Contemplating switching to all electricity

Battleaxe44

I am trying to find a way to cut the gas costs next winter. I resent paying this money.:mad:

I have done EVERYTHING as advised and even with a month out of the country our gas bill for the quarter to April 2013 was £394.00. the only thing running was the central heating at 18 degrees 24/7 and heating the hot water/ . bein Senior citizens this puts us into the fuel poverty bracket (Subjective).

our boiler is now ten years old and it is not a combi boiler. it was installed new in the house just before we bought the house.

Our electricity bill for the same quarter was £257..00 (I have rounded up the figures) I am not grizzinling about the electricity bill because of building work, and I have switched grom gas to electricity for cooking, we also ran oil filled heaters to boost the warmth in some of the rooms in the house i.e the Conservatory, which has been insulated, but can get very cold in there in winter, despite it having a central heating radiator in there. When we went away we turned that radiator off and closed the doors so no wasted energy in there.

This equates to just under a 1/3rd of our superannuation for this period.

This quarter with the central heating off and just using the gas for heating the water the bill was £71.00 and the electricity bill was £192.00.

I have installed all energy saving appliances during our rebuild and the appliances have AAA ratings, including fridge, washing, machine and dishwasher.

The house is 2 bedroom, brick semi. Insulation in the loft is 8 years old. The exterior walls have all been insulwooled. The windows are thos double glazed horrors and we have gone around sealed where we have noticed the draughts. These windows will be rpelaced in the next 18 months when we have saved the money to do this.

In the kitchen now we have finished all the major building work, we are going to insta an oil filled electric radiator on one of the internal walls and now I am thinking about taking out the central heating in the house, replacing all the radiators with the same type of radiator and not putting them under the windows where the currents ch radiators are, waste of heating in my opinion and I have put reflective foil behind these radiators, but all I can see of this method it is reflecting the heat back on the metal of the radiators, so I can't see this being efficient, with the heat going up the windows. I estimate the cost of doing this exercise in the vicinity of £2800.00 and the cost of a combi boiler.

I realise we will have to pay a standing charge for the gas if we remove the present central heating suystem.

All the raditors in this house have the gizmos on the em to regulate the heating to each radiator (I hope i have explained this so the reader can understand what I am trying to say). I know the pipes to each radiator at present also give off heat, but is that really energy efficient?

All I can see is the gas bill going up Oh yes we have fixed our tariff and I have switched providers but I am really getting fed up being a fuel tart.

My husband is talking to a couple of neighbours regarding installing our own wind turbine and supplying energy to the houses who want to connect up to the turbine, but this is in the future. One fellow around here has a little turbine and produces his energy using this, the joys of living in a semi rural area.

The drawback could be when we sell no central heating as such BUT if anyone bought the house, I suppose they would be thinkiong of upgrading anyway. I have never had gas in a house until I came to live to live in the UK. We used solid fuel and electricity. I have to admit I miss my open fire and wet back for heating the hot water and house when living in NZ.:rotfl:

Reopening the old fireplace is not an option, When we rebuilt the house this was investigated. If this was an option we would have done this during the rebuiding.

Oh also we had far more snow and ice than in winter here.

Oh solar panels on the roof is not a viable option. This has been investigated. I would love to have solar hot water heating as we had when we built in Australia

As canny squirrelling senior citizens, we are not eligible for any of the government grants i.e warm front etc. We find the add about the gas boiler and savings amusing.

If the electricity failed, everything could be run using a back up generator, providing the fuel to run it was available...have experience with this one. Eathquakes, floods and bushfires.:eek:

I did jokingly mention to the Hobbit he could sell all the copper piping in the house and recoup a miniscle amount of money for the outlay I am contemplating.:T

The question really is, would you convert to all electric if it could be proven to save money in the long run?

I would like the read what others think. Would you do this if it was an option? Pros and Cons please.

All typos are my own, my brain works faster than my fingers:rotfl:
Wish the spell checker would work

Andy_WSM

It won't save money if you continue to use the heating as you do now. If you only heated ONE room at a time with electricity, you MAY save money - especially if you had the gas removed and stopped paying a standing charge and annual servicing costs.

