Tenant arranged removal of night rate meter in flat with electric heating?

Tenant arranged removal of night rate meter in flat with electric heating?

9:36 AM, 26th September 2022, About 2 years ago 28

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Hello, Advice appreciated!

I have a flat that has no gas, and has electric storage heaters which were on night rate electricity.

The tenant left, and we found he had arranged for SSE to change the meter to one without the night rate facility.

This was without our permission, and when asked, the tenant said it was because he couldn’t get the storage heaters to work.

Setting aside that obviously we would have helped him with the heaters if he had let us know, we now have these issues:-

-We feel it would be unfair to let the flat to another tenant due to the higher cost of heating night-stores with day rate electricity.

-Are we likely to persuade SSE to re-instate a night rate?

-Where do landlords stand with regard to insisting that utility companies contact them regarding major changes like this?

-If SSE might charge for re-instating the meter, is it allowable to withhold this against the deposit, or does this not count as “damage”?

Thank you.

Wendy


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Dave S

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14:33 PM, 26th September 2022, About 2 years ago

Doubt you will get SSE to fit an economy 7 meter. The best bet is to use a tarriff such as octopus go which gives you 4 hours at cheap rate. However your main problem is that you will have to get an electrician to fit timer relays to each circuit of your storage heaters to switch on only in the cheap rate time period. The old economy 7 meters used to have a relay built in which switches the seperate fuse board on during cheap rate wheras the new meters don’t and basically make your complete supply cheap rate

Mike

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14:42 PM, 26th September 2022, About 2 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Doug Ellison at 26/09/2022 - 13:57
well done Doug, I have been thinking about this why not use cheap night time tariff and use batteries to charge up during night and then use stored energy during day time, last year I was using 16kwh per day and at todays prices I can no longer throw my money down a drain, so I managed to cut down my usage from 16Kwh per day to less than 6Kwh per day, so I could well look into this and exploit this situation, I am also looking at some Youtube videos on waste oil burners, that burn waste car engine oil or used cooking oil, very simple to construct and all you need is a cold air blower to burn the oil to heat a primary central heating coil and pump it through your central heating, heat your home for virtually free. Fortunately I am good at DIY, so I won't need specialist engineers or notify anyone,, its a game of survival, and legislation or pollution is my last concern !
Biggest polluters of global climate change is manufacturing industry, every screw and nut requires enormous amount of energy to manufacture from toys to cars to food packaging to industrial mining and processing of raw materials to electronic chip fabrication, building roads and infra structure, waste disposal, poor recycling, all consumes tons of energy which is what is causing earth's climate change, its not just cars, home heating too, when everyone can stop using non-renewable energy, then I can stop burning waste heating oil.

Reluctant Landlord

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16:51 PM, 26th September 2022, About 2 years ago

Reply to the comment left by John Allies at 26/09/2022 - 14:10
interesting.....I questioned an EPC guy about this earlier in the year and he told me as long as there is one storage heater in the MAIN living room then the EPC will take account of this and the calculation will NOT regard the property is being assessed as purely as being fed by panel heaters.

Therefore be worth keeping one storage heater in use to ensure a better EPC rating in the main room. Apparently it makes no difference if the storage heater has an actual dual rate feed or not. That is irrelevant.

Reluctant Landlord

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John Allies

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17:19 PM, 26th September 2022, About 2 years ago

Sorry but I don't altogether agree. I agree with the part about having one storage heater in the living room as being sufficient for the property not to be assessed as being fed by panel heaters, but if that is not on dual tariff then it is not considered to be a storage heater but a panel heater.

Doug Ellison

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19:09 PM, 26th September 2022, About 2 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 26/09/2022 - 14:42
Sounds like you know what you’re talking about Mike.That’s all beyond me,never been very practical.
There are 2 Octopus tariff’s which offer cheap nightime electric,Octopus Go (4 hours)and Intelligent Octopus(6 hours)for which you need an electic car(which I have)
If you,or anyone else transfer to Octopus you can get a £50 credit (which I get as well)by quoting “office@dougellison.co.uk.
I should add that’s not the reason I’m recommending them,as utility companies go they’re almost certainly the best.

Chris H

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19:41 PM, 26th September 2022, About 2 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Mike at 26/09/2022 - 10:41
Sorry to say that a clause stating "That a tenant cannot change energy supplier or have pre-payment meters installed,"
Would not be legal, nor possible if the energy supplier installed pre-payment due to debt, as has happened to a tenant I know.

Notaportfolio

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21:19 PM, 26th September 2022, About 2 years ago

Thank-you for your replies and help. Just to clarify:-
-We have no problem, of course, with tenants changing supplier, that is their choice.
- This tenant didn't change to a prepayment meter, he just seems to have agreed to SSE removing the Economy 7 meter. He doesn't seem to have understood the situation, and of course SSE will have been delighted to remove the cheaper electricity option!
- It doesn't seem fair to get the next tenant to sort it out, as they would be paying full price to heat up the storage heaters until it was solved. We want to get it sorted out before we can re-let the flat.

Reluctant Landlord

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10:10 AM, 27th September 2022, About 2 years ago

Reply to the comment left by John Allies at 26/09/2022 - 17:19
agreed but it is out of the EPC remit to take account of what tariff the tenant decides to use or how the storage heater is used. The fact that there is a storage heater in situ (and I expect has been shown via EICR as installed correctly and therefore working) is enough to tick the box.

John Allies

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15:39 PM, 27th September 2022, About 2 years ago

Reply to the comment left by DSR at 27/09/2022 - 10:10
Sorry I have to disagree once again. You are totally right to say that it is out of the EPC remit to take account of what tariff the tenant decides to use or how the storage heater is used. As a domestic energy assessor of some 12 years I will advise you of the process we are bound to go through with regards to the electricity supply in a property to submit an EPC survey in order to obtain an energy rating. Firstly we must take a picture of the of the meter and ascertain whether it is single or dual tariff. If for any reason we are unable to take a picture or it is not clear that it is dual tariff then it is assumed that it is single tariff. If the meter is single tariff then any heating appliance in the property including storage heaters are assumed to be panel heaters. ( I am obviously not referring to Heat Pump systems here). The EPC survey is based on the energy capacity of the property and not the choices of the people living in it.

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