up.
I wouldn't rely on an air-air or air-water heat pump for all your heating needs unless it's a huge system. When it hit -7 degrees last year we had so many calls from so many people with old heat pumps, saying they were without heat - we modified them so they worked just enough, but any closer and the heat would have been out for the duration.
Plenty of manufacturers now guarantee they will work to -10, and most of them will work - but I would still retain your boiler in the loop if you have one.
Working until minus ten isn't much use if it turns to minus 12!
Ground sourced is ideal - but you need a big garden, a stream, or a pond for that to work without £££boreholes. A great solution, but it won't be within budget and give even a 25 year payback unless you are happy to hire a digger, do your calcs, destroy the garden while installing it, and replace every radiator in the house for one twice the size.
 
We're doing ah job at the moment. Brand new flats all having air conditioning which will do the hating/cooling.

New build houses we fit air source heat pumps and unvented cylinders.

Gas is old hat now
 
Air source heat pumps make sense if gas isn't available or not cost effective to get it connected to the supply.

But in most cases it's still going to be cheaper to run GSH with gas prices a quarter of electric.
 
It’s not that gas is gold hat now, it’s superior in many aspects but if we have any hope in making a meaningful dent in climate change has gas and oil heating has to go. I’m not some green hippie but I think we can probably all agree digging up oils and gas and then burning it isn’t the best idea for the long term future for the planet.

In a generation or two we will look back at the concept of piping a highly flammable gas into people homes as a rather silly idea.

Many people don’t realise how much gas just gets burnt during production and how much just leakes into the atmosphere, it will blow some people’s mind.

Back on topic, For the OP storage heaters are the way forward. They have a bad rep but they do work. Grab an oil heater for the days you get it a bit wrong during the funny autum and spring months.
 
Transam said:
An air con split/VRF multi split that also provides heat will heat the place up in no time with warm air - are you thinking of UFH? We spec a LOT of splits at work, often for buildings with no radiators. They are normally set by the BMS to come on max heat, max air flow about half an hour before staff arrive, and by then the place is up to temp.
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Its psycho sonny, he marches into every thread with no clue :p Over time you need to learn to ignore him.

Indeed, heat pumps are very effective indeed and kick out huge amounts of warm air. They will also usually be cheaper than gas heating to operate with ~400% efficiency. Very good systems and what we will be running soon at our house in favour of oil.
 
Sasahara said:
Air source heat pumps make sense if gas isn't available or not cost effective to get it connected to the supply.

But in most cases it's still going to be cheaper to run GSH with gas prices a quarter of electric.
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Large systems (in some cases as small as a (large) house heated by a single ground or air sourced heat pump) can be run using a gas engine rather than an electric motor - generally existing engines with slight adaptations. One big multisplit I've seen runs a Micra engine!
 
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