central heating, why bother?

retired_at_last · 15 December 2010 at 1:29AM

I live in a house with no central heating and no gas supply either. Used to have an open coal fire that heated the living room and hot water.

That was bloked up and replaced with a coal effect electric fire and a couple of oil filled radiators and a portable calor gas heater for emergencies such as power cuts.

Plus an electric shower and an immersion for hot water.

So I thought, since I retired I would put in central heating.

Options, oil or LPG or wet electric or night storage heaters.

All involve heating water to heat the air to heat house. Except the night storage heaters.

All costing at least £6000, possibly more.

Then possibly costing £500 plus a year in fuel. Plus what I pay for electricity for anything not involving heat and hot water.

It would cost me what I am paying now for just electricity, about £1000 a year.

Then I thought, why not just heat the air directly? Oh! just like I am doing already.

So is central heating necessary?

I don't think so but I've never had it.

aboard_epsilon · 15 December 2010 at 2:22AM

You just wait until you get your electricity bill ..i know someone that was putting in cards into the meter ..the other week and they used £70 worth in an electric fire and oil filled rad house.

if you want to heat the air directly ..then the cheapest method is paraffin if you don't have mains gas or Free wood fuel ..paraffin works out about 7 pence a KW if you buy it in bulk and thats for the specialist more expensive paraffin known as "paraffin extra"...normal premium paraffin has a shhitt load of die in it that will burn your wicks out in a week.

paraffin is more or less 100 percent efficient

BTW ..the latest domestic oil fired boilers are now condensing ..so i think you may find one of these that is maybe 85 percent efficient...but they cost a lot more than gas boilers and are more complicated to fix...but i hear they are made better.

you have other choices as well ..
look up "air source heat pump" .. 250 percent efficient ..and gov give you back 7 pence for every kilowatt made by it ...avarage install is £8000 but only really work well with under floor heating ..which will be a hell of a lot on top of that .

all the best.markj

tori.k · 15 December 2010 at 9:54AM

We had an oil combi boiler fitted in March, and already made huge savings on our electric.
we were paying £110 a month DD and thats now down to £50 we just topped the oil up which was £233 for 500 lts but that should take us way beyond easter as we only used a around 200lts from March till Oct end (without heating) so are saving around £300 this year.
The set up cost was expensive but i see at as an investment as we are the only house in our area with CH and not night storage heating.

All that aside im glad we decided to have it installed as we are not getting any younger so the inadequate heating is sorted before a problem ever arose

Owain_Moneysaver · 29 December 2010 at 10:11PM

retired_at_last wrote: »

So I thought, since I retired I would put in central heating.

Options, oil or LPG or wet electric or night storage heaters.

All involve heating water to heat the air to heat house. Except the night storage heaters.

All costing at least £6000, possibly more.

Have you actually got any quotes for the work, as especially storage heaters should be a lot less than that.

Installing gas central heating is likely to pay for itself, and make the house more attractive, if you do intend to sell.

central heating, why bother?

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