Gold Shield Electric Heating

john bonn

Hi all,

I hope there is somebody out there that can give an insight into how the above mentioned 'Gold Shield Electric Heating System' works.

I am looking at apartments at the moment and it has come down to 2, however, location wise, the one with the Electric heating system is very suitable, its just I do not know how the whole system works.

In the main living space there is 1 huge storage heater and on the opposite wall a switch with on / off button and a dial for low / medium and max setting, I assume this operates that heater.

There is another similar switch in the hall, but without the on / off button. There is then a small storage heater in each of the Bedrooms.

Also, in relation to the hot water, there is a switch adjacent to the Hot Press, that has a timer button, either on or off, there is a dial with the 24hours on it, but does nothing else. Oh also, there is a boost button.

I asked the letting agent about the whole system, they are clueless on how it works.

As I say, the location of the apartment is very suitable, so if I could get my head around the heating system I would take it.

So, thanks for any help / advice anybody out there can give.

davelerave

The 'gold-shield ' system isn't particularly user-friendly to say the least.I would recommend you get to grips with the concepts of 'dual tarriff' metering, 'night storage heating' and 'combi-heaters' first.They used to have a 'handout' for customers.Don't know if there's a link available for it.

cjm123

I have storage heating, its ok but not as good as gas.

The ones in the bedrooms should be just heaters with a 24 hour timer which you use to set the times they turn on and turn off and a temp setting.

The hot water will be the same, a 24 hour timer, which should be set to come on at 3 or 4 at night for 1 to 2 hours to ensure you have hot water for the start of the day and it heats the water at night at the cheap electricity rate. The boost is just to turn on for 15,30 or 60 minutes if needed. If you have an electric shower then then its only to provide hot water and 1 to 2 hours to night will be fine.

2011

The 'gold-shield ' system isn't particularly user-friendly to say the least

+ 1.

IMHO it is an inefficient dated way to heat houses/appartments with very poor control that has been popular in Ireland with developers/builders because it is cheap to install and they dont have to live with it!

cjm123

Now the tricky part, the storage heater themselves.
I have 2 types, in the main living room i have 2 which have 2 switches on the wall beside them, one switch is for the whole heater, the other is for the secondary or booster part of the heater. It should have an input and output which can be set from 1 to 6 or something like that.
They basically store heat overnight at the cheap electricity rate and release the heat over the day depending on how the input(store) and output(release) are set. I find the best setting is input to max and output to minimum, hopefully ensuring the room stays warm for the day.

cjm123

The other type is in the hall, its a storage heater but with out the secondary or booster heater, it has an outout and input setting as well and works the same way as the other storage heater.
The rate of charge at night or how hot the heater is in the morning will be controlled by storage heating timer clock which will have a sensor attached to it which will control the rate of charge depending on the temp outside.
They can be very hit and miss getting them running right and even then are not very responsive to changing the temp during the day as they release the heat over the day. Hope this helps

aujopimur

Electric heating is the most expensive & inefficient heating.

john bonn

Thanks for the replies,

Still trying to get my head around how the water is heated. As already mentioned, there is a set up adjacent to the Hot Press, which consists of a dial that has a 24 hour clock with a switch that says timer on / off. Also has a boost button. However as far as I can tell the dial does nothing really.

As one person who replied mentioned, set the timer to come on during the night for a few hours to have hot water for the next morning, the only way I can see this happening is if I get up and switch the timer on.

Views?

Pete67

The timer is preset to come on at the off peak periods so that water is heated on the cheaper night rate electricty. It should be switched to timer, and the dial should show the current time against a reference mark on the casing - it may have two marks, one from summer time and one for winter time. Use the appropriate one.

If the switch is off, there will be no timed heating of water.

The boost can be used at any time to heat water for 15, 30, 60 minutes depending on what you select, however if you use this during the day you will be paying more as the day units are much more expensive.

In my experience, you just leave it set to timer and you will never need to use the boost. Just make sure the time is correct on the 24 hour dial so you are using the cheaper night rate electricity.

