storage heaters/electric central heating or gas?

erials

hi i'm a student living away from home very ignorant when it comes to electric heating and we've just received a rather large electricity bill. we live in a 2bed middle flat with electric heaters on the wall each heater can be switched on at any time of the day independent of other heaters. to be honest they are not very effective and i was wondering if buying and using plug-in fan heaters will be more expensive to run.
we are on economy 7 but i'm not sure how that relates to our heating. we have our water tank on from 12-7am but i'm not sure if that is relevant. some of the heaters in the flat can be put on there own timer but that means i have to leave the switch on all day or all night. please can someone help very confused

erials

if the living room has storage heating and the bedrooms have electric heaters is the are the bedroom heaters using the electricity from the storage heaters?

BillyBailey

Try a1 low carbon solutions - they have grant funding for electric conversions to gas and also for those on coal who want to go onto gas. put it into google and see how you get on

BillyBailey

Try A1 Low Carbon Solutions - they have grant funding up to £1000 to help convert from either electric or coal to gas. Give it a go and put it into google - a1 lcs

oilman2uk

Hi,

Try this website A1LCS(dot)co(dot)uk. Or give them a ring on 08456000337. There is upto £700 available for swtiching from electric to gas. The money is provided due to npower's CERT commitment, and, the beauty of the funding is that you DON'T need to be an npower customer to qualify. Anybody qualifies......

matchmade

I'm a small-scale property developer, in the middle of building a block of four new flats, three two-beds sized 75m2 and one one-bed sized 55m2. These are to current building regulations so are pretty well-insulated (though not "zero-carbon"), and my builders appear to be making every effort to seal gaps and generally reduce the pathways for heat loss.

My quandary is what fuel options to install. A large 1- and 2-bed flatted development elsewhere in my city is using flat-panel Dimplex electric panel radiators only, each with an independent thermostat, plus immersion water heating. There's no gas at all. The developers must have saved themselves a tidy sum on the new gas installation: my little development will cost £3400 for the pipes, plus I estimate £600 for my guys' time to dig trenches etc. Then there's the cost of four separate little GCH systems with condensing boilers, radiators (we've decided we can't afford underfloor heating), pressurised tank and immersion heater, which will be the best part of £8000. Average cost per flat for gas = £3000 with zero-rated VAT.

Everything I read on this forum, and my own past experience, suggests that I should go for GCH and regular electric power and lighting circuits plus an immersion. However we always seem to be talking about old poorly-insulated houses. On the face of it, it does seem ludicrous to go for 4 separate mini gas central heating systems, with 4 condensing boilers needing maintenance and an uncertain replacement lifecycle (the likes of Vailliant refuse to give me this information; my plumber says 5-10 years, which is pathetic given that an old-style boiler can easily last 25 years). Part of me is tempted to go electric-only due to the ease and low cost of this installation. Have the big developers I mentioned made a wise and justifiable decision to go electric-only in modern well-insulated flats, or are they just burdening their future owners and tenants with high bills whilst saving themselves the gas installation costs? The fiasco of night storage heaters in previous decades should be a warning to me, but maybe things are different this time with high insulation and controllable panel radiators?

I should mention I have sympathy for people who struggle assessing the cost-benefit equation for home heating: I'm a former electrical engineer with a humanities PhD, so not unintelligent, yet here am I struggling to decide the specification for a new-build flat, which is about as controllable an environment as you can get!

paceinternet

matchmade, you should have a heat loss assessment done for the properties. Then you can consider different scenarios of occupancy to come up with a range of annual kwh usage. I don't think it is just gas installation costs, but annual and whole life running costs which have to be considered. You recognise this yourself.

Storage heaters are unlikely to be an answer unless people are at home all day regularly.

If electric only looks interesting, consider the option to add a heat pump, or air to air (airconditioning type heat pump), to the main living area and maybe panel heaters to the bedrooms. You need to have a suitable outside area for the evaporators, but it would be very positive environmentally and with low running costs.

Cardew

Matchmade,

What an excellent post! It sums up the dilemma on choice of heating perfectly.

I posted this extract from the Daily Telegraph some 5 years ago:

This was an article from the Daily Telegraph that I posted - bear in mind that the article is over a year old and the prices are out of date.

On the level: what gas really costs
(Filed: 12/10/2005)
Ask Jeff
There's a lot to be said for wiring-in electric panel heaters or night-storage heaters, writes Jeff Howell

A month ago I wrote about switching energy suppliers, and have since been asked by several readers for my views on the most economical energy source. I get a steady trickle of letters with this query anyway, but the recent rises in gas and electricity prices, press stories about diminishing stocks of natural gas, and the increase in the crude oil price following hurricane Katrina have all led to a greater concern about energy supplies and prices.

Most readers in urban areas will have natural gas piped into their homes, and might assume that this is the cheapest fuel. But over the past few years I have viewed a lot of new housing developments (many as a judge for The Daily Telegraph/What House? awards), and I have been struck by the fact that most new houses and flats these days tend to be fitted with electric panel heaters rather than gas-fired central-heating systems. On the one hand, this could be seen as a cynical ploy by the developers to cut costs. After all, wiring is cheaper than pipework, and there are no boilers, pumps or radiators to break down or leak, requiring remedial call-backs. On the other, it might be a blessing in disguise for the new owners. Sure, they are paying more per unit for electricity than for gas, but their annual maintenance costs will be practically zero, whereas gas-fired central heating incurs considerable maintenance and depreciation costs. So let's have a closer look at the subject.


