Best Electric Heaters

nanoutex

Hi,

Just bought an apartment and I need to change the heaters as they do not work (they are very old storage heaters) I can only put Electric unfortunately.
Any advice on the best; energy saving, fast, constant heat…
Thanks
Anne

antoinolachtnai

Is there a balcony?

How many outside walls are there? Is it on the top floor?

Is it south-facing (i.e., get a lot of sun)?

nanoutex

Hi,

It is south Facing with good insolation in general.
no Balcony 1 exterior walls.
thanks

antoinolachtnai

Well, there is a higher-end storage heating system called Quantum which Dimplex makes. I do not have much information about it. But it will not give you constant heat or instant heat. It has better controls so should be an improvement over the old system.

It might be enough. Your apartment sounds like it will never get particularly cold. So maybe it will give you enough and let you 'top up' with an electric fan heater when you need fast heat.

I wonder what is wrong with your old storage heaters? Storage heaters have many faults, but a good thing about them is that they have few moving parts and never really break. An electrician may be able to fix these easily enough, and this might get you through this winter, and you can make a better decision about what you need for the future next year.

Another, more sophisticated possibility is to install an air-to-air heat pump or air-to-water heat pump as an alternative to storage heating. The reason I asked about the balcony is because this requires a unit outside the apartment. It might or might not be practical for you to install such a unit. These systems will give you fairly fast, constant heat. An air-to-water unit could also heat hot water.

shaymo88

There's another type of electric heaters that are seemingly very efficient and heat up the rooms very well. I dont know anything about them apart from what I read online.
There's a few companies in Ireland selling them and they are similar prices to storage heaters. They are called Far Infra Red heaters.
Google them and you will find several companies, have a read what they say and see. From some customers reviews they are great, the heaters heat up the objects in the room, furniture, walls and you! Compared to standard heaters which heat up the air in the room, these do a better job.
Have a look and see.

antoinolachtnai

Welcome to boards.ie!

shaymo88 wrote: »

There's another type of electric heaters that are seemingly very efficient and heat up the rooms very well. I dont know anything about them apart from what I read online.
There's a few companies in Ireland selling them and they are similar prices to storage heaters. They are called Far Infra Red heaters.
Google them and you will find several companies, have a read what they say and see. From some customers reviews they are great, the heaters heat up the objects in the room, furniture, walls and you! Compared to standard heaters which heat up the air in the room, these do a better job.
Have a look and see.

An electric heater is an electric heater pretty much in terms of efficiency.

These heaters are in many cases have a high capital cost considering the amount of heat they actually produce. And they are no more efficient than a heater you buy in Power City.

shaymo88

ok, suit yourself. Just a suggestion

nanoutex

Thanks for your answers.. Ill look into the options! I really need to change the heaters as they are not working.

did you hear about the Lucht Heating ? everything I read seems positive and less costly than Storage.

bleary

I've read quite a few posts on here and I'm as confused as ever.
Thoptions include
Non storage
Lucht
Fahro
Ecovolt

These are electric heaters whose main benefit seems to be a larger element of control through timers thermostats and apps
Storage heaters
Dimplex quantum
These are storage with a higher programmability allowing to to schedule your heat on demand for example for evening or other times .

I have spoken to people with non storage who are fans and say it has worked out cheaper and better but in comments here it's said the products aren't any better than a plug in electric heater.

antoinolachtnai

It's just the laws of physics. An electric heater is an electric heater. Sure, you can put controls on it if you want, and sure, some of them have fans and some do not. But they all have exactly the same efficiency.

By all means if you want a more expensive system and you can afford it and it suits you, buy it.

There is a load of silly advertising and marketing nonsense going on too. You have to be wonder when you see people who have never posted on boards before register an account and very soon after start talking about particular types of heaters.

I would not like to see someone who might be very badly off and desperate to save money on fuel bills wasting all their savings on overpriced electric heaters sold with a fancy sales pitch.

DublinDilbert

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

It's just the laws of physics. An electric heater is an electric heater. Sure, you can put controls on it if you want, and sure, some of them have fans and some do not. But they all have exactly the same efficiency.

By all means if you want a more expensive system and you can afford it and it suits you, buy it.

There is a load of silly advertising and marketing nonsense going on too. You have to be wonder when you see people who have never posted on boards before register an account and very soon after start talking about particular types of heaters.

