Standalone mains socket timed storage heater - do they exist?

[Jonathan]

The bloke at B&Q had never heard of them, I can't find them on the web, but I am SURE that a standalone semi-storage type heater with timer must be available. Basically, the central heating has totally mashed up, it's going to be a while to sort it (months?!?), and to heat the house electrically at day rate for the evening would be utterly prohibitive. Is there such a thing as a standalone storage heater? I realise it wouldn't store as much because the core would have to be lighter, but...something around £30ish?

[Matt Beard]

Do you already have the correct meters fitted for economy 7, and are you already on this tariff? If not then a storage heater of any kind is useless.

[Jonathan]

Oh yes! Well, there's a radio teleswitch which make the whole house go cheap for about 7 hours, and is billed at 1/3 the daytime rate, so I reckon that must be it!

[Lurch]

On or around Wed, 9 Nov 2005 17:22:07 -0000, "Jonathan" mused:

They're not.

If you only want to spend £30 then I'm not even going to bother telling you what your options are as none of them are anywhere near £30.

[Jonathan]

OK, one of the options ISN'T fixed storage heaters, and I need to heat 2 bedrooms and one living area on a 30 amp ring main, so I'm open to ideas!

[Owain]

This is the problem. 30A ring circuits are intended for general purpose loads, not heating. Especially with storage heaters, there is no diversity (as they all come on at the same time to store up heat for 7 hours) and so they have to be supplied on their own circuits, usually

15A per heater. You'd only get two 3kW storage heaters on a ring circuit and that would be the circuit almost fully loaded. Forget running the washing machine at night as well, to take advantage of the cheap leccy.

If you have spare ways on your consumer unit there's no reason you couldn't run 15A radial circuits to individual heaters and use plug-in timers. Check the timer ratings though, not all are rated for full 3kW.

Owain

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Basic fan heaters.

[Ed Sirett]

It has been found to be cheaper (to run) to replace storage heaters with less powerful electric convectors, on timers and thermostats. IF the users are out at work all day.

Many programmable room stats (for CH) can switch 10A of pure resistive load, but 2A of inductive (i.e. CH control gear).

Smiths (not WHSmiths!) do a programmable time switch cum FCU for around £40.

Low cost Wall mounted convectors often have integral time switches and/or thermostats.

I suspect that using non-storage electric heating is against the building regs (Part L probably) however if the net effect is to consume (much) less units of electricity it is clearly a moral win.

[Lurch]

On or around Thu, 10 Nov 2005 21:23:46 +0000, Ed Sirett mused:

Exactly what I was about to say, (nearly)!