help

[h]

how do i work my night storage heater

[New Forester]

The idea is that it heats up at night, using cheap off-peak electricity. It has great lumps of brick or concrete inside, or a lot of stone chippings. These store the night-time heat, which is let out slowly the next day. There are usually two controls. One sets the input temperature for the night time. The other controls a vent to let the heat out when you need it. You'd normally turn the second one down at night, and up in the evening, while leaving the first one set to the same amount all the time. They are not bad if you spend the day in that room. However, they are pointless in a bedroom, or if you are out all day -- by evening they're often cool again. Not much cop if the weather changes suddenly either. Often better to have a fan heater or convector. One thing to check is whether the clock on your off-peak meter is set correctly (or indeed if you are actually still on an off-peak tarrif). Sometimes the timer gets out of sync (from power cuts), and the input happens in the daytime -- this can be quite convenient, as you pay off-peak prices at that time instead. Of course, one really ought to tell the leccy straight away.

[New Forester]

What I didn't mention is how the heater "knows" how to work only at night. If you're on an off-peak tarriff you have two supplies to the house -- an off-peak one which only switches on at night, and a general one which works all the time. They are separately metered at different rates. If you're concerned about green issues, you may like to think about how the electricity is generated at different times. Most of the off-peak generation is covered by power stations which take a longer time to turn up or down -- in other words, largely the nuclear ones. This is the whole point -- they want to encourage you to use power which they have to generate anyway. Peak load is mainly gas or oil which are more quickly controllable.