As long as the hot water tank is well lagged this is a fairly good system for water heating. Ideally the tank should be pre-lagged at the factory - it will have a layer of green foam on the outside. Sometimes the thermostats in the immersion heaters are set too high, wasting energy and creating a risk of scalding, they should be set to around 60 but not more than 70 degrees C. You need to remove the terminal covers on the heaters to check adjust the setting, so I'd recommend you get an electrician to do this for you as you can expose live terminals.

john bonn

Thanks Pete67,

That information is of great help. So basically when the apartment is occupied (mean not away on holidays), just leave the timer switch on 24/7.

burly

Pete67 wrote: »

The timer is preset to come on at the off peak periods so that water is heated on the cheaper night rate electricty. It should be switched to timer, and the dial should show the current time against a reference mark on the casing - it may have two marks, one from summer time and one for winter time. Use the appropriate one.

If the switch is off, there will be no timed heating of water.

The boost can be used at any time to heat water for 15, 30, 60 minutes depending on what you select, however if you use this during the day you will be paying more as the day units are much more expensive.

In my experience, you just leave it set to timer and you will never need to use the boost. Just make sure the time is correct on the 24 hour dial so you are using the cheaper night rate electricity.

As long as the hot water tank is well lagged this is a fairly good system for water heating. Ideally the tank should be pre-lagged at the factory - it will have a layer of green foam on the outside. Sometimes the thermostats in the immersion heaters are set too high, wasting energy and creating a risk of scalding, they should be set to around 60 but not more than 70 degrees C. You need to remove the terminal covers on the heaters to check adjust the setting, so I'd recommend you get an electrician to do this for you as you can expose live terminals.

Hi,

Does this system look like the GoldShield system you described above???
The large heater in the living area has a switch which the smaller heater in the other rooms do not have. The tank is factory insulated with 25mm insulation. The photo shows the timer controls for summer/winter setting etc.
Could you describe how this system works?
I have attached photos of the system I have.


http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/9730/p9231600.jpg

http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/8098/p9231602.jpg

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/1539/p9231603.jpg

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/6575/p9231598.jpg

Thanks

burly

Dotsie~tmp

+1

For hating storage heating.

shaymousse

Hi,

I recently moved into an apartment with this type of heating. Storage in the hall and living rooms and normal heaters on the walls in the bedroom. These are grand and working ok.

My problem is with the heating of the water in the tank. The timer on the wall is the same as the one above ie with the boost switch and the settings for summer and winter time.

Currently it is set to come on in the night time from 3am to 7am and I have hot water in the morning. But when I come home in the evening the water is lukewarm. Should I set the timer to come on in the afternoon? I dont really want to as it will cost a lot more money using the day rates. I also have a problem that the water in my shower is not very hot at any time of the day for some reason. The tank is well insulated.

My landlord had a plumber and electrician out who said the system seems to be working as it should. However Im not convinced.

Any ideas on how to get hot water?

Thanks.

davelerave

set the timer as pete outlined .
normally 'boosting' will be at the peak-rate.
what type shower? instantaneous or power/mixer shower?

shaymousse

davelerave wrote: »

set the timer as pete outlined .
normally 'boosting' will be at the peak-rate.
what type shower? instantaneous or power/mixer shower?

Hi

Its a mixer shower. It gets hot for 1-2 mins then goes cold. Any ideas? Thanks.

shaymousse

Hi

Its a mixer shower. It gets hot for 1-2 mins then goes cold. The timer is set as Pete says. Any ideas? Thanks.

davelerave

assuming everythings been checked ,not really,
mixer showers and electric water heating are not a great combination

sherkin1

I have Gold Shield Heating in my apartment and it is not great. When my water is heating at night it sound like it is boiling and making a sound like a kettle. I have checked the Stats in the two immersions and replaced one which was faulty, but still it makes the noise. Any ideas.

SpaceTime

sherkin1 wrote: »

I have Gold Shield Heating in my apartment and it is not great. When my water is heating at night it sound like it is boiling and making a sound like a kettle. I have checked the Stats in the two immersions and replaced one which was faulty, but still it makes the noise. Any ideas.

