On 20/11/2011 11:18, wrote:

We live out in the sticks and our central heating (which we rarely
turn on nowadays) runs on locally stored gas which is becoming
steadily more expensive.

We have a large multi-fuel stove which we keep alight through the
coldest weather and we have a good supply of wood for that.

We *were* thinking of adding a small solid fuel stove at the other end
of the house in the breakfast room where we do spend quite a lot of
our time but the costs are just silly - like £6000 for a fairly small
installation (it does include some hot water with the space heating,
but that's all).

So we are looking at alternatives, we are already on an Economy 7
tariff for electricity, thus storage heaters would seem to be
something to explore. How good are they nowadays? I.e. are they

Unless you are talking about the huge ducted fan assisted beasts that
run off 3 phase, then as crap as ever IME.

really able to not output much heat unless the fan runs? What other
pros and cons do they have? They're not particularly cheap (start at
around £450 as far as I can see) so one wants to be sure they really
do the job reasonably well. Also are there any particularly to be
recommended (or the opposite) and is there anywhere I can get some
sort of independent review and comparison?

Would a heat bank be a better "storage heater" for your application?
Charge on E7 electric, but then use the heat when you want via the
existing wet CH system?

(to improve further, perhaps the heating could be done via heatpump
rather than directly from the E7)

--
Cheers,

John.

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