Do I Stick With Gas Central Heating?

DSB1972

I hope this is the logical place to post this.
My boiler is getting on, we'll need a new one in a year or two I reckon. With gas prices rising so high is sticking with gas to heat the house the best idea?
Storage heaters, electric water heater(s), pain of converting the house to take these, what a nightmare and a huge cost.
Is there another way?
Is there any info out there to EASILY compare boiler costs to electric stated above or
Is there another unit which can replace a boiler that doesn't use gas? to provide heat & hot water. I know some countries use air conditioning summer & winter, that's energy efficient but lots of units round the house.
Any Ideas?

Cardew

Gas is approx one third of the price of electricity. Electrical Heaters are 100% efficient, a new gas boiler is theoretically 90+% efficient, but in practice is probably between 80% and 90% efficient.

Even though gas boilers should have an annual service to add to the costs, electricity doesn't compete on running costs.

The 'air conditioning' is called (Air to Air) Air Source Heat Pumps(ASHP) which are difficult to retro-fit.

The more popular heat pump system is an Air to Water ASHP. Again difficult to retro-fit as larger radiators are required or Underfloor heating. Very expensive - often in excess of £10,000 - and often produces poor results if incorrectly installed.

In any case it doesn't really compete if you have mains gas - so the answer is stick to gas.

sk240

If you can go with gas central heating, at the moment that's your best option (i'm assuming natural gas and not LPG), a heat pump of any form will cost about the same to run as gas central heating.

rogerblack

Storage heaters can in some circumstances be cheaper, considering all the costs.
Air-sourced heatpumps are generally expensive, and will be no cheaper than gas, if run on normal price electricity.

In general, the cheapest solution is likely to be to replace the boiler when it fails, and spend as much as you can afford at that time on home insulation.

Topping up attic insulation can help a little, but if your house is otherwise poorly insulated -very little.

Draught-sealing can pay back in weeks.

A.Penny.Saved

Get all the pipes well insulated. That should help a fair bit and maximize the systems efficiency. It can be difficult as many fitters don't pay any attention to insulation which can make it difficult to insulate some pipes. I had to re-plumb half my heating system in order to insulate the pipework.

I would say, stick with Gas because after attempting to heat one room with electric, even at a much lower temperature, it still cost me as much overall as it did with Gas and that was only one room rather than the whole house minus one small bedroom. My heating wasn't working so it was a real eye opener. It was very fortunate that we didn't have a cold winter.

kwilkinson99

Air source heat pumps are generally an option if you have mains gas - the best savings are when you are displacing electricity or oil.

As someone else has already mentioned, retrofitting an ASHP can be quite a major project.

Cardew

kwilkinson99 wrote: »

Air source heat pumps are generally an option if you have mains gas - the best savings are when you are displacing electricity or oil.

As someone else has already mentioned, retrofitting an ASHP can be quite a major project.

Do you mean NOT an option?

andrew-the-cat

A heat pump is in essence an air conditioner running in reverse. It extracts heat from the outside air and dissipates it inside the house.

Many large homes in the USA (especially in the southern states like Florida) use central air conditioning which is delivered to multiple rooms by air ducts in false ceilings etc, if using a heat pump then you can also use this to deliver warm air to all rooms. No gas supply required, it's all electric. Better yet, since you are not burning gas, it is better for the environment, and also more efficient than gas central heating.

Ben84

I don't expect electricity to become cheaper than gas any time soon, if ever. There's currently a large price difference that doesn't seem to be closing much as electricity is getting more expensive too. Mains gas has always been historically cheaper than electricity per kWh, so I'd wonder why anyone suspects this situation to invert? A large amount of electricity is made from burning gas anyway in the UK, so the two have become linked now.

Anyway, the advantages of gas are that it's desirable if you ever sell your house, it's fast and you can use it any time of day without a cost penalty. Electric storage heaters are slow, need planning ahead to use and are pretty inflexible about when you use them and when the heat comes out, as well as not being able to turn them on instantly if needed. Extra daytime heating requires other electric heaters and is expensive too. Personally, when house hunting I put mains gas central heating pretty high on the list of must haves as I associate storage heaters with high running costs and disappointing performance compared to gas. Even my 1970s back boiler was cheaper to run and more flexible to use. For the money you'd spend on pulling out and replacing a likely better system system, you could get a lot of insulation.

rogerblack

andrew-the-cat wrote: »

Better yet, since you are not burning gas, it is better for the environment, and also more efficient than gas central heating.

This is somewhat misleading.

The emission of carbon by electricity generation is 500g/kWh.
Gas combustion releases 210g/kWh or so of carbon.
Call it 250g/kWh - assuming a condensing boiler.

Good air-source heat pumps have an efficiency of around 4:1 - they produce 4 units for every 1 of electricity.

My current best rate for gas is about 3p/kWh - electricity is 14.7p.

This would take the cost for heating to about 3.5p/kWh - for the heatpump.

Still more expensive than gas, though comparable.
The problem happens when it gets colder.

Both the heat pumping capacity - how much heat it can produce - and the efficiency - how much it takes to produce that heat drop.

This can easily mean that unless the system is properly sized, you fall back on really expensive 'boost' heaters, which are nothing more than normal electric heaters.

A system properly sized for winter loads of a house, that is one of the more efficient ones on the market (otherwise it won't come close to gas) is likely to cost several thousand pounds.

macman

If wholesale gas prices continue to rise, then what do you think is going to happen to retail electricity prices, since the majority of UK electricity is produced from gas-fired power stations?
That situation is not going to change within the next 10 years at minimum.