Fuel prices vary across the country, and different suppliers have different charging practices (some add standing charges, and some operate a sliding tariff, with the first hundred or so units being more expensive). But roughly speaking, a standard "unit" of electric power, a kilowatt-hour (kWh) - which will heat a one-bar electric fire for an hour - costs about 7p. Off-peak electricity ("Economy 7") costs about 3.5p per kWh. Natural gas piped into the house ("town gas") costs about 2p per kWh, but gas boilers might be only 75 to 80 per cent efficient, giving a truer cost of nearer 2.5p. Heating oil and LPG (liquefied petroleum gas, or "Calor Gas"), using similar boilers, currently provide heat at a rate equivalent to 4.5p and 4p per kWh respectively.

On the basis of fuel costs alone, gas, oil and LPG are cheaper than standard-rate electricity. But this does not take into account the costs of buying and installing boilers and fuel tanks, nor the annual maintenance costs, nor the fact that boilers have a finite life. The trade price for a new gas boiler is about £600, but you'll be lucky to find a gas fitter who will supply and install one for much less than £ 1,500. Big companies such as British Gas routinely charge £3,000 or more.

Old gas boilers had few moving parts and could be expected to last for 30 or 40 years, but the new ones are packed full of electronics and might last 10 years or less. So let's budget £200 per year in boiler depreciation. Then there's an annual servicing cost of at least £50 - and some readers are still paying £180 or more to British Gas for annual breakdown cover, even though this does not include a proper strip-down service. So readers who think that gas is the cheapest fuel should remember to factor in £250 to £400 per year as an extra "standing charge" when they do their calculations. (Add to that the annual landlord's gas safety certificate - £50 - and the Government's proposal that in future every home might also have to have an annual gas safety inspection.)

Electric heating, by comparison, is practically maintenance-free, and has a conversion rate of energy into heat of 100 per cent. For readers with an existing gas, oil or LPG heating system, the most economical option is probably to keep it going. But for those considering a change of fuel, or starting from scratch, there's a lot to be said for wiring-in electric panel heaters or night-storage heaters, or even simply plugging oil-filled electric radiators into the existing wall sockets.

Clearly there is a case to argue for both fuels(gas/electric).

From the running costs aspect it will obviously depend on the lifestyle of the occupants - a stay at home family will be better off with gas, a working couple not much to chose.

On the other hand Gas CH will undoubtedly enhance the value of the property for selling or renting; but if the latter the landlord has to pay for mandatory annual inspections.

The 'achilles heel' of gas IMO is the disgraceful reliability of modern condensing boilers. Several years worth of savings can be wiped out by the requirement to replace an electronic board.

beave

Ok go easy guys as im a newbie here but have been reading all the threads regarding electric, gas oil heating etc etc , none of it really makes me want to decide which way to go which is my issue here .
Basically we own a 3 bed semi bungalow which only has an electric water boiler for heating , its hopelessly outdated and doesnt actually work so we rely on a woodburner for heating the place during the winter months . hot water isnt an issue as all the appliances we run creates its own hot water . Now we are looking for a move over to a new heating system as the wood burner just isnt good enough for the whole house . We live out in the wilds so have no direct mains gas we can hook up to . We were also looking at fitting an intelligent electric heating system from a firm called intelligent heat (i cant put links up for spam purposes) just for ease of doing so but after reading the threads on here im kind of wondering whether it would be cost effective . There are only 2 of us in the house and both work full time although im a subbie bricklayer so often get days off here and there especially during the winter months when heating would be needed the most . Now would this sort of system work for us or more importantly would it be cost effective for us over a fair period of time as say having a oil system fitted , taking into account the cost of oil, regular boiler servicing etc etc ive tried to take all the info in from this and other threads but i have complete system over load with all the advice given . We cant have a external gas tank fitted due to the nature of the garden and general area so thats out of the question and im not intrested in having storage heaters fitted so it can only be one of those 2 systems . There seems to be some very knowledgeable people on here so hopefully i might be able to get an answer to my qaundry as my brain has just gone into melt down . Many thanks for your help in advance

lucknnow

Just happened upon this thread.

I live in a 2-bed former council house in an area with no piped gas. Before I bought the house the council renewed the CH system for all its tenants in the area and we were given the choice between electric or open fire. As I did not want an open fire anymore the only option was going electric. The storage heater system was chosen by the council and there were no other choices (other than going back to an open fire)

The tariff was also decided for us and we were put on Scottish Hydro's Total Heating Total Control. I am not able to change tariffs or switch suppliers because of this system.

For hot water I have a huge tank in my utility room which looks like a torpedo standing on ends and occupying the whole room.

My question to all you experts out there, please can someone suggest a more economical solution or am I stuck with this system and Scottish Hydro till forever?