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Electric radiators - any + recomended suppliers

Dave Thomas
I've been asked to swap out some old, massive storage rads for slimline ones that can be run during the day. Having worked in a town where mains gas is king this is a new one on me, so I'm after suppliers/manufacturers that other forum readers have used and found reliable.. The ones I've looked at seem to have a maximum power of 2 or 2.5kw, clearly inadequate for space heating a downstairs room in a traditional ( ie, OLD) cottage. Clearly, I can't fill the house with 4kw heaters, but one larger on for the downstairs room may be an option if they are available? Does anyone know?

I'm going to look at the job tomorrow, but it appears to have one decent sized living space that rule of thumb calcs suggest around 4kw heat, 2 small bedrooms and a tiny kitchen. 

Just to be clear, I'm not after any advice on supply or exceeding  maximum demand etc: just the possible availability of  larger heaters than I've seen so far, and reliable products.
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    Environmental and social charges on gas bills are 2 per cent. On electrical bills they are 23 per cent. Source: The Times 4th Feb 2021.


    Z.
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    .... but you can expect more environmental charges on Gas, possibly even a new tax shortly.  Going forward new gas wont be an option in a few years and will be replaced by heat pumps, storage heaters, direct acting heating, maybe biomass etc,
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    statter:

    .... but you can expect more environmental charges on Gas, possibly even a new tax shortly.  Going forward new gas wont be an option in a few years and will be replaced by heat pumps, storage heaters, direct acting heating, maybe biomass etc,  


    and lots and lots of thermal insulation...

       - Andy.


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    While this post is still rumbling, I touched on what economy seven is supposed to be & how it should work: It used to be an old white meter then when economy 7 came it was "whole house" cheap rate electricity, with a separate timer for the heaters ,ie the entire installation switched to cheap rate at night. You could therefore boost your immersion or even your heaters during the day: you could save money by washing clothes at night with a timer. But that just doesn't seem to be the case anywhere these days, certainly in this area (Denbighshire, old MANWEB): there's no timer for the storage radiators or immersion: they just come on for the entire duration of the night and go off in the morning (horrendously wasteful if you only need a little back up heat surely?). I  had this system in my current house some years ago before I ripped out the storage rads and installed gas CH and got the meter changed.

    Does it no longer exist?
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    I'm pretty sure that E7 around here (YEDL) is still as you describe -  you get a 24-hour supply that's metered on a daytime rate during the day and a night time rate for the 7 hours overnight - plus a switched night-time only supply. The latter is usually used for storage heaters and bottom immersions (whose thermostats should shut them down once they're up to temperature). Traditionally you had a one dual-tariff (originally white) meter - the timer both switches the off-peak supply and tells the meter which tariff to record usage against.


    Before E7, offpeak arrangements often had two separate single-tariff meters - one for the 24-hour supply and the other for the off-peak hours (which often included a couple of hours in the late afternoon) and the timer just switched the off-peak supply on-and-off - so you were charged full rate for usage from the 24-hour circuits regardless of if it was off-peak or not.


    These days of the free marked, suppliers are in competition with each other and seem to have decided to compete on making up the most complex tariffs, so you might have just about any permutation (E10, E12, E7, variable-half-hour-variable-rate wholesale tracker tariff,...) whose names might not be quite the same from one supplier to another.

       - Andy.

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