Would electric heating be a deal breaker for you?

London_Town

I'm researching a forthcoming house move and have idenified a small development I like, that just happens to be electrically heated. The homes are 2 bed terraces and semi's, built around 1994.

The other homes I have been considering are all gas centrally heated. I'm trying to decide whether electric heating should be a deal breaker for me. With the gas heated houses which were built in the 1980's, I'm budgeting for a new boiler, new radiators and a powerflush. This alone will be a few thousand pounds. Then there will be the ongoing maintenance of a gas fired central heating system.

While I appreciate that a kwhr of electricity is more expensive than a kwhr of gas, looking at whole life system costs, which is cheaper? I'll be living alone in a very frugal manner may I add.

I wondered if anyone had bought a home with electric heating and bitterly regretted it? Maybe modern electric heating is alot cheaper to run and more efficient than the old storage heaters you used to hear about.

I know energy costs are going to rise sharply over the next decade, so I'm a little scared of ending up in an electrically heated house I can't afford to heat by 2015.

Any experience or constructive advice would be greatly appreciated.

puddy

it wouldnt be a deal braker but it would be considered in the price i wanted to pay as i wouldnt stick with electric and would want to change to gas

one thing to question, can you have gas installed, if they were built in the 90s but dont have gas, is that because gas is not in the area??

i personally wouldnt keep electric houses, what about when theres a power cut? but the cost mostly puts me off electric, i have heard rubbish things about storage heaters, i think they're a false economy, as is economy 7

bitsandpieces

Electric heating is more expensive than gas - although a very well-insulated place may be cheaper to heat, anyway. I wouldn't see it as a deal breaker, though I would expect it to be reflected in the price.

Given that houses in London can be horribly expensive, heating costs may be a comparatively small proportion of the cost of the property?

London_Town

Thanks jenner, gas is across the road on another development. These homes were heated electrically to save costs in their building I guess. However, not sure how expensive it could be to bring gas across the road and have a whole system installed. Maybe cheaper to have PV Solar Panels installed actually.

googler

jenner wrote: »

i personally wouldnt keep electric houses, what about when theres a power cut?

Take a long look at your 'gas' boiler and tell us - is it connected to an electricity supply point?

puddy

of course, but i can still light the cooker

London_Town

Thanks bitsandpieces, you make a good point about modern insulation helping. The house is in a part of the West Midlands where the housing stock mainly consists of houses from the early eighties onwards. Both posts make me wonder if potential resale could be an issue?

elise83_2

Place I've lived in for 3 years is all electric and living on my own my quarterly electricity bill was around £40 late summer and £120 in winter once I got the radiators going. The radiators themselves are pretty old and probably not all that efficient and the actual property isn't particularly well insulated so I guess this could be an example of a worst case scenario for you.

Errata

jenner wrote: »

of course, but i can still light the cooker

That's quite important if there is a depth of winter electricity power failure that lasts for days, as I have cause to know.
I would never consider a property that didn't have a gas supply, and the cost of having one installed, even from across the road, is phenomenal.

London_Town

Cheers elise83, those costs sound encouraging. I'm not one to have the house very warm, I'm pretty hardy.

googler

jenner wrote: »

of course, but i can still light the cooker

.... and here was I, thinking the thread was about heating....