How do storage heaters work?

Absolute rubbish. Hot all day then come 7pm cold so you end up using ther "boost" button (some have this to override the Economy 7 circuit) then end up costing a fortune.
as you pay normal rate.

Also, you have to closely watch the weather forecasts, as once charged up, it the next day is warm/hot, theres no way to turn them off.
 
Living in a flat with storage heaters for the past six years I havn't found them particularly expensive to run. My electricity bills total ~£550 per year with no gas installed. This is with being at work all day, leaving storage heaters on from late October until the end of March and using the convector heater part during the late evenings of the coldest days of the winter.

You do need to set them to an appropriate level to heat up over night to release the stored heat over the next day. They can keep heat stored for quite some time, especially with the boost set to off and doors kept closed to prevent heat escaping. There is also a convector part, which can be used to provide additional heat from higher rate electricity if required.
 
How do storage heaters work? They don't. They give off some small amount of heat, not anywhere near enough to heat up a room.
 
In our flat we have around 5 storage heaters and two normal electric fan heaters in the kitchen and bathroom. Of those we only use 2 heaters and they work fine for heating the entire flat.

The only issue is when you get the next days weather wrong and get the settings wrong for the weather. Ok when you can open the windows, not so great if you didn't turn them up enough.
 
Reminds me of my friend researching these and decided he would not use them as they were expensive to run.

So he went out and bought 3 or 4 electric fan heaters for like £50 He told me about 2 months later what he had done and i was like :eek:

I think his first bill was like £800 HAHA Owned!
 
I had storage heaters in my flat, luckily I had a gas boiler for water only, this was removed and I installed Gas Central Heating.

Whilst I was installing the central heating I only left one of the storage heater in the hallway on low and this cost I think around £40 to run during November, this was 3 years ago so cant remember exact costs, with the gas I can heat the whole place and on demand hot water and this cost £35 ~
 
Got 'em here too but only ever have the one in the hall on in mid winter as the place is warm enough usually; if cool in eve I put on more clothes and or use a small fan heater for a short while.

As my ex commando friend is always telling us: There's no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing! lol ........ suppose he should know having had to survive -20 when in the RM.
 
The Creda/Hotpoint factory I worked at for 27 years built these by the millions and all they are is a big toaster.
After spending all those years testing, building and repairing them I never understood why they sold like they did.
Complete crap.
 
dmpoole said:
After spending all those years testing, building and repairing them I never understood why they sold like they did.
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I think it comes down to one simple thing... no choice. :-) If you have no gas (and in flats that's probably a bonus to be honest) then there's only one way to try and reduce your heating costs, and that's via storage heaters (assuming you're on the right tariff).

I agree they are far from perfect as a convenient source of warmth, but they do a good job of making sure your home doesn't get too cold "on average". Sure, you have to top up the heat or wear more clothing later in the day, but they keep the place habitable far more cheaply than any other kind of electric heating.
 
I used to have storage heaters until i moved in march to my first house that has Gas.

When they were first designed electricity was cheap but as we all know its very expensive nowadays so they are now a very very expensive way for heating.

I was left in £650 of debt when i left my old property which was around 80% for the storage heaters for electric so i was told by EDF.

I never really understood how they really worked and never really understood the control panels and thats from 2 different property's using storage heaters,i usually always had to manually use the boost function for heat or else it was too cold.

My gas bill is so so much cheaper now.
 
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