Would you buy a house with no central heating?

stepharoo

I think we'd consider it if:

a) we would be moving in the summer months. At this time of year, sorry, but hell to the no!
b) we had funds available to install heating relatively quickly if needed.

Some good friends of mine live in a cottage with no gas supply and no storage heaters or anything. They do have, however, a beautiful fireplace that literally heats the entire house. It's so cosy and warm you'd never even think about them not having CH.

My husband and I have a dream to install a woodburning stove in our "forever house", but we'd like CH as a backup, which is what my inlaws have. I just thought, my Granny has a woodburning stove that chucks out loads of heat. She lives in quite a large semi detached house (4 bedrooms, 3 reception rooms) that doesn't have CH, but does have storage heaters. I don't think she has them on too often because they are ancient and take days to warm up. Not sure how much the fuel costs her because my uncle scrumps a lot of fallen wood from the local common. Her house never feels oppressively warm but when the stove is going it's not horribly cold either. She has a small electric heater she plugs in if she's feeling chilly.

Have you looked around the house? Doing that would give you an idea of if it's feasible for you or not.

jc808

elliebobs wrote: »

many many thanks to all those that have posted; it's great to get views from everyone.

The option of buying and then moving out temporarily isn't available unfortunately. We would have to move in straightaway but, that said, i think we could cope with the disruption of having CH installed.

I apreciate that, if we were to sell the house at some point, it would def put off some buyers.

One other thing that i noticed re the house is that the energy rating is the lowest you can get. In all my time on Rightmove I've never seen one that bad. My old house was a two bed terrace (19th Century) with an 18 year old boiler and that was a C/D rating so presumably the lack of Central heating. For those who are particularly interested. here's the Rightmove link but feel free to ignore!

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-27429565.html

Sure ive seen a G once - but that is pretty low : )

elliebobs

Stepharoo; thanks for your input. We haven't looked around the house as we're not really in a postion to buy at the moment. I don't have property bee installed at the mo but I think it's been on the market for some time so can't see it getting snapped up. The lack of CH is one of the things that is preventing it being sold I would imagine!

elliebobs

jc808 wrote: »

Sure ive seen a G once - but that is pretty low : )

Yeah, I've never seen a G and was pretty shocked at just how low it was. The potential is also pretty low so the introduction of CH must ramp it up a fair bit. With it being an end terrace too, as someone else on here mentioned, a lot of heat would be lost from one side.

If we were to buy it relatively soonish we probably couldn't afford to install the heating that I would want (big old school radiators) until about a year after, which could make for a pretty cold and miserable year...it would be worth it though I think, bigger picture and all that

Squish_21

Yes, it wouldnt stop me buying.

As long as the lack of CH was reflected in the price, then i'd buy it with a view to putting underfloor or gas central heating in depending on how the sums added up for the property in question.

thejonesfamily

watch for the damp issues with that house, next door looks a little damp.

Davesnave

It has single skin solid brick walls, so it will always leak heat like a sieve. That's probably why the potential is so low, though there is always room for improvement, I'd have thought. nevertheless this problem is pretty much impossible to alter, so you will always pay more for energy in this house than an equivalent one with cavity walls. That can be expensive over time and fuel isn't going to get cheaper.

The wood burner will chuck out a fair bit of heat, if you can feed it dry, seasoned logs, but where are you going to store them? You will need tonnes in a winter like we're having, and they need to be there a year in advance, covered up a bit, not just left in a pile. It may have a multi-fuel firegrate, in which case smokeless fuel will kick out more heat than logs. Either way, look realistically at the yard and consider whether it will suit drying clothes as well and, possibly, give room for a toddler to play too.

PS. You are at 175m there, which will be reasonably breezy, and there's a fairly steep escarpment immediately to the south east, so how much sunshine does it get at this time of year, especially mornings?

PPS. My range hob runs on bottled gas, so don't assume a mains supply available for CH.

mr-mad_2

I don't like the look of those water filled electric radiators, Whats the point.
With electric heating, put 2kw in, get 2kw heat out. Oil or water filled you still
get the same heat out, just less control. The room reaches temperature the
oil or water radiator switches off on a stat. But the radiator continues to
emit heat till it cools. The room cools and the radiator switches on again.
Then there is a delay till the radiator heats up again.
How can they justify £400 for these things.
You are better of with a £15 2kw convector heater, it goes on and off
as its needed and you can get them wall mounted. BUY THEM IN THE SUMMER.

I am currently sitting under a
Daikin Split Air conditioning system (Inverter).
Draws heat from even frozen air outside and pumps it inside.
Bought it cheap on EBay and a local fitter installed it for me.

http://www.daikinac.com/residential/documents/Split%20Systems%20Brochure%20PCSSUSE09-05B%20-%20Daikin.pdf

dizziblonde

jc808 wrote: »

Sure ive seen a G once - but that is pretty low : )

We're a D (possibly an E but I don't think we're quite that low) with a C potential - I can't suddenly make a house with no cavity walls have 'em!

Loanranger

It looks in pretty bad condition on Street View. Old photo obviously but I would get a full structural survey in case the work done is just cosmetic.
The stone floors will suck out heat, too.