Storage heater (ceramic bricks heater)

[Kiro]

Reading the first article Ben posted in this week’s Monday read, I wanted to ask if somebody here owns one of these ceramic brick heaters (maybe somebody living in Hokkaido or Tohoku?) as I’ve been interested for some time.

Is the heat which comes out of them as good as they say… and the monthly bill as big as they say?

[RetireJapan]

I think Philip Brasor has written more about that on his blog about buying (building?) their home.

Haven't met anyone that has one though.

[Bushiman]

I have a storage heater...
It's a Stiebel Eltron product but I'm not sure of the model. From looking at the website it looks like it might be the SHF4000 model.
Anyway, I live in Nagano surrounded by mountains, up around 700m elevation and the unit has been a waste of money unfortunately... When we built the house back in 2012 the architect/builder suggested it could be a great solution to our heating needs and we paid something like ¥20man for the unit and installation. We tried using it for the first couple of years but the heat output just wasn't enough and so we switched to heating via the AC unit. I don't seem to remember seeing a big difference in monthly power usage...
The architect later apologised and has offered to get rid of it for us...

[Kiro]

Thank you! I just read through the posts, quite informative.

@ Bushiman , may I send you a PM, as I have a couple questions about the storage heater usage.

[Bushiman]

@ Bushiman , may I send you a PM, as I have a couple questions about the storage heater usage.

Sure!