who has experience of electric storage heaters?

[MamaChris]

Am looking at lots of houses we could buy. All need something doing. One has electric storage heaters. Has anyone lived with these? How did it work out? Only time I tried it was at work, but never got to grips with it - office always too too cold or hot. And how disruptive/expensive is it to install gas heating? (property already has gas hot water). Thanks!

I got them once many moons ago as there was no gas in the area. They were absolute crap.

Not up to date with costs of putting in gas heating system, but in your shoes I'd be going for that option.

I had them in my house when I moved in. They are absolutely shite.
They are scorching and give off most heat during the night (cue lots of chest and respiratory probs from me being dried out), they are not adjustable. You have to guess 24 hours ahead what the temp might be.
If you work they are hot all night while charging up, give off heat all day while you are out, then you need to put a bloody fire on or something else when you come home as they are cooling down Oh and the water will be on an immersion heater so you have to check with people who wants a bath etc. Or run out of hot water.
I had them ripped out and nice, controllable, timeable gas central heating put in.

It was reasonably distruptive to install gas ch, took about 3 days for 2 blokes to do it in my little house. Carpets and floorboards up, lots of dust and dirt, but oh boy the lovely central heating and instant hot water was worth every minute.

they really can upset you. you can't control them, in fact, i didn't really understyand the point of them at all.

we had them to heat a barn, yes a barn, it was a conversion that was badly done, and we blew about 25 quid a week on them during the winter, about 7 yrs back.

bad.

Bloody awful. Every place I have ever rented has had them and they are just crap. They get incredibly hot so are dangerous if you have little ones playing anywhere near them, are big bulky and ugly and cost a fortune to run. Hate them. We currently have them in our flat, and 2 have broken completely (don't think it's worth ringing the landlord to repair them, what doesn't work will not cost me money is my theory) and the living room one is on mainly when I have washing to dry on airers. But I must have wasted so much money keeping them on overnight only to find the next day that it is scorching hot and needig to open windows to reduce the temperature. I would avoid if you can.

thanks for the replies. that's fairly unanimous! there's gas to the property (hot water is gas heated, apparently, and there's a gas fire), so I guess our best option would be to install gas central heating. 3 days doesn't sound so bad, we could perhaps stay with friends

(thats 3 days for a 2 bed terrace...)

we bought a house once with them and it was a nightmare!

Very expensive and crap, ime

once you put the gch in you will have upped the value of your property above the cost of installation IME.

ESHs are awful.

It's not all that disruptive to install CH - we had ours done under pretty bad circumstances - 200+yo house, nothing went to plan - the man was still installing the unit in our loft when I was in full labour with DD2 (was supposed to be a home birth). I distinctly remember practically shoving him out the front door with him saying 'I'll be back tomorrow first thing to finish off' Me: 'No you WON'T!'

Sorry if this is a bit late to reply but have just read.

We had storage heaters in our house and although they are probably not the most friendly of heating systems, unlike central heating where you turn up the thermostate and in half hour the room is warm, but if you check on your heaters there are two dial, one is for in-put and one is for out-put. the in-put one is for the amoutn of electricity the heater would use to heat up during the night and the output one obviously is for the amount of heat it let out during the day. so if you had them both on maximum you are obviously wasting a lot of energy, we tended to have ours on 3/4 input and just under half on output.

I do agree with most posters that they can get very very hot so with small children this could be a problem but I wouldn't let it put me off buying a house just because they were there. BUT saying that i do find that you get a better heat and more value for your money on central heating.