Storage Heaters

[Joeboy]

Took a moment today to hook up a 850W SH in the box room. My extra Hive plugs are on back order so went with an old skool 3kW mechanical timer. Only running it for a couple of hours a night. Will fit properly once the Hive plugs arrive.

[Oldgreybeard]

Much the most sensible way to control storage heaters, using simple timers combined with their internal thermostats. I struggle to understand how on earth anyone could consider the Lot 20 nonsense, with specific regard to storage heaters, to be a good idea at all.

[nowty]

Its going to need a double boost at the weekend.

[Joeboy]

Its going to need a double boost at the weekend.

Second challenge of the day, autoignition on the WBS and now 'Survive the weekend', cool!

This wee heater is a part of a plan to have a couple of large central core SH's pushing out the heat backed up by X amount of smaller satellite units. All in an attempt to keep the whole house at a decent average temp.

It is working out surprisingly well and all SH's with mechanical output control (the flap) are all set to zero so there's a decent bit of back up there for when temps plunge. The house WBS isn't running at even 50% capacity. With these reserves in place I aim to complete Winter gas free.

I also have some spare charging time on the current Go Faster window but as I'll be on Go from New Year I don't want to get used to that. Fingers crossed and Octopus will get on with it and add more cars n chargers to IO. Until then, we'll adapt.

[AGT]

Love the storage heater, fitting mine in the Xmas Holiday.
WB fully loaded and pumping the heat out.
Got to agree with everyone who talks about keeping the central core warm.

[Joeboy]

That's all the storage heaters up to 5 hour charge now.

A three set of Hive plugs arrived today. Handily half paid for by the recent arrival of the FIT cheque from BG! I can use all three plugs which will gain us a couple of mechanical timers back to shelf.
I am left with one of 1.7kW SH, no obvious space for it.....Must try harder!

[Oldgreybeard]

Been looking at the numbers for the cold spell down here. Two night s ago it dropped to -2°C,, during the next day it rose to 5°C. Last night it dropped to -4°C, rising to +6°C during the day. Right now it's -3°C and falling.

I've kept the MVHR heat pump on 24/7, which draws around 500W and puts out about 1600 W. House has warmed up from about 21°C to 22.5°C, without using the main ASHP at all (the one that heats the floor slab as a storage heater). The floor surface is sat at around 22°C, so isn't really doing anything to heat the house.

The batteries can easily provide the 500W needed for the MVHR heat pump all day, it's only about 8.5kWh even without any generation from PV (bearing in mind that we're on E7, so that runs the heating overnight, and tops the batteries up if there is no PV)

As it happens we've generate between 12kWh and 14kWh each day over the past three days, some of which has charged the car, the battery and has given us free hot water for the past two days and tomorrow).

Interesting experiment, done in part to see if we could manage if the main ASHP went U/S. The answer is definitely yes, with the proviso that using the MVHR heat pump for heating does tend to make the air a bit too dry, Despite bowls of water on the windowsills, and a batch of washing drying this afternoon, the RH inside the house is a rather uncomfortable (for me()30% right now.

[Joeboy]

That's my storage heater path complete. Installed three hive plugs and a final 1.7kW unit this morning. Had a count around the house, we are as follows

6x850W upstairs
10x850W downstairs

That's 13.6kW with a 7 hour charging capacity. 95.2kWh potential storage capacity!

We are currently on a five hour charging window, falling to four hours at Hogmanay and rising to six hours when IO opens to me.
Nowty, please adjust my storage capacity when you have a moment. This has been an excellent wee journey and I'll happily have the ability to shift the charging window from Turkey at New Year.

[dangermouse]

Handily half paid for by the recent arrival of the FIT cheque from BG!

A cheque?!

How quaint

[Joeboy]

Handily half paid for by the recent arrival of the FIT cheque from BG!

A cheque?!

How quaint

Is it? I have no awareness of that, ah well.