The bottom line, as I'm sure many will point out, is that electric heating, whilst cheaper to install is approx 2.5 times more expensive than Gas heating to run (assuming day time tariff).

Cardew

Frankly your proposed plan of taking out gas CH doesn't make any economic sense.

If you leave your heating on 24/7 it is not surprising that a Jan to April bill is £394. On the other hand an electricity bill of £257 for the same period is very high.

Where is your thermostat? If in a hall, setting that to 18C might mean your rooms are considerably warmer. In any case 18C is not warm enough for pensioners - 21-22C is recommended.

The bottom line is that gas heating costs about one third that of electrical heating. Supplementing gas CH with oil filled radiators is a very bad idea.

You need to have your heating on timed. Why have it on when you are in bed?

macman

Why would you replace a gas CH system with one that wil cost you 250-300% more to run per kWh? Utter madness.
There is absolutely no need to have either heating or hot water on 24/7, especially with decent insulation.
Sounds like you need to invest in better controls for your existing system (digital programmer, TRV's etc), and run it for sensible hours.
For more meaningful advice please post your annual kWh consumption for each fuel.
PS: ripping out gas CH and DHW will also massively devalue the property.

lstar337

Seriously, turn your heating either down or off over night.

That is where your money is going.

Take it from a person who is all electric, it is not cheaper.

Battleaxe44

Cardew wrote: »

Frankly your proposed plan of taking out gas CH doesn't make any economic sense.

If you leave your heating on 24/7 it is not surprising that a Jan to April bill is £394. On the other hand an electricity bill of £257 for the same period is very high.

Where is your thermostat? If in a hall, setting that to 18C might mean your rooms are considerably warmer. In any case 18C is not warm enough for pensioners - 21-22C is recommended.

The bottom line is that gas heating costs about one third that of electrical heating. Supplementing gas CH with oil filled radiators is a very bad idea.

You need to have your heating on timed. Why have it on when you are in bed?

Clarification:

The heating is not on when in bed, it is controlled by a thermostat set at 18Cm then turned down to 5C when in bed.

We supplemented with the oil filled radiators in the living room and, kitchen has NO heating.

We left it on 24/7 when we were away to prevent pipes from freezing

Our gas tariff is far more expensive than electricity tariff. This is why I did the number crunching. I consider £71,00 for water heating on a timer to be expensive.

I did say we were having building work done at this time, hence the high electricity usage, as you can see it has dropped this quarter,

Oh the Hobbit and I are very active

Battleaxe44

lstar337 wrote: »

Seriously, turn your heating either down or off over night.

That is where your money is going.

Take it from a person who is all electric, it is not cheaper.

It is turned to 5C overnight.

Battleaxe44

macman wrote: »

Why would you replace a gas CH system with one that wil cost you 250-300% more to run per kWh? Utter madness.
There is absolutely no need to have either heating or hot water on 24/7, especially with decent insulation.
Sounds like you need to invest in better controls for your existing system (digital programmer, TRV's etc), and run it for sensible hours.
For more meaningful advice please post your annual kWh consumption for each fuel.
PS: ripping out gas CH and DHW will also massively devalue the property.

We do have digital programming and TVR o all radiators ( could not think what those things are called).

Now sensible hours are subjective, we rise at 5am and got to bed at 10pm. I am home all day. in witnter lights are needed during daytime. it is so dark over here.

I guess I am to give up my hobbies then.

We have had the house surveyed and the house meets all the standards as recommened by WHICH and other organisations.

OMG, now I have to dig out the paperwork for annual consumption.

I am also wondering if because we were on fixed rate tariff and were paying 9% excess for this priviledge. i have now changed the tariffs and paying a 2% reduction on charges. When Martin said Fix I did, but iut cost us in the long run. The comparison sires are not much help, especially when DD's are not going to be an option for us. We do not have DD's for anything. We pay on demand. DD's caused me a lot of griedf during the ID Theft and Fraud in 2005...I do not trust anyone with access to our bank accounts.

