Morning all. I've been back in the UK for almost a month now; it's been good and a bit of a whirlwind. I found the drop in temperature from the Dominican Rep very hard to take and for the past week have been dealing with a nasty virus which had me shivering and sweating in equal degrees. Fortunately we have a few days of lovely weather at present. I'm staying with my weather-hardened family and don't have control of the thermostat lol.

However, here's my question. I have managed to find a very affordable apartment to buy in the exact location I'd been keeping my eye on for some time. It will need some improvements but I'm excited about my upcoming new home. In the past, I've always had gas central heating and now I'm buying in a place that is electric only. I'm not sure yet about the state of the existing storage heaters, but I really want to be sure that by the time the winter comes I can be warm enough without breaking the bank. There are all kinds of new systems advertised and I'm doing my research as best I can, but it would be great to hear from anyone here how they have tackled this issue bearing in mind the high cost of heating, especially when my blood has adjusted to 25 years in the tropics.

Thanks for any shared experience.

Where in the UK will you be living? I’d say there’s a distinct difference in winter severity across the country. My flat is in north Norfolk, and the winters may be miserable/damp/changeable but, objectively, temperatures are never that low that you really need much heat. My newish flat is electric only, and simply has one cheap electric heater in each room - so I just use the heater for a while if I’m in the room, there’s never a danger of getting seriously cold or pipes freezing or whatever. Up north, could be quite different

Thanks, Robin. I'm in Rugby, which certainly isn't the coldest part of the country but I've become a wimp living in much warmer climes. I want to be forearmed with knowledge so that if I have to update what I have, I will be able to make some informed choices.

Does it have to be storage heaters? We weren’t on mains gas in our last house, and we ran an annexe on an air source heat pump, and the house on ground source heat pumps. Both worked brilliantly (plus we got the Renewable Heat Incentive, so the whole system paid for itself in 5 years and we made profit on it), but we had underfloor heating everywhere, not storage heaters. That was in a 600 year old Grade II* listed (i.e. no insulation and single glazing) house as well, and we never had any issues with warmth.

Yeah. My other home is northern New York, where we get minus 30 Celsius and crazy numbers like that in the winter. So the English minus five to plus five is quite acceptable to me! I know what you mean about random bad colds etc. I guess that’s a function of being in a foreign environment.

Bear in mind that although you may feel the cold at first, you will get used to it. I came home from Queensland after 20 years, and even though I loved being cold, the first year was a shock at times. Now back over two years, and I have definitely re-acclimatised to UK weather.

It's an apartment, so those sort of changes may not be possible, particularly if it not ground floor, also it may be leasehold, and there may be permissions to get to make changes like that.

Welcome back.

It didn’t take us too long to acclimatize after 29 years in the sub tropics and I expect you will soon settle down to the lower temperatures. I don’t have any suggestions for your heating options except to say that energy companies have some great options available for cheap overnight rates. (For example to charge up your storage heaters). We have solar panels and also an EV. Our overnight electric rates with Octopus are less than 7p/kWh which covers all power, not just the EV so we schedule dishwasher and washing machine to run overnight. Also, during the winter months I set the the solar panels inverter to fully charge the storage batteries every night so we start the day at 5:30am with a full charge which lasts us all day and well into the evening.


PS
you don’t need solar panels to install storage batteries.

https://givenergy.co.uk/home-battery...without-solar/

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ut...rage-worth-it/

Thanks all for the reassurance that I will adjust again to the lower temperatures.
Yes, the property is leasehold and there are regulations about what you can and can't do there. From having spoken to a number of residents there today, they don't find the cost of heating the small apartments too horrendous, whether on the lower tariff or even using it carefully on the normal rate. I had started to look at the heat pumps and will continue doing my homework, but I think it's probably going to be a simple solution with more modern heaters. I appreciate all the replies.

I didn’t mean that the OP should get GSHP’s or ASHP’s themselves, was just sharing my experience of heating with electricity only. I meant that an updated heating system rather than storage heaters would probably work really well if that worked for us in a super old house.

I'm in a small apartment and have two storage radiators, Lounge and bedroom, my bills are very reasonable as they run on off peak electricity and I'm on the cold side of the building.

Great to hear, I'm hoping that will be my experience, too. Sounds like a very similar property. Thank you.

One other thing that probably people don't think about is that you have other apartments around you also with heating on so your apartment benefits from their heating, as does theirs from yours also here the corridors are also heated to a slight degree, and that helps.