In this blogpost, we review how to keep your house warm with storage heaters. Keeping a warm home is not only important for your comfort and health but also for the safety of your house.
It’s important to keep your home dry and warm to prevent damp and mould. One of the best ways to do so is by switching to energy efficient electric storage heaters. We’ll be covering some of the ways storage heaters keep your home warm below.
How do storage heaters work
To understand how storage heaters keep your house warm, we first need to explain how storage heaters work. Like wet radiators, electric radiators radiate and convect heat into your home. However, instead of storing heat in water, electric storage heaters store heat in a ceramic clay core, often called a Chamotte block. This non-porous core heats up to maximum temperature in minutes and continues to keep the radiator warm long after without needing to draw electricity.
How well an electric storage heater heats your home is very much dependent on the quality of the radiator.
Radiator housing
The shape and design of the radiator is important in how effectively it heats your home. Top of the line electric storage heaters like ELKAtherm have a large fluted service area. In fact, because the flutes are welded on both sides of the housing, with only 1cm apart, the surface area is larger than most wet radiators. Having a larger surface area results in more radiated heat in the room.
Radiator core
While having a larger surface area will help radiate more heat to your home, it’s also important to have an energy efficient core to ensure your radiator is converting and storing the most amount of heat. Top brands like ELKAtherm are made with a Chamotte block which contains up to 20 heat plates. The block not only retains heat, it also heats up quickly too. For instance, independent tests show that with an outside temperature of 6 degrees, an ELKAtherm radiator would only need to be on a third of the time to maintain 21 degrees in your room.
How to keep your home warm with night storage heaters
Night storage heaters are a specific type of electric storage radiator that requires a dual tariff, normally called Economy 7. These heaters are designed to heat up their core overnight, while consuming a cheaper tariff, and release this heat throughout the day. Unfortunately, many night storage heaters are grossly inefficient and often end up expelling all their heat by late morning. Practically speaking, it’s also difficult to determine what the British weather might be like the following day. Because daytime energy charges are often double than that of normal tariffs, it makes daytime top ups to your electric heaters very expensive.
If you’d like to learn more about how ELKAtherm storage heaters can help keep your home warm and dry, contact our electric heating expert team on 0800 270 7736 or fill in the form on the side of this blog.