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I simply insert some palladium rods in a couple of cups of heavy water. Connect up one D-cell and that lasts the winter! |
Posted on 03/23/2009 7:00:18 AM PDT by McKayopectate
Sorry for the vanity, but I can't seem to find any good reviews/comments/opinions on Storage Heaters online. Everything seems to come out of England, and the last place I want to trust any info out of is that place.
Here's the deal. My Mother-in-law wants to convert her basement into a livable space. She has baseboard heaters upstairs, but they're expensive to run. The electric company is pushing "storage heaters"--the kind where bricks are heated up and release heat at intervals so she doesn't have to use the baseboard heaters (which she'll have in the basement, too).
Anyone know something about these?
—the one in my mother’s house in SW Wisconsin is separately wired and heats only off-peak at a reduced rate—works fine—
Brick storage heaters do work better than just heating the air. But I bet they are going to be custom made. Today you would likely imbed heaters in the concrete floor and use that as the heat storage. I have seen installs like that, and they seem to work fine, but not going to be cheap to do once the home has been built.
Sorry, too little information.
And in some places converting a Basement to a “livable space” isn’t even legal. Its an Occupancy / Code thing.
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I simply insert some palladium rods in a couple of cups of heavy water. Connect up one D-cell and that lasts the winter! |
Have you considered embedding heating coils in the floor? We had this done for a vacation house in Colorado and it supplemented the expensive baseboard heaters nicely, cutting costs quite a bit. The ceramic floor was nice and warm underfoot too, though floors placed directly on a slab, like a basement floor, are usually uncomfortably cold. I believe you can have it done with a wood floor as well as with tiles.
I seriously doubt that your mother has a power meter that differentiates the power used during the different times of day.
No matter what they hawk, heating up something and then allowing it to sit for several hours means a loss of heat.
—the heater that my mother has is separately wired on its own meter which allows for heating only on an off-peak basis-—
—and furthermore, although I don’t have the power bill in hand since it’s 1700 miles away, some years ago the rate, IIRC , was about three cents a kilowatt—
I seriously doubt that your mother has a power meter that differentiates the power used during the different times of day.
I live in Wisconsin & our electric rate is keyed to the time of use. It's an optional program.
IIRC you can put the coils down on top of the concrete then do tile flooring over top.
Okay, I’ll look into that. Thank you.
Interesting. Many years ago I lived in an apartment that had the water heater on some type of remotely activates switch which allowed the power company to turn them off during times of extreme demand. It was darned annoying to get into the shower to find you had no hot water. I didn’t sign up for it don’t think I got a cut on my power rates so I bypassed the thing.
Why do you doubt that?
I've got one on my house.
I know other people in other parts of the country that also have them?
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