Case study — local authority
Storage heater replacement for Cornwall Council
In 2024, Cornwall Council instructed us to replace five night storage heaters in a council-owned property with energy-efficient German electric radiators.
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Client
Cornwall Council
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Property
A council-owned property
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Removed
5 night storage heaters
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Installed
Energy-efficient German electric radiators
The brief
Five storage heaters, one council property
In 2024, Cornwall Council instructed us to replace the night storage heaters in one of its properties — five units in total — with energy-efficient German electric radiators. The instruction was the whole story: take out the old heating, put in heating that can actually be controlled.
Night storage heaters are the units councils keep replacing, and the reasons are practical rather than fashionable. A storage heater charges overnight and gives its heat back on its own schedule — warmest in the morning, fading by evening, regardless of when anyone is home and with no way to call for more once the charge is spent. For the person paying the electricity bill, that means paying to heat hours they slept through. For the landlord responsible for the building — which is what a council is — it means heating that is hard to run well even when everything works.
Modern electric radiators change the deal: heat when it is wanted, room by room, with a thermostat that holds the temperature it is set to. That controllability is the argument, and it is why this particular swap has become routine work for local authorities.
What went in
German electric radiators, chosen for the controls
The replacements were the German-engineered electric radiators we install — slim, wall-mounted units with precise thermostatic control. Fitted inside them are Magmatic heat retention stones, which keep releasing warmth after the element switches off and spread heat across the whole surface of the radiator rather than in hot spots.
The stones do what the bricks in a storage heater do — store and release warmth — with the drawback removed: they work on demand rather than on an overnight charge. The radiators heat when they are asked to, they do not run out by evening, and no off-peak tariff is needed to make the arithmetic work. That is exactly why they replace night storage heaters so well.
The radiators, in brief
- Manufactured in Germany
- Precise thermostatic control, room by room
- Magmatic heat retention stones — warmth continues after the element stops
- Half convected, half radiant heat, spread evenly across the surface
- Slim, wall-mounted profile
How we work
The same job, whoever the client is
A storage heater replacement runs the same way for a council as it does for a homeowner — survey, a written specification, removal and disposal of the old units, then installation and handover:
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Free home survey
We visit, measure each room and look at how you actually live in the house. Heat output is sized per room — a guess made over the phone is how people end up cold in the room they use most.
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A written recommendation
You get a clear proposal setting out what we would install, why that specification, and what it costs. No pressure and no obligation to go ahead.
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Removal and disposal
We take out the old system and dispose of it. Storage heaters are heavy, awkward and often full of decades of dust — that is our job, not yours.
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Installation and handover
We install, test and then show you how to run it. Getting the controls right is most of the saving, so we do not leave until you know how to use them.
Councils further afield
A long way from Christchurch, deliberately
We are based in Christchurch, Dorset, and most of our work sits along the south coast around it. Cornwall is well beyond that patch — and Cornwall Council instructed us anyway.
For local authorities and housing providers, we travel: council heating work is planned, specified and scheduled in a way that makes distance a logistics question rather than a barrier. If you are responsible for housing stock — wherever it is — we are happy to talk.
Responsible for council or rental stock?
Storage heater replacements planned, removed, disposed of and installed — one property at a time or at scale.