You can get heaters with timers and use a 13A plug socket.
I have got a small storage heater that is under 3kW that will work ok with a 13A plug top.

 

Yes, a small variable power heater sounds the way to go. I do this with a 300W/800W patio heater which has a tilt function to keep the living room cosy during the day. Others on here use oil filled radiators. Fan heater might be too noisy. Would maybe add a thermostatic plug so the temperature is under control on any warmer nights.

Depending on budget, I use this a simple thermostat:
KETOTEK Digital Thermostat Plug Socket Temperature Controller 220V with Sensor Probe, Thermostatic Plug Heating Cooling for Greenhouse Freezer Refrigerator Fermentation : Amazon.co.uk: Business, Industry & Science

But companies like Shelly will sell you a wifi version of the same thing.

 

A couple of woolly jumpers in her favourite colours?

 

Put an energy monitor on the supply and give your daughter an allowance and tell her it is up to her to decide how she uses it.

 

Get an air conditioner/ heat pump if you can get the ducts to outside, or even just the roof area?

 

Wifey's mum got a portable one in the summer. It's not quite a jet taking off, but I couldn't sleep next to it, so if noise is a concern you'd need to be sure of choosing a quiet one? Although the idea of cheaper running costs is attractive!

 

If you're going to get aircon I wouldn't choose a portable one. You can buy integrated through the wall units, and split aircon units for under £400.
If it's a split one you should probably get it installed by an FGAS qualified engineer, but as a plus it should be a bit more efficient and a lot quieter.

EDIT:- OK correction you can buy single split aircon for £350 but it looks pants, £500-600 for something a bit better, and the floor mount console units look relatively expensive for what they are.

 

My wifes office is in our loft conversion and have often wondered if it would be cheaper to get a little electric heater rather than heating the whole house all day. 9-4 monday to thursday she works from home and is the only one there!

 

This is exactly why I use the small patio heater in the living room. That and a quick burst in the to warm up the bedroom in the evening and bathroom in the morning have been enough for us so far this winter.

 

15 tog. set electric heating to come on just before waking up.

The thing resistive electric heating maximises on, beating anything else, is rapid room (air) heating.

 

No need for a SH to “require significant electrical work” you can just plug it in via a timer or smartplug.

The one I have in the garden office has a 900W heating element so 4-ish amps.

Storage heaters are cheaper than heat pumps if you’re on GO!

 

Have you got a link to that?

 

try insulation and jumper

 

I came back to my cold unheated house last night whose boiler I turn off when I am away for a few days. It had dropped to 16C inside, which I guess is not too bad seeing as night time temperatures have been around 5C for a couple of days. But also looked at my first full month gas bill from Octopus!! Whaaaa!!! My account has gone negative for the first time ever!

Most of the gas cost is my shower, and other hot waters, I seem to use 3kWh of gas for water heating a day, on average.

But was thinking about right now, the Sun is shining and the house is heating only very very slowly.

So ... solution to colder house; how about painting them black?

Is there a way to control the degree of insulation, so (in cold times) when the Sun is shining one can reduce the insulation somehow when it is cold in the house? Some sort of 'switchable' insulation?

 

Black paint isn't as crazy as it sounds - in hot places, they often paint buildings white to reduce solar heating, and solar panels are known to contribute to heat islands, because they're black. Researchers discover solar heat island effect caused by large-scale solar power plants

There's the answer! Solar panels, providing a little heating and some power too.

 

I've got a houseful of these , there amazingly efficient compared to many others, not a solution to charging during the night unfortunately but keep temps v accurate is the key, also get your local electricity wholesaler to get the ones with presence technology - like France where they have to have them turn down 1 DegC every hour for 4 hours where no one is detected in the room.. our cats loved these!

https://rointe.com/uk/d-series-wifi-radiators/

 

I've got a houseful of these , there amazingly efficient compared to many others, not a solution to charging during the night unfortunately but keep temps v accurate is the key, also get your local electricity wholesaler to get the ones with presence technology - like France where they have to have them turn down 1 DegC every hour for 4 hours where no one is detected in the room.. our cats loved these!

https://rointe.com/uk/d-series-wifi-radiators/

We've started buying these, first one is here ready to fit. Thanks for confirming you're very happy with them. I was drawn to them as they connect directly to WiFi without the need for a hub, and can be integrated into Home Assistant, allowing me to dump any excess solar into them.

 

SH?

Sentral heating?

 

Storage Heater

 

You’ll need something with storage if you want to leverage octopus go. If your room has 500-600w heat loss then even if you heat it up during go, it’ll have cooled down again by the morning

perhaps you could overheat it so it is ok when you need it but then it’d cool over time

Mai ideally you want something that can trickle heat in through the day

wonder if something like sunamp could be converted to build a portable storage heater charged by electric?

 

You’ll need something with storage if you want to leverage octopus go. If your room has 500-600w heat loss then even if you heat it up during go, it’ll have cooled down again by the morning

perhaps you could overheat it so it is ok when you need it but then it’d cool over time

Mai ideally you want something that can trickle heat in through the day

wonder if something like sunamp could be converted to build a portable storage heater charged by electric?

