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OK the flat has storage heaters, they have an input and an output dial and an on off switch.
The electricity meter has 3 tarifs, day, night (about half the day rate) and storege energy (which is about 2/3 of the night rate).
Now I presumed if I turned them on they'd be 'off' untill the stored meter turned on at midnight, but they got warm, not hot obviously, just warm enough to know they were definately on, after about an hour in the middle of the day.
Am I doing it right? Or do I have to manualy turn them on each night before going to bed? But then surely if they are on a seperate circuit this doesn't make sense as there's only one tarrif for stored energy and If I can use it any time of day it defeats the object of storage heating?
I had these! They are a bloody pain.
AS far as I could figure out, basically you need to decide today if you think it will be cold tomorrow. If you think it will be cold tomorrow turn up the input and boost, this will store the heat tonight and tomorrow they will be warm.
If its cold today and yesterday you didn't think it would be then you're ****ed!
Yea, I get the principle but as far as I can tell they come on as soon as you turn them on whereas the principle is surely that they come on only 12-7 when the cheep rate is, so logicaly that wire from the meter to the heaters shouldnt be live during the day?
don't they just work by heating bricks up at night?
Check that the night tariff clock is set to the right time?
I used to have these. There was a 'switch' next to the meter that was controlled by the electricity company somehow. Came on about Midnight and went off 7ish in the morning. I vaguely remember that it went funny (about 12 years ago), and left the heaters on day and night -- they were good about getting it fixed quickly though.
Ours used to go on at night, then we had a mid to late afternoon topup/boost for an hour or so. Could be that you had turned them on during the afternoon boost which on economy 7 was the same as the night rate.
It would be worth checking the time on the suppliers timeclock as snaps says.
spooky beat me to it
Also there is a daytime boost period which comes on at some random period. There are a few tariffs,some of which are legacy and some are current, like white meter / off peak etc
Also if you turn the boost up, that opens a flap and lets the heat out, so its best to keep the output low during the day and the house is empty and turn it up when you get home.
have you googled the make and model to see if you can get a manual? Input should surely be on at the time of the best tarriff and output when you want it to warm your rooms.
The meter is some kind of new fangled digital thing so presubably the switch bit is built in, but the time is definately correct.
Theres a big button labled 'boost' as well, wonder if thats the 1 hour a day button spooky mentions?
Input should generally be left on,if you want heat the next day.
Its a truly horrific system, trying to guess tomorrows weather today
1961bikie, I've got the instructions for ours, similar, but ours have no convection element, just the storage bricks and a flap on the top.
We had no boost button, just the supply switched on mid afternoon for the storage heaters and also the hot water immersion heater. If the input is turned up, they will heat, if input is turned right down or off, they won't heat.
Your boost button might just turn them on using the higher rate daytime tariff.
Does it really matter when they come on along as they are being charged at the storage rate - can't you determine this by monitoring the meter readings for each of the different tariffs.
Which tariff are you on - Economy 7 or Economy 10? The latter includes an afternoon period.
Tarrifs have changed and are pretty confusing, but we found that the electricity company was really helpful, so give them a ring.
We have one night storage heater left. I replaced the spur outlet with a plug socket so I could connect the storage heater through a timer to make sure I am using cheapest rate at night
Some kind of supersaver economy special rate, we're in the inbetween bit of not having enough insulation to be cheep to heat, but too much and not poor enough to qualify for free/cheep insulation, the bills are quite high but not enough to make insulating it ourselves economicaly viable, so we got a special discounded rate and meter which is marginaly cheeper than standard.
Theres 3 rates:
Day arround 13p/unit
Night arround 6.5p/unit
Stored energy 4.5p/unit
IIRC
Surely "on" means you're turning the heating elements on (hence it's getting warm) and off is releasing stored energy?
Sorted now, apparently our tarrif is similar to economy 7.
We get 5 hours to the heaters/hot water overnight and 2 in the afternoon on the heating/hot water. So to test I'll turn them on first thing saturday morning and they should stay cold untill at lest lunchtime.
How can your bills not be high enough to warrant some extra insulation? A few rolls of fibreglass from a DIY shed (usually found on 2 or even 3 for 1 promotions) is pretty cheap, I think I got three rolls (enough for a 2 bed terrace for around £20.
100m2 (its a flat above a shop so disproportionately big and no benifits from flats above/below like in a block)
So about £150 to insulate it (£19 per 8m2*170mm at homebase + BOGOF * 13)
Savings supposed to be 15% for a house going from 0mm to 270mm, so from 100mm to 250mm its going to be say 1/3 of that, so even paying £80 a month now (sorted what was wrong so that should go down anyway) it would take 3 years to pay back, and we don't plan on being here that long.
Fair enough. We topped up from about 50 to 150mm so the difference would be more noticeable. Best bit though...we can't hear the seagulls squawking on the roof anymore 🙂