Electric storage heaters

[Sweetlove23]

I am buying a house with no gas mains. They have new electric storage heaters.

however what is the best way to use them if I work from home some days and not others. At the moment I have central heating which comes on if it goes below 16 or I can override If cold.

how does everyone manage things and what do you think the cost would be for a 2 bed end terrace.

So awful. This is what we have. I have them off and use plug ins.

@RareMaker does this cost you alot of money though?

Horribly expensive, switched ours off 5 years ago. We fortunately have a woodburner so we dont freeze.We are replacing ours with electric thermostat radiators in the new year.

@mogtheexcellent will the radiators run off a heat pump?

Had them at uni, never again. You can't just have heat, you have to plan 24hrs ahead and then if your plans change you're just stuck heating an empty house , or if it's actually not that cold after all you just have to roast

Theyre not great unless you’ve got a really good electric tariff. Electric heaters aren’t much better.
a woodburner should heat a two bed cottage.
If you’ve space and access an oil boiler would be the option to go for. Heat pimps can be great or crap. Mines crap.
A multi fuel stove with back boiler so it will do some radiators and hot water as well would be the option I’d go for.

You've got to switch them on the day before (as you probably already know) as they store the heat up overnight and release it the next day. So you can't just flick a switch for instant heat. They are also not very effective anyway. You'll never get overwhelmed with heat from them! I've got a feeling though, but ready to be corrected, that Economy 7 is being phased out pretty soon. That was the whole point behind night storage heaters - that they stored electricity at night when the tariff was cheaper. People I know have already replaced theirs with electric radiators but obviously electric heating is never going to be particularly economical.

Thanks everyone. So would you recommend having the thermostat radiators installed so I can have instant heat.

It very much depends on the type/make you have - new modern decent ones are incomparable to old storage heaters. New digital storage heaters are superior to an electric boiler and radiators system or wall hung thermostatic heaters

Would a heat pump and new radiators or ideally wet underfloor heating be an option?

I liked having storage heaters. The modern ones are much better. You need to make sure you have an overnight cheap tariff as they charge up overnight and release the heat through the day. I think you can control them on an app now too.

It's years since we had storage heaters, but the one thing I do remember about them was that because they heat up cheaply overnight they did chuck out a lot of cheap heat during the day. We were both out at work so it was wasted on us, but if you're working at home it might be worth bearing in mind.

We moved into a house with them 12 years ago.
They are fantastic
Our house is always at a comfortable/ warm temperature- all of the time.
No mould anywhere either.
Our home is about 35 years old and is well insulated and double grazed.
We have solor panels so off sets cost.
Each too can have the temperature set , or turned off.
Very controllable.

I absolutely love them and wouldn't have anything else.

No. We can't afford a heat pump. They are just electric radiators but we can programme them for when we need heat as opposed to heating an empty house like the night storage heaters.

I found the heat pump to be worse than storage heaters. As I had to decide a day in advance how hot I wanted it and it used so much electricity. If I hadn’t had a back boiler put in I was going to look at storage heaters

2 bed end terrace you say? How old is it? Do you have cavity or solid walls?
Electric heating and an un-insulated solid wall house is the worse scenario.