Interesting idea. @jmacneil has hooked a towel rail up to his. All getting a bit pricey though!

 

Make a box for her to sit in out of 100mm rigid insulation

 

I spent way too long googling storage heaters I’m never going to buy

none of them seem to say how much heat they lose when not actively heating, or efficiency. I’ve seen 38% mentioned before. If you charge eg 3.4kwh but don’t need that heat until the following evening - that could be 12 hours after the off-peak finishes. How much effective heat is then left - half? so 1.7kwh usable

obviously any lost would leak into the room adding some heat in but thats not the same as getting it when you need it.

 

Some very old SHs have insulation that has degraded (or wasn’t very good to start with). These were completely unsuited to lifestyles of the 80’s to 00’s where houses were completely unoccupied all day. The SH would leak heat out keeping the house toasty warm all day, then the heat would all be gone by the time the house was occupied again in the evening.

Modern “HHR” (high heat retention) SHs are much better insulated, they claim to store heat for “up to 48hrs”. However I’d still only recommend a SH where the property (or room) isn’t unoccupied for many hours during the day. I use one for my “garden office”. This winter my Octopus Go cheap rate is 0230-0630 and the room is occupied from 0730-1730 so “heat leakage” isn’t a problem. Previously I was on 2030-0030 cheap period and the SH managed to retain enough heat to last until the end of the working day.

If you WFH and are already on Octopus Go, then a SH in the room you use as a “home office” could be a really good idea. Saves burning peak electric or running the gas boiler.

 

worth thinking about, thanks. I do wfh and in the converted garage with an undersized radiator to warm the entire room and that wouldn’t be able to heat at low flow temps. Converting that could be an option. The rest of the house even when its cold is generally ok during the day - two of the bedrooms and the living room are south facing with large windows so any sun and they warm up so could leave off until evening..


i need to play with the oil filled radiator to see if I can estimate heat output needed when it gets colder. My calculations for heat loss suggest 1.4kw (two external walls, quite a long albeit thin room (it was a single garage) and a chunk has a roof rather than a heated room above.

 

worth thinking about, thanks. I do wfh and in the converted garage with an undersized radiator to warm the entire room and that wouldn’t be able to heat at low flow temps. Converting that could be an option. The rest of the house even when its cold is generally ok during the day - two of the bedrooms and the living room are south facing with large windows so any sun and they warm up so could leave off until evening..

Perfect use case!

 

@Stinsy - which SH did you get? I’ve a similar issue to the Op except it’s a cellar…

got a portable AC/heat pump in the ‘coal store’ pumping into the room (so it’s quiet) that works quite well - at ~0.7-0.9kw (gives out about 2.5…)

 

I went for “Dimplex Quantum" which was astonishingly expensive, but frankly all the fancy features are a bit crap. I was on the phone to their technical support trying to get the smart charging feature working (where it decides how much energy store for the next day) and the more I found out about how it worked the more I realised the guy who designed it is a moron! The guy in the phone admitted he spent all day in the phone to people explaining how to disable the feature.

 

do they charge ok on 4hrs octopus go? hard enough to find kwh storage - some sites list it deep in the tech specs - but theyr’e all based on 7hrs charging. So does that mean you can undersize as the bricks inside won’t be able to fully charge; or go for a higher input charge to try and mitigate - get more in the shorter time? How did you go about it?

 

Yes. Fine on Octopus Go.

Most storage heaters are fully charged and hitting their overheat ‘stat after 4-5hrs in any case. I charge mine for 2hrs in shoulder months. They were also designed for draughty, uninsulated, houses. So you need much smaller SHs than were specified 50 years ago.

No need to meddle with the bricks or heating elements.

 

As above, there are lower power plug in storage heaters. The other option is if there are radiators in there maybe get larger ones and fit electric heaters to them to make them dual or conbi fuel and have those run in the cheap window.
inow+ make some good ones it seems, I'd maybe go for the 3-600watt ones and have one in each rad. If you have two long rads on each side of the space that would easily warm them up in a few hours.

Also look at insulation, it sounds like it needs some up there...

 

This is interesting, agreed on the insulation part and I will be checking that out. We took the rad out as it was placed in a position that was heating the door and not the bedroom and at the time bringing the plumbing round to the desired location was about £70 in parts so I just went for the smart radiator. The current thinking is to run the heating on the cheap rate of 2330-0430 and keep the door shut and see how we go.

Need to do some more reading about how long the rads would stay warm for and if it'll work just being plugged into a plug socket.

 

Have now switched from intelligent to go faster. I wanted the simplicity of a fixed window for when my battery comes, and the 0630 end should help for heating in the morning over winter

 

But with intelligent you still have a fixed window, it's just a longer one and they can add extra windows to the primary one if they see fit.

 

yes but for me I wanted that extra hour to 630 for convenient washing machine end time plus bathroom ufh - ending at 530 the room cools down too much by the time we're up

 

My washing machine is fairly new, apparantly 700wh for an eco cycle - of course my wife puts it on 40c (she won't budget) so perhaps 1kwh. And most of that will be in the first 30 mins to heat up the incoming cold.

So in theory we could adjust to have the first hour of the cycle in the cheap rate, but we also have space heating we want to consider too