is gas or electricity cheaper to heat home?

krits

Buying a house which has no gas installed although there is supply to hook up to. Was told the prices are virtually the same now - is it cheaper to have gas central heating these days versus electric heaters? Also anyone out there know how much the gas connection ould cost, and indeed a new central heatingsystem? Wonder if in future natural gas will ever be cheaper option again? Thanks!

sequence

I guessing either the EA or the seller told you they are virtually the same price :rotfl:

Electric heating is a lot worse than gas and a lot more expensive. I personally wouldn't touch it....

Lilium

Gas is cheaper. With electricity you're also paying for the fuel they had to burn to generate it.

DH and I used to live in a one bedroom, first floor flat which had storage heaters. It always felt cold despite getting heat from the people below too. I reckon our bills now aren't much more and we've now got a 3 bedroom house with gas central heating. I wouldn't want to go back to electric heating.

jonewer

Gas.

Better to burn it and generate heat in your house than to burn it, heat water into steam, use steam to drive turbine, use turbine to drive generator, send electricty through transformer, send through 100 miles wire, through another transformer, into your home, and then force it through a bit of thick wire to make it hot to heat your home.

Mankysteve

Gas is about the third of the price of eleci maybe half if you use Economy 7.A modern condensing boiler are 85%+ efficient do the math. To make use of economy seven you have to use storage heater which are horrible devilish things although they have improved but not that much.

tyllwyd

We removed electric night storage heaters about three years ago and intalled a gas combi boiler. The gas is cheaper (although we did miss having background heat in the house all night from the storage heaters!). Also, one advantage of doing it now is that you can get a modern efficient boiler, which does keep the cost down - we were worried about having a combi boiler and no hot water tank so that water only gets heated when you are running the tap, but it is fine, the advantage is that the gas bills in the summer are tiny.

To get central heating installed (boiler, radiators etc) I'd expect you'd be looking between £3000-£5000.

Owain_Moneysaver

tyllwyd wrote: »

We removed electric night storage heaters about three years ago and intalled a gas combi boiler. The gas is cheaper (although we did miss having background heat in the house all night from the storage heaters!). .

If you change your room stat to a programmable thermostat you can have different temperatures set at different times - so the house doesn't get cold overnight but you're not paying to heat it up to daytime temps.

motherofstudents

Gas would be my choice. We heat a 3 bedroom bungalow/kitchen/bathroom/conservatory and it costs a lot less than my mother pays for her electric storage heaters in a one bed flat. The only problem is that you will have to pay to have it installed. If you go to British Gas it will be very expensive but a local installer should be cheaper. We paid #2600 but being a bungalow we don't have an upstairs which might have made it cheaper - although the boiler is in the loft.

wessexw

Also think of selling in the future, most potential buyers will want gas installed and electric heating will be a big no no in most peoples books. You'd potentially devalue your property with electric heating installed.