I would not like to see someone who might be very badly off and desperate to save money on fuel bills wasting all their savings on overpriced electric heaters sold with a fancy sales pitch.

The only area where they might save energy is in how the storage aspect works. It calculates the energy demand for the room and only puts the required amount of energy into storage the night before.

antoinolachtnai

Yes the storage heaters do this and that is fair enough and would be a value for money feature.

But most of these high-priced heaters are not storage heaters.

Bob24

nanoutex wrote: »

Hi,

Just bought an apartment and I need to change the heaters as they do not work (they are very old storage heaters) I can only put Electric unfortunately.
Any advice on the best; energy saving, fast, constant heat…
Thanks
Anne

I am in a very similar situation OP. In the end what did you go for and are you happy with it?

Bob24

nanoutex wrote: »

Hi,

Just bought an apartment and I need to change the heaters as they do not work (they are very old storage heaters) I can only put Electric unfortunately.
Any advice on the best; energy saving, fast, constant heat…
Thanks
Anne

I am in a very similar situation OP. In the end what did you go for and are you happy with it?

Blaithin73

hi there,

We ended up going with EcoVolt and are so happy with our new heaters. We replaced three old storage heaters downstairs and 3 electric convector heaters in the bedrooms upstairs. Our house is now lovely and warm when we want it to be. We can control our heating, all the heaters have thermostats so are economical and cut in and out as needed. We have seldomly used our heaters upstairs as the downstairs ones seem to heat the whole house. Price wise I couldn't but recommend EcoVolt. We replaced them in October this year so it's our first winter with them. I'm a stay at home mother so have the heating on a fair bit and our bills have been very reasonable. Hope this helps

Varatha

Blaithin73 wrote: »

hi there,

We ended up going with EcoVolt and are so happy with our new heaters. We replaced three old storage heaters downstairs and 3 electric convector heaters in the bedrooms upstairs. Our house is now lovely and warm when we want it to be. We can control our heating, all the heaters have thermostats so are economical and cut in and out as needed. We have seldomly used our heaters upstairs as the downstairs ones seem to heat the whole house. Price wise I couldn't but recommend EcoVolt. We replaced them in October this year so it's our first winter with them. I'm a stay at home mother so have the heating on a fair bit and our bills have been very reasonable. Hope this helps

Hi Blaithin73, Hope you're happy with your new heating system. I am actually looking to install new electrical heaters for my bedrooms and have come across your post. With Ecovolt can you set different temperature at certain times in one go? Say 17 degrees from 9pm to 12am and 19 degrees from 12am to 6am. Basically without having to wake up at 12am to reset again. Also can we control the heaters remotely through smartphone?

Blaithin73

hi Varatha - the heaters are all individually thermostatically controlled so you decide what room temperature you want them to be at eg 20 degrees - they come on and once the room reaches that temperature they will go off again. You decide what the lowest temperature you want the room to go to eg 15 degrees and once the room temp goes that low the heater comes back on again. There isn't an app as far as I'm aware but there is a central control panal which we bought so you can see what the temp is in every room in the house and turn on all or as many heaters as you want to from that control panal. I was a stay at home mother until recently so I just turn the heat on and off as I needed it. You can definitely set a timer if you wish I just haven't bothered to do it as our house heats up fairly quickly. We are really pleased with the Ecovolt heaters though I couldn't recommend them highly enough

ercork

Hi,

I had Ecovolt heaters a couple of years ago and I can confirm that you can set different tempetatures for different parts of the day. And for different days of the week too.

Varatha wrote: »

Hi Blaithin73, Hope you're happy with your new heating system. I am actually looking to install new electrical heaters for my bedrooms and have come across your post. With Ecovolt can you set different temperature at certain times in one go? Say 17 degrees from 9pm to 12am and 19 degrees from 12am to 6am. Basically without having to wake up at 12am to reset again. Also can we control the heaters remotely through smartphone?

cute geoge

In process of pulling out 4 storage heaters in a house that is rented out to young family .From the limited bit of research i have done I will probably go with ether eco volt or farho energy saving heaters .It is a 2 up 2 down house with the living room and kitchen downstairs .The living room has an open fireplace .The house has poor enough insulation and i was wondering would i be better off to go for 1 oil filled rads like the dimplex quantam in one of the rooms downstairs .Sales guy was putting me off this as he said i will need 2 electric feeds to fit one of these .There would be only one feed at present to the storage heaters