Immersion heaters can make a little bit of noise while heating. That's not completely unusual. However, if the water in the tank is too hot (i.e. if you run the hot tap and the water's too hot to touch or the surface of the tank is beyond about 60-70ºC you really need to get the thermostats checked again.

If the water's boiling in the tank, you should stop using the immersion and get it services. Boiling / very hot water can scald you and can also badly damage some fittings like shower pumps, some shower thermostats and plastic pipework.

In general I found electric heating in apartments I've rented over the years to be absolutely terrible. It always works out as very expensive to run and the control is diabolical.

In most systems I've seen there are also no storage heaters in bedrooms and instead you're expected to use full-price electricity and crumby little electric radiators that tend not to be very effective.

I would avoid those systems like the plague. Natural gas or oil is much better.

These systems probably made sense when unit rates were much cheaper than today and also where people were retrofitting heating systems to old houses that never had central heating and wanted to do it cheaply without plumbing.

Compare the kWh price of gas and electricity and you'll see which one is cheaper to use for heat!

antoinolachtnai

Well, you are mostly right, but:

- there is a loss with a gas boiler. On a small installation, that will be a bigger issue than a big installation, I think (though I don't have the documentation to prove that. But even with a modern condenser boiler, you can figure on a 15 or 20 percent loss, i.e., 15 or 20 percent of the heat that goes out the wall.

- there are significant standing charges with a gas supply. If you can avoid these, you might be better off.

- a gas boiler is supposed to be serviced once a year, no matter how small your premises is.

- a modern condensing gas boiler depreciates. You shouldn't reckon on a condensing boiler lasting more than 15 years. Storage heaters last a very long time.

- it is only in the late evening that you want heat in the bedrooms anyway, for the most part, and instant-on heating may suit that situation.

It basically depends on how big the premises is and how well insulated it is. If there are a lot of external walls, I would lean towards gas. If you only have one external wall aren't just under the roof, and the windows are pretty good, then electricity might be just fine.

The controls on old storage heaters are very bad. I have looked at this a lot, and i think it should be possible to build a much better controller which is linked to weather forecasts.

2011

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

- there is a loss with a gas boiler.

Yes and there is also a significant loss on the cables that supply electricity to your home. It is mainly due to these losses that electricity is transmitted at higher voltages.

According to this 2008 report from SEAI:
"The relative size of the useful final electricity consumption to the energy lost in transformation and transmission is striking. These losses represent 55% of the energy inputs."


Electrical losses in the form of heat are minimised at higher voltages.

- there are significant standing charges with a gas supply.

Define significant, mine is only €9 a month including VAT

- a gas boiler is supposed to be serviced once a year, no matter how small your premises is.

....and electrical installations should be tested periodically.

- a modern condensing gas boiler depreciates. You shouldn't reckon on a condensing boiler lasting more than 15 years.

Agreed, but due to significant cost saving (compared to electricity) they are well worth the money.

Storage heaters last a very long time.

True, but this cost saving is completely negated by the running cost of a storage heater. Besides heating elements have been known to burn out.

- it is only in the late evening that you want heat in the bedrooms anyway, for the most part, and instant-on heating may suit that situation.

What do you mean?

The controls on old storage heaters are very bad. I have looked at this a lot, and i think it should be possible to build a much better controller which is linked to weather forecasts.

Such controllers already exist, Google "Devireg".

They are a marginal improvement, but storage heaters are still considered a disaster by anyone that has had to put up with them. I replaced all of the storage heaters in my mothers home recently and had a gas fired central heating system installed. We experienced immediate cost savings, a warmer home and superior control.

I put an add on the internet offering the storage heaters (all in perfect condition) and panel heaters for free to anyone that wanted them, I did not get a single taker.

