storage heater costs

orange247

Hi

Myself and my girlfriend are looking to move in together into a new apartment. We're both living in houses that have gas heating and most of the apartments we're viewing have electric storage heating. Just wondering what are the rough costs involved and the difference between winter and summer.

Would you advise against moving into a gaff with storage heating or if its managed well do costs work out the same?

Cheers
Dave

Borzoi

Modern apartments have decent windows and insulation, so storage heating works out to have similar costs to gas/oil.

On the other hand, it is basicly a crap system delivering much of the heat during the day when, presumably, your not around. Secondly control is iffy at best being based on the ouside temperture during the night determining how much the system stores, and crappy dampers on each heater as to how much it gives out.

A good aspect of the system is that it generally maintains about 16C all the time, but as I've said if your not there, who cares?

Ultimately I'd prefer a gas system, but storage isn't that bad that I'd pay good monry to change it

Spoken as the proud owner of such a system for the last 3 years.

vibe666

i'd have to disagree with that I'm afraid.

I've lived in 2 apartments with storage heaters, the second being a pokey little one bedroom 'modern' apartment in the centre of dublin (about 10 years old) and although our electricity bills are around the 70-80€ mark in the summer when we have the storage heaters turned off, our winter heating bills are usually around the 200-220€ mark, which as I'm sure you've already figured out is pretty $hit for somewhere that I can completely vacuum without unplugging the hoover once (seriously, it's tiny).

i asked about this in a post last year, and it seems people are heating a 5 bedroom house with gas/fuel for less than I'm paying. and the other place was no better although it was slightly bigger.

i tried fiddling with the knobs and tweaking it as best i could, and last year i even turned off one of the heaters completely so we were down to 1 single large heater and the bill still topped 200€, so there's no way around it i'm afraid.

sorry to give you the bad news, but look for somewhere with something other than electric heaters if you can find it.

orange247

Thanks guys, have looked at a fair few places all ready, all storage heating. My other pet hate at the mo is all these 'new/modern' places without electric (i.e. seperate from the ch) showers! :mad:

I can live with the storage heating, I think its all down to managing it well and I'd rather stick a jumper on than bang the heating on, but no damn shower, sorry I do not want to get up early praying there'e hot water there, particularly in the summer!!!!

cheers
Dave

Victor

vibe666 wrote:

our winter heating bills are usually around the 200-220€ mark

That sounds "wrong".

Borzoi

vibe666 wrote:

, our winter heating bills are usually around the 200-220€ mark, .

Like Victor says - that's wrong. My winter ESB bils are about the €200 mark and it's a larhe 2/3 bed, about 1100 Sqft. I don't stint on the heat, but rarely need to use the boost settings. So your bill for a small appartment is excessive.

Orange247, for hot water for showers etc, just put the immersion on for a few hours. All new places have a timer, so you can have as much hot water in the morning as you require, and at half price thanks to you night rate meter!