Please tell me about your experience of electric storage heaters and/or having GCH installed

[WhyDidntIGetAnySoup]

Hi wise mumsnet hive mind.
My partner and I viewed a 2-bed house today, as FTB which ticked so many boxes. It it well under our budget and does need work doing but all manageable. One thing which I would like to hear other’s experience of is that it has electric storage heaters and no GCH. This would need to be installed which we can probably afford.
Please can anyone give their experience of:
a) What it’s like having these as your main source of heating.
b) What are running costs like?
c) If you had GCH installed at any time, how long did it take to complete the work and what kind of price was it?
d) Any other pointers or tips would be great to hear!

We are thinking, if we decide to go ahead and change to GCH, that we could have the install done before we physically move in.

Alternatively, depending on the advice we receive, we may decide to hang on and do it at a later date. However, my thinking is it will be more work to do while we’re living there (due to lifting floorboards/moving furniture, etc) than when the property is empty, and therefore would likely cost more.

I’ve lived in houses with storage heaters as the sole source of heating but I wasn’t aware paying the bill (and it was 25 years ago!) so no idea of costs.

Any thoughts?

TIA 🙂

You might be able to get a grant for an air source heat pump as the house has no central heating.

First of all is there mains gas in the road that you can connect the house up to? It's so unusual to have no gas central heating these days, that would be my first question. I can think of a couple of 1980's developments near me that don't have gas laid on in the road.

my own experience of storage heaters is that they aren't that warm and it's an expensive way of heating the house.

I have never hated anything as much in life as night storage heating. Freezing all day in winter, boiling to death at night, unable to control any of it.... However it was a very old system and the landlord was useless at fixing anything.

Is there even gas to the property?

I’ve had night storage heating.

it’s not great. You get a reasonable amount of heat in the morning but it was mostly gone by the evening. We also had an open fire and we needed it in the evening.

Not a fan of storage heaters but that was from 1990's. The tech may have improved since then?

We did put in GCH 3 years ago and it cost around £5K for combo-boiler, plumbing and radiators. It works a dream for us. We keep it on all year low and slow.

HOWEVER, it does mean that we now have a second daily standing charge to pay. I wish we had opted for solar panels, batteries and an ASHP instead. You'd still need radiators and pipes and probably a hot water tank(?), but the running costs could be offset by the cheap and free electricity. You could also look into air conditioning too. I assume that a/c running costs are pretty much free if you are running when the sun shines! Lot's of homework to do.

Yes electric can be expensive.

But small houses can be cheap to heat, especially if they are well insulated and modern. Think EPC B.

I would be thinking about :

a) What is the EPC and how difficult would it be to improve the thermal performance (cheap).

b) How long are you actually going to stay in the two bed if you have a partner and are thinking of starting a family ? A gas installation would cost a lot and pay for an awfully large amount of electric heating.

c) What tariffs are available to mitigate the heating expense. For example economy 11.

The default response will be electric bad, gas good.

But whether it is worthwhile going for a gas installation depends a lot on your personal circumstances.

I'm another victim of ancient storage heaters - too hot in the morning, freezing at night. The last 20+ years with gas central heating still feels like luxury!

^ This. I didn't think of that. If you're FTB'ers and may not be there more than 2 or 3 years then don'y go to any great expense. You won't get it back.

Storage heating is horrible. You could improve things slightly with electric underfloor but its just not great.

Had an all electric house for nearly 25yrs before getting gas & GCH installed.

NSH are not the useless, evil, expensive, ineffective things they are often portrayed as but to get the best from them you need to be on a suitable tariff and know how to use the heating to best effect.
When I bought my (previous) house it was on Econ7 and I suffered the usual complaints of a hot house in the morning and it cooling down in the late evening. Luckily my (soon to be) OH was an electrician and advised me to move onto Econ10 which was a game changer. 5hrs cheap-rate at night, 2.5hrs in the afternoon and 2.5hrs in the evening which meant you could leave them on low at night and then charge them during the day which was MUCH more effective. Also it meant that there was more likelihood of being able to use cheap-rate for doing the washing, dishwasher etc.
The multiple boosts meant we could bin the huge Econ7 water tank and have a smaller one which freed up useful airing cupboard space.
Having to think ahead by 12hrs to know what the weather was going to do and how much heat would (or would not) be required became second nature but Econ10 made this much easier than the old Econ7 setup.
We also found that NSH maintained the temperature in the house far better than GCH as they never got cold (unless switched off).