Mojisola

Battleaxe44 wrote: »

our boiler is now ten years old and it is not a combi boiler. it was installed new in the house just before we bought the house.

The house is 2 bedroom, brick semi. Insulation in the loft is 8 years old. The exterior walls have all been insulwooled. The windows are thos double glazed horrors and we have gone around sealed where we have noticed the draughts. These windows will be rpelaced in the next 18 months when we have saved the money to do this.

I am thinking about taking out the central heating in the house, replacing all the radiators with the same type of radiator and not putting them under the windows where the currents ch radiators are, waste of heating in my opinion and I have put reflective foil behind these radiators, but all I can see of this method it is reflecting the heat back on the metal of the radiators, so I can't see this being efficient, with the heat going up the windows.

A new boiler will be more efficient and cheaper to run.

What depth of insulation do you have in the roof?

New windows may help but if you're replacing double glazed with double glazed, there may not be much difference.

I've also understood that radiators are put under windows because of the way heat circulates round the room. If you move the radiators to another wall, you could find that the area around the windows gets so cold that it's uncomfortable to use that part of the room.

We have thick curtains and, on some windows, a blind as well which gets pulled down at night. We were surprised at how much difference that made.

Battleaxe44

Andy_WSM wrote: »

It won't save money if you continue to use the heating as you do now. If you only heated ONE room at a time with electricity, you MAY save money - especially if you had the gas removed and stopped paying a standing charge and annual servicing costs.

The bottom line, as I'm sure many will point out, is that electric heating, whilst cheaper to install is approx 2.5 times more expensive than Gas heating to run (assuming day time tariff).

Andy thank you for your reply. I didn't explain myself too well, it is gas that is the bone of contention, not the electricity.

Gas is going to continue to rise in price, no matter how muh we cut back. Electricity will rise also, but the prices have not risen as fast gas has.

We would not be having the gas removed just capped at the meter, in case we sell in the future.

We have reaerched the large oil filled radiators that run on electricity and are thermostatically controlled.

I know this might sound cavalier at the moment, but devaluation of the property is not a worry for us. This is house ideal for a young married couple, it is not for a family, or a young family with one child if we sold.

This remodel has cost a lot of money and already added value to the house, new ceilings throughout with modern building mateials, soundproofing the community walls and into the loft, new insulation where building has been undertaken as well fixtures. it was discussed with the architect when we removed interior walls to open plan downstairs about all electric but at the time of the remodel, as we had to completley rewire the house and a new consumer unit installed, I thought it might have been an ideal tinme to do it, but as were paying cash for the build, we could not afford the new system, everything is geared up for it, if we go ahead.

it was the gas bill that shocked us. not the electricity bill. Especially as we have done ALL the right things, apart from running the heating for the month we were away. Oh the gas meter was repleaced just before the quarter that I am discussing. it has been checked since to make sure it is running correctly.:cool:

Battleaxe44

Mojisola wrote: »

A new boiler will be more efficient and cheaper to run.

What depth of insulation do you have in the roof?

New windows may help but if you're replacing double glazed with double glazed, there may not be much difference.

I've also understood that radiators are put under windows because of the way heat circulates round the room. If you move the radiators to another wall, you could find that the area around the windows gets so cold that it's uncomfortable to use that part of the room.

We have thick curtains and, on some windows, a blind as well which gets pulled down at night. We were surprised at how much difference that made.

Yep, insulated wool curtains and blinds at all windows, did this when I moved in, and have just replaced with new ones when we redecorated. The insulation in the loft 3inches thick and is wool not fibreglass stuff. and the tiles have sprayed with some stuff. (The spray was applied done when the house belonged to MOD). We have spent a lot money to make this house winter proof, but something is still not right.

I am wondering at a compromise now. Put in the new radiators I am contemplating and running them to see if the all electric bill is higher or breaks even next winter.

we have to get planning permission for the turbine and the envorinmental impact study has been done and approved, but getting the money to pay for it is for the future.