Old electric storage heaters

Mamamia22

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A relatives apartment has the old style large bulky looking electric storage heaters with a day / night meter. Is there any point in considering upgrading these heaters ? With electricity now 45 c a unit I’m wondering is there any alternatives ?
 
Well note they shouldn't be on 45c a unit if they are charging the storage heater at night, they should be on a much cheaper night rate.
They should only be paying that for daytime boost, if the storage heaters have that as an option.


There was a recent thread here with more suggestions
 
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I'm looking for the old style dumb storage heaters actually!
I had them in an apartment once, made sense in living room, or say hallway or bathroom. But there was a 'dumb' one in the bedroom that made no sense to me. It got too hot during the night if you wanted it to have any heat stored for the next day.
 
There are smaller ones in the bedrooms yet. I think these only do instant heat. Yes the night rate is cheaper but still high at around 22c. Only a few years ago the day rate was 15 c. I’m trying to figure out how best to set these heaters.
Also the immersion is a huge tank covered with green foam. Any logic to reducing it in size. Small apartment only two occupants. No gas supply.
 
The tank may be both cold and hot, if it's an apartment - there would be no "attic tank" that we're used to in houses, and a cold tank will serve toilets,bathroom sinks, etc. The heated part of the tank only forms part of the overall tank.

This was a friend's experience in an apartment.
 
I have that copper tank covered in green foam but my immersion is attached to the side of it, an economiser I think it's called. Heats enough to fill a sink in 5 minutes but will generate more hot water to the tank if you leave it on longer. I would never use the tank for a bath for example so don't need the full tank heated. You could heat enough for the pumped shower with it though for one shower anyway.

As for the storage heaters, I am currently doing battle with ESB over a bill for appro €1,200 for one average storage heater and one small hall one in a one bed council house of approx 600 sq ft! Electric Ireland fitted a new meter and apparently those two old storage heaters used 5,437 units over 64 days, just can't be right! (Neighbour in identical house used 1,136 over same period). The occupant had never previously used the storage heating having only moved in about 18 months earlier and just wasn't familiar with them so didn't turn them on but with that cold spell earlier this year and encouraged by neighbours who were using theirs with no issued flicked the switch to turn them on and lo and behold the huge bill ensued!

So basically check they are working right and the unit usage before leaving them on too long!
 
apparently those two old storage heaters used 5,437 units over 64 days, just can't be right! (Neighbour in identical house used 1,136 over same period)
Wonder if they just left them turned on 24x7? That usage is basically 3.5kW running 24x7, probably about right for a small and medium sized heater.
 
Wonder if they just left them turned on 24x7? That usage is basically 3.5kW running 24x7, probably about right for a small and medium sized heater.
It is close enough in figures but (and I'm no electrician!) they can't run 24/7 as the night rate meter or the heaters I don't know which has a timer and it only comes on at night from 12pm to 9am to charge. If they did run during the day I believe it's only on the boost function and that comes from the day rate units and they weren't affected at all.

Apparently too even though they are on all night they are not necessarily drawing power for the full time, bascially it was explained to me that once they are 'charged' as such then that's enough, kind of like charging your phone was how I understood it. Doesn't necessarily take the whole 9 hours especially when in daily use.

We did a test last week actually and turned them on again for 24 hours, light on switch came on at 12 and off at 9 as expected and the reading over the 24 hrs was 24 kw and that was 'charging' them from stone cold as they hadn't been on for months.
 
Tried to shop around with the electricity unit rates. Got nothing on bonkers.ie. Is there somewhere else to get a better rate or just go to Bord Gais direct ?
 
Electric storage heaters are "dumb" devices that generally just store up energy in heavy bricks during the night (for which you will need to have a day/night or smart meter with day and night tarrif) & releases it slowly during the day. In some cases you might also have an additional wall thermostat that turns a "boost" option on & off and this is where you might be having issues - check to see if there is a thermostat unit anywhere on the wall.
Some units don't even have a boost option, and just blindly storage up heat & night & slowly release it on default.

The trouble with these in my experience is that they tend to release nearly all the heat during the morning and afternoon while I am out of the home, and then I need to turn on manual boost which of course is charged at peak rates. So you end up paying a lot to heat the home at a time you are not there. Then again, my experience is mainly from using them in shoddy pre63 flats that were probably underpowered for the size of the unit and probably had close to zero insulation in the home. There are 3x storage heaters in my house, all of which were broken when I bought the place (I assume the tenants had short circuited them by trying to dry clothes on them).
Another issue is that if you size them properly many of these are huge units using 2.5kw to even 3kw which will go through quite a lot of electricity, but it will heat the room properly.

You can get storage-like electric heaters now that include panels that store up heat and then switch off, thus reducing the amount of time the heater is on by 30-40% - its still an expensive way to heat a room. The main issues I've found is poor placement & underpowered heaters.
Newer electric heaters have to comply with new "Ecodesign" standards since 2018 to detect open windows, distance from users, etc. https://www.dimplex.co.uk/news/ecodesign-everything-you-need-know
Then there are companies like Technotherm in Germany that produce more sophisticated heaters that store some energy, and can take power from PV panels. Solar power obviously might help in some cases if for example you have a battery and were storing some power during the day or using it to warm up a cold home.

With energy efficiency like you get from such devices it might be worth investigating mini splits or even air to air heat pumps, but these are relatively expensive - eg I got a quote of 2.4k plus electrical work for a highly efficient bloc and indoor unit for a 26m2 living room - these things are very close relatives to air 2 air heat pumps so similar performance but if efficiency 300-400% for heating it does mean you'd be heating such a space using a considerably lower amount of electricity per kw output - with storage or standard panels you get 1kw output for 1kw input. But at that cost probably better off pricing a proper air 2 air heat pump which I see some models from Daikin can feed up to 5 indoor air units.
 
Not my post originally but as I commented regarding storage heaters cost dispute with Electric Ireland I just thought I would update. As of today EI have refunded 1,000 euro of the 1,200 bill for the 2 months of storage heater use, this would be more like correct and tallies with the next door neighbour's bill for exact same house/heaters/period.

This 'battle' took since last April approx when bill was received and I was determined to see this the whole way to CRU if necessary, it wasn't even my account but I was typing the emails on the account holders behalf with their permission. It was obvious the heaters could not have used the units registered on the 'new' meter installed and we have no explanation as to how that number was clocked up but they admitted that the heaters in question could not possibly have used that much in the period billed, in fact they said that it wouldn't use that over the full normal winter period of using the heaters.

Either way it's sorted now despite threats of disconnection while meanwhile not engaging with account holder or answering their emails and apparently they have no service standard regarding how long they have to reply to a complaint! All in all a very unsatisfactory system, the account holder wanted to give up months ago and just take the payment plan offered but I advised against it as it was just wrong!
 
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