Eventually gas was put into our road and as we wanted a gas hob anyway, we made the decision to have everything ripped out and a complete new wet system installed which of course meant having a gas supply pipe laid across the front garden.
Not for the faint hearted, every room was affected as the electrics had to be removed (my OH did that) and then a new wet system installed but it tied in with some building works so we managed.
The combi boiler was ok and the GCH effective but at no time did we think "thank god the NSH have gone" and of course, having gained space from the removal of the water tank, we then had to find room for the boiler so it was swings & roundabouts.

Hi Everyone
thanks for all the feedback, really helpful and loads to think about. To answer a few points:

• we have a young child and are not planning on any more. So, other than another dog (or 2 🙈), we’re not going to be increasing in numbers. Other houses in the street have had attic extensions so we might further down the line decide to extend but it’s not essential rn.
• The property is almost certainly able to be connected to the gas mains. It’s a house in a small side road in the suburbs of a small town, probably built in the 1940s. We are having another viewing during the week, so will be sure to ask re gas mains.
• HOWEVER, following the first reply, I have realised that we may well be eligible for a ASHP grant so this is something we are seriously looking into. We have no desire to have ac but do want to have easy access to heat and hot water all year round.

thanks everyone, your responses have been incredibly helpful!

I will update my other thread from a few weeks ago about being ftb when things move forward for us. Wish us luck!

Hello! I bought my house earlier in the year so I am approaching my first winter in an all electric house with storage heaters.

to connect my house to gas from the road I have been quoted over £6,000 by the power company. That’s before a full central heating system fit.

I am going to weigh up options but will likely get a log burner installed downstairs then go from there.

My house was priced to reflect the lack of GSH when I bought it, it’s a lovely house and I admit with the summer we have just had I forgot about the winter!

As per my previous post.
Check your tariff, E10 is still available to new customers from some suppliers and it was a complete game changer for us.

Heavy ugly useless things, had a student flat for a year with them, hopeless and high bills.

Personally, I wouldn't jump to GCH.

If you are going to be doing some renovation work anyways, I would go for an air source heat pump, solar panels ( or those solar roof tiles), and add extra insulation.
I think extra insulation not only for the winter but the increasingly warm summers.
Would be more expensive to start, but much easier to live in in the future

We had new storage heaters fitted last year. The ones in the house were about 30 years old and very ineffective.

No mess, much nicer to look at and easier to operate. My husband did the research and all I remember is that these are high heat retention and you have to make sure you buy the right size for the room. The ones we have can we switched on during the day without charging overnight (we have only done this for short bursts).

You need to be sure you can get a good electric tariff.

We didn't go heat pump because that would have meant too much mess with the floors and we don't have space for the equipment.

Can't remember the cost.

My first two flats had storage heaters with hot water tanks. Ones in first flat were great, they were in small rooms and put out enough heat to keep me warm throughout the day. I had to keep doors closed and by mid evening they had given out most of their heat but I was quite comfortable. The water was plenty hot for a morning shower with the remaining staying hot well into the evening for washing dishes etc. The ones in the second flat were just as good except for the one in the living room. It just wasn't enough for the space it had to heat, had there been two heaters it would have been fine.

Although I had a good experience for the most part, both flats were quite small with both only being three rooms. They would not have worked in any sort of open plan living space, I had to keep all the doors shut to keep the heat in.

Then there was their inflexibility, If a day was warmer than I was expecting, there was no way to turn the heaters off. If it were colder then there was a boost function but that cost a lot to use. In generaI though don't recall the cost being too expensive, they were economy 7 and I never had to worry about my energy bill. That being said, energy is so much more expensive than it use to be, I still think a version of economy 7 exists though.

So, they weren't bad for me but I wouldn't want them now.