What heating system should we have with no mains gas available to us?

Mel6

Please can someone help?
We cant get mains gas, we have storage heaters & they are rubbish! Do we go LPG which is costly to refill bottles at the wrong time of year. We only have a small garden so cant really have Oil. What about Electric Boilers with 4-5 wet rads or maybe Oil filled rads? We have Economy 7 but can change to Economy 10 which sounds a lot better. can anyone advise us what to do as we keep getting very mixed reviews? Thanks - Mel

Mickyp

I live in a 4 bed well insulated house with no gas, only electric, therefore no central heating. We heat the hot water with an immersion heater on timer over night and have small oil radiators in the bedrooms and kitchen with a wood burning stove in the living room. The electric bill is about £100-£120 a month and we probably use £30 of wood a month over the winter. If your insulation is not very good I would consider installing a air source heat pump for water heating and install some radiators.

suki1964

If you have the storage heaters, the correct tariff and them set properly they should be pretty good - theres a lot of great advice on their usage on this forum

Like mickyp , we also have a stove (multifuel in my case so burn smokeless) and that makes such a difference to the temp in the house. I have oil CH and thats so expensive to run that I only have that on for a few hours a day to keep the house warmth staying at a liveable level and use the stoves to really get the house toasty.

Yes you have to store fuel and lay a fire and clean the stove out but they are a lot cleaner and quicker to clean then an open fire and much more fuel efficient and controllable - one scuttle a day keeps my stove burning a good 12 hours

Katie-Kat-Kins

I would stick with the storage heaters!

If you don't have mains gas they are probably the cheapest option. Learn how to use them efficiently and spend some time and money getting your insulation up to scratch.

You could look into an air source heat pump but would have the initial installation costs to pay, which you won't if you stick with the storage heaters.

If your storage heaters aren't adequate you can always suppliment them with a small fan or convector heater in the evenings.

Googling should give you a copy of the full instruction manual for your heaters, and even the installation guide which will help you decide whether they are capable of heating the space you have or whether you should upgrade them.

Might be worth checking they are working correctly, a blown element or two can cut their efficiency, but elements are cheap to replace.

I wouldn't change my storage heaters now unless I could afford a heat pump, even if gas was available I'm not sure I'd change as the lower maintenance cost outweighs the higher running costs.