On 21/11/2017 08:08, Martin Brown wrote:
On 20/11/2017 14:40, David wrote:
On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 10:38:53 +0000, tim... wrote:

snip

can you not get bottled gas or oil?

tim

Back in the day IIRC the cost for energy used to be (cheapest first):

Mains gas.

Mains electric.

Has that ever been true even in the dim and distant days of white heat
of technology "electricity too cheap to meter" ? My recollection of
electric storage heaters (my parents were early adopters) were insanely
ugly boxes that got mad hot in the middle of the night and lost their
heat during the day when no-one was home and provided precious little
useful heat in the evening thus ensuring the expensive electric fire and
fan heater got run as well. They were basically a waste of space. The
firebricks came in handy for making a small kiln after we scrapped them.

The flat I lived in before had a (single) storage heater for the general
living area and it worked OK. It looked quite old and probably dated
from when the flats were built (probably late 80s). It had a slider on
the top that allowed more hot air to come out, but by the time you might
have needed it there wouldn't be much heat left in the core. There was
an instant heat circuit to provide heat if it ran out of heat in the
evening, though I very rarely needed it. I learnt to check the weather
for the following day and adjust the heat input accordingly. I didn't
bother to heat the rest of the flat (bathroom and bedroom) and closed
the communicating door to concentrate heat in the living area as required.

The (Economy 7) electricity bill was £700 a year (in 2015), including an
off-peak immersion heater for hot water and instant electric shower.

--
Max Demian