Don't forget, although gas boilers have inherent inefficiencies a unit of gas costs more than 3 times less than a unit of electricity (1 unit of electricity costs about 18 cent and a unit of gas costs about 6 cent) :eek::eek:

If electric heating is superior, can you explain why gas fired central heating is so popular?
I can only see the advantages for the builder/developer but not for the end user.

SpaceTime

2011 wrote: »

Yes and there is also a significant loss on the cables that supply electricity to your home. It is mainly due to these losses that electricity is transmitted a higher voltages.

According to this 2008 report from SEAI:
"The relative size of the useful final electricity consumption to the energy lost in transformation and transmission is striking. These losses represent 55% of the energy inputs."


Electrical losses in the form of heat are minimised at higher voltages.

That's true, but you're only charged for the losses occurring between the electricity meter and the appliance which would be relatively tiny.
Overall though, the transmission network's quite lossy over long lines and as voltages are stepped up/down using transformers.

You do however pay for the losses ultimately through your electricity bill in the unit rates.

From an energy usage point of view, it's probably a lot more efficient to burn the gas locally to produce heat than to burn it in a power plant to drive gas turbines and/or generate steam to drive steam turbines then turn that into electrical energy and transmit it through a complex and lossy power grid only to then use the end product to generate heat!

Electricity's incredibly useful for lighting, running appliances etc, but for heating I can't really understand how it makes sense.

2011

SpaceTime wrote: »

That's true, but you're only charged for the losses occurring between the electricity meter and the appliance which would be relatively tiny.

Who do you think pays for this loss the?
The transmission losses are built into the rate you pay per unit, as you acknowledge here:

You do however pay for the losses ultimately through your electricity bill in the unit rates.

From an energy usage point of view, it's probably a lot more efficient to burn the gas locally to produce heat than to burn it in a power plant to drive gas turbines and/or generate steam to drive steam turbines then turn that into electrical energy and transmit it through a complex and lossy power grid only to then use the end product to generate heat!

+1

Electricity's incredibly useful for lighting, running appliances etc, but for heating I can't really understand how it makes sense.

Agreed, I am a fan myself
The gas powered iMac never really took off

SpaceTime

There's actually a really good advert from Renault showing how life would be if everything was petrol powered

Little petrol engines on your shaver, nice pull-started petrol cake mixer, a nice diesel PC, petrol powered chip and pin machine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q24UxF-6ns

Electricity certainly has its uses But, I'm not sure direct heating is one of them really.

It starts to make sense though when you've got huge non-fossil fuel based power systems be it renewables (where we're headed) or more controversially nuclear like France where about 75-80% of electricity's produced without any CO2 - obviously that has its downsides should anything ever go horribly wrong.

But you can see why electric space heating in homes is quite common and logical in France but doesn't make a whole lot of sense in Ireland really.

If we do actually achieve huge levels of renewables in the electricity generation mix, it will start to make sense again though at least, if the price is right.

antoinolachtnai

2011 wrote: »

Yes and there is also a significant loss on the cables that supply electricity to your home. It is mainly due to these losses that electricity is transmitted at higher voltages.

According to this 2008 report from SEAI:
"The relative size of the useful final electricity consumption to the energy lost in transformation and transmission is striking. These losses represent 55% of the energy inputs."

Electrical losses in the form of heat are minimised at higher voltages.

factored into the cost of the electricity unit already. There is basically no loss per unit once it is inside your home and paid for.

Define significant, mine is only €9 a month including VAT

That is the price of 1320 units of night electricity per year, which is 15 units per night for the 90 coldest nights of the year. For sure, it is not much, but it might be if you just don't use that much heat and particularly if you don't use much during the day. It is of course true that electricity suppliers charge more for nightsaver meters, for no particularly good reason.

....and electrical installations should be tested periodically.

Every five years according to ETCI I think. And you have to get the electric certified anyway, whether you use it as your main heating source or not.

An 85 euro service would pay for 1000 more units of nighttime electricity.

Agreed, but due to significant cost saving (compared to electricity) they are well worth the money.

It depends how much heat you actually use.

True, but this cost saving is completely negated by the running cost of a storage heater. Besides heating elements have been known to burn out.

really depends on how much you use it. Elements don't commonly burn out in less than 20 years as far as I know.

