Electric panel heaters

Sudden · 13 Oct 2017 at 16:22

I bought a new flat earlier this year and wouldn't you know it, only about half of the heating works. There are 5 electric heaters in the flat (wall mounted panels) and only two work.

It's too costly to repair them (about 100 each + labour), so was going to replace them. My old flat had gas though so I have no clue what to look at or how much to spend. Does anyone have any suggestions?

It's a 1 bed flat in a 10 year old building.

Also - they all seem to be going into the wall socket rather than plugged in. Does this mean I need an electrician and not something I can do myself (i'm DIY inept, particularly at this stuff, but willing to learn in case it's a super easy thing to do. If complicated, then will go the electrican route).

Haze · 13 Oct 2017 at 17:42

So.... it will be cheaper to replace the entire heating system in your flat, instead of repairing the broken ones...

Sudden · 13 Oct 2017 at 19:07

Well, new electrical panel heaters seem to cost anywhere from £50 - £200, so even at the higher end, seems to make more sense to go for a new one instead of repairing an old one? Also don't have to replace all 5, just the broken 3 (though depending on where I end up, would consider all for consistency).

lude1962 · 13 Oct 2017 at 19:15

they sound like storage heaters, they may have a temp control and on / off switch
might be worth rechecking
if they're just storage heaters they take a while to heat up

Sudden · 13 Oct 2017 at 19:20

The brand is creda. They are supposed to take a few minutes if they've been off for a while, but have waited a day and the display is still blank and there's no heat. I called Creda to check and they said it sounds like a faulty part which would cost close to £100.

One of the heaters just has a faulty display because it still heats, but the others don't do anything after coming on.

Edit - don't know if storage or not. Honestly don't know anything about heaters so turned to the wisdom of OcUK.

pastymuncher · 13 Oct 2017 at 19:21

Think yourself lucky they don't all work or you will have huge electric bills. Our housing association used us as guinea pigs and fitted a load of these damn things in our house a few years ago as a trial that they wanted to roll out across all of their properties. They replaced the Dimplex night storage heaters we had at the time and had ceramic cores in them. They were bigged up by the manufacturer as having instant heat and being extremely economical to run. Well that turned out to be complete bull as we then had the highest electricity bill for a single quarter that I have ever had, £546!! They came out to make sure that we were using them correctly which turned out that we were and I had to submit daily usage figures along with daily meter reads. Next quarter was another massive bill over over £400 so our complaints to the housing association increased. This went on for another year until the housing association gave in and ripped them out and paid for gas to be piped to everyone and gas central heating with combi boilers fitted. Since then things have been great but I never did get any help with the massive bills that were forced on us. I wouldn't recommend these things to anyone.