Quick heating question

[TVR-NUT]

Went to view a house today with the wife and we are very interested in it. However it has storage heating, which I have not used before. The house is double glazed though. Therefore I was wondering if this form of heating is/would be any good? The house is a rental property, so we won't be able to convert to gas central heating.

[prand]

My experience of it is awful. I would personally avoid.

I'm sure there will be people on here saying "Modern systems are so much better, and if set up correctly it can be an economic and efficient way of heating", but I found in the three houses/flats I rented that had this, I was always cold, and spent days fiddling in the cold with settings trying to get it right and money spent on extra electric heaters and electricity to power them, and never feeling warm as you had no immediate heating, it all did its thing late in the night.

This also means you get no gas hob - and cheap electric hobs are awful to cook on, and the hot water is likely to be immersion only, which again is ok in principle, but cr*p if also timed to economy 7, and you may also only have an electric shower which after too many cheap rented places, I have developed a phobia of.

[condor]

I've had a storage heater for 25 years and am quite happy with it for background heating. You'd probably need another source of heat as well - I've got an electric flame effect fire which I normally have on in the evenings as the storage heater has nearly given out all it's heat by then.

[blueg33]

In my former days as an estate agent, I found that people were anti storage heaters. Mainly because of lack of controlability. Many are good at keepingthe house warm duringthe day but are out of retained heat by evening, so not much good if you are at work in the day.

New ones may be better

[Gingerbread Man]

In short, they are crap and if you owned the property and lived there, you'd pay to have them ripped out and a wet central heating system installed.

Renting wise, expensive to run for the tenant, cheap to keep and maintain for the landlord.

[TVR-NUT]

Thanks for the input so far everyone. Anyone else who has used/got experience of storage heating got any advice?

[Dr_Rick]

I bought a new-build flat in 2001 in Livingston that came with a storage heater in the living room. It was so heavy that it started to bow the floor. I too was less than impressed with having to fiddle with the controls to try and get tomorrows heating level just about right with no option for the here-and-now.

Solution: chuck it out and replaced it with an instant electric radiator (no hot water plumbed heating available).

Dr Rick

[condor]

Re the controls - I think there was a thread about that last winter.
From mid October I had my 3KW heater on boost and input control 2/5.
In anticipation of the cold snap I've moved the input control to 3/5 - when it's sub zero temperatures day and night the input control will go to the max 5/5.

However, as previously posted, I use the storage heater for background temp - and use direct heat as well.

As a btw, those halogen stand-up heaters that cost approx £10 are very good for direct heat and fairly inexpensive to run.