What do you mean?

Well, bedrooms don't necessarily need a lot of heat.

Such controllers already exist, Google "Devireg".

This does not take into account weather forecasts. Electrics are a bit finicky in it in my experience. You could do a lot better than this.

They are a marginal improvement, but storage heaters are still considered a disaster by anyone that has had to put up with them.

I know plenty people who are happy enough with them. It really depends on the property and the lifestyle. Less than 2 exposed sides on the building, it will probably be ok.

I replaced all of the storage heaters in my mothers home recently and had a gas fired central heating system installed. We experienced immediate cost savings, a warmer home and superior control.

This was a detached or semi-detached house? Definitely not a great candidate for storage heaters, unless incredibly well insulated.

Don't forget, although gas boilers have inherent inefficiencies a unit of gas costs more than 3 times less than a unit of electricity (1 unit of electricity costs about 18 cent and a unit of gas costs about 6 cent) :eek::eek:

A unit of night time electricity costs a lot less than 18c. Energia are now at 8.44 cents. So when you put a 20 percent loss on gas, it isn't tremendously far off. For sure, there is a loss of flexibility because you have to do your heating at night.

If electric heating is superior, can you explain why gas fired central heating is so popular?
I can only see the advantages for the builder/developer but not for the end user.

Where did I say electric heating was 'superior'?

All I am saying is that there are situations where electric heating is perfectly adequate. I am not saying it is great, but it can often be practical enough.

2011

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

factored into the cost of the electricity unit already. There is basically no loss per unit once it is inside your home.

Agreed, my point was that just like gas there are losses associated with using electricity that the end user pays for in tier bill. Whether the loss is upstream or downstream of the meter is irrelevant, what is relevant si that the customer pays for it.

That is the price of 50 units of electricity. For sure, it is not much

Insignificant amount over 2 months if it is used for heating.

Every five years according to ETCI I think.

I think it is every year for rented accommodation.

This does not take into account weather forecasts.

Accurately predicting the weather would be of little advantage with gas fired central heating as it can heat radiators quite quickly compared to storage heaters.

I know people who are happy enough with them.

....and I know people that are happy with a 14" black and white TV, but the general consensus is that they are outdated and pretty cr@p

Less than 2 exposed sides on the building, it will probably be ok.

Agreed in some limited circumstances this solution is OK, not great, just OK.

This was a detached or semi-detached house? Definitely not a great candidate for storage heaters, unless incredibly well insulated.

Yes, it was all that the budget allowed for at the time.
It was a derelict house and I did 99% of the work.

A unit of night time electricity costs a lot less than 18c. Energia are now at 8.44 cents. So when you put a 20 percent loss on gas, it isn't tremendously far off.

Increased standing charge for dual tariff, less control and increased cost during the day.

For sure, there is a loss of flexibility because you are

For sure.

All I am saying is that there are situations where electric heating is perfectly adequate. I am not saying it is great, but it can often be ok.

Agreed there are a few limited situations.
However in the main it is not the way to go.

frankmul

2011 wrote: »

I think it is every year for rented accommodation.

When did that come into effect?

2011

frankmul wrote: »

When did that come into effect?

Can't find a link, I could be wrong (I did say "I think")

Bruthal

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

factored into the cost of the electricity unit already. There is basically no loss per unit once it is inside your home and paid for.

At the end of the day, to output 1kw hour of electric heating begins by burning peat etc at a generating station. Converting to electricity would have fair losses. Then transmitting down the line.

To state that all this losses is paid for when it reaches the house, as if that now means only the final circuit in the house needs to be measured to show how efficient electric heating is, seems possibly a little flawed, especially as pricing is based on cost of production, not on losses between the fuseboard and element, even though it is only those losses that a Meter would measure or charge for.

Sir Arthur Daley

2011 wrote: »

Can't find a link, I could be wrong (I did say "I think")

Every 5 to 10 years one of the landlords i maintain houses for goes by.