Electric Heating tips

How to use your storage heater controls efficiently

Storage heaters work by using the off peak electricity at night (with a cheaper rate) to charge up and store heat and then release the heat during the day when the electricity is more expensive. There are ways to use your storage heaters as effectively as possible to help to reduce the running costs and save you money on your electricity bills. If you tweak your heaters to better suit you / your property you should find savings quickly.

Standard storage heaters have 2 controls. Firstly, the Output, which controls the amount of heat given out during the day (as long as there is stored heat available).  Secondly, the Input, which controls the amount of electricity used at night, meaning how much heat is stored in the heater for the next day.

The easiest way to understand this is that the output dial is to control how much heat you want now, whereas the input dial controls how much heat you want tomorrow. If you are running out of heat in the evenings or the nights are getting colder you may need to turn up the input dial for the heater so that you store more heat for the next day. If your storage heaters are never running out of heat and are on all evening until you go to bed, its best to do the opposite and turn the input dial down as the heater is storing more heat than you need therefore wasting electricity.

If you have rooms that are very rarely used it may be a good idea to lower the output and input dials or turn them off completely. The best option would be to keep them both on but at a low level to keep the room at a steady temperature and lower the chances of condensation in the room.

Another way to save on electricity is to turn the output dial to zero when you go out or if you go to bed, this will save you heating unused/empty rooms. The dial can be set to zero about an hour before going to bed as the rooms and heaters will take a while to cool down.

When it is summer and you do not need to use the heaters, turn them off at the wall, not just on the dials. This will ensure that they are not being used. Remember though that when you want to use them again you will need to turn them, back on the day before to store the heat over night before the heating can come back on.