Free Storage Heater Experiment

[nowty]

Storage heater number 3 which was only going to be used for Sub zero temps has been used for a half 3 hour boost for a while and its been just right but tonight its going on for the full 6 hour cheapslot.

I've still got the bricks in the oven in reserve.

[Joeboy]

We have 850W SH's upstairs in bedrooms 4,5 & dressing room. Also a 1.7kW unit with element in our big bedroom.

The instant heat element comes on via hive plug with manual backup being as below.


So far, so . The test is SWMBO and no 'Joe, put the GCH on or I'll kill you' yet! Tested down to around -4 so far.

[Caesium]

I have a 3kW unit in the lounge which is working amazingly well. The room about 4m * 4m and keeps it pretty toasty so long as I keep the doors closed. With doors open it struggles a little. It's our only source of heating in that room though so far this winter and its barely been below 20c.

The other smaller units aren't as successful. I kind of knew at the time of installation that the 1.7kW unit in the kitchen, which is about 8m * 3m, wasn't going to be enough. It's pretty weedy and indeed it makes almost no difference. Most of the heat in the unit is gone by midday as it's running the fan almost constantly just to keep the room at 16c (and failing at that). I'll probably move it to an upstairs smaller bedroom. I have another (simpler, completely passive) 1.7kW unit in my office which does keep the chill off and means the radiator comes on less, but still not quite enough to keep it over 20c when its -4 outside, like now.

I'm sort of on the lookout for another 3kW for the kitchen but for me it's not worth a lot more investment now, with the gas price capped at 10.3p until March, which is practically the same as my cheap elec on Go Faster, and still a lot cheaper than daytime electricity. So once my SH runs out I might as well use GCH for now. It's that or flatten the batteries in a couple of hours (or pay 40p!).

After March who knows what'll happen to gas prices but I won't much care by then as the heating will be going off. So this is all kind of becoming a problem for next winter and it'll depend a lot on what the market is doing and what tarriff I can get, which is basically guessing at the moment.

[Joeboy]

I had a quick look at the old gas figures for this house. Shockingly I found that back in Oct to Dec 17 we consumed over 10.2MWh of gas. So far in that same time period this year we have used 22kWh total gas which was No1 Son jazzing up the house with GCH while we were abroad.

This outcome leaves me in a similar way of thought to the SH's. Its only when you really look at it do you realise the benefits its brought. If I turned our SH's off i'd notice quickly what was up! We will use around 8MWh of electricity Oct to Dec this year but that includes EV charging and a guesstimate for Oct since we were abroad. None of which allows for the 1.5MWh of electricity that we also used alongside the 10.2MWh of gas back in Oct to Dec 17.

I guess my point is to anyone starting the RE journey, It is well worth keeping a log of figures as you'll likely forget how far you've come. Nice to have the reference to reflect on. Cheers!