cheaper rent or gas central heating?

SteveRadner

Hi All,

I'm looking at rental flats at the moment and have a couple that are of interest. The cheapest by about £75 per month is electric heating only and I'm wondering if the extra cost of that will make the cheaper monthly rent irrelevant...

Thoughts?

I want to get a handle on roughly how much more expensive heating with electricity would be over heating with gas. I don't have to factor in boiler costs etc as I'll be renting.

I'm not against electric heating but think that my maximum monthly rent for a electric heating property should probably be lower than gas heating. I'm just not sure how much the difference should be...

poppasmurf_bewdley

It really depends on how many people there are, and how many rooms you have.

Until I had a woodburner fitted last year, I used an electric fan heater in my lounge as the sole means of heating for two years. However, I am lucky that my bedroom is a mezzanine type and the heat from the lounge travels upwards and also heats the bedroom. For the bathroom, I used another fan heater as and when required. That was the total heating during the winter.

I am on one of the MSE deals with eON so electric is approximately 10p per unit and my bills came to about £150 a quarter. I do have gas central heating but it's LPG and very, very expensive.

If it's just yourself, the government's advice on just heating the one room you are using can be cost effective.

FullForce

SteveRadner wrote: »

Hi All,

I'm looking at rental flats at the moment and have a couple that are of interest. The cheapest by about £75 per month is electric heating only and I'm wondering if the extra cost of that will make the cheaper monthly rent irrelevant...

Thoughts?

I want to get a handle on roughly how much more expensive heating with electricity would be over heating with gas. I don't have to factor in boiler costs etc as I'll be renting.

I'm not against electric heating but think that my maximum monthly rent for a electric heating property should probably be lower than gas heating. I'm just not sure how much the difference should be...

Agreed - too many variables, details of which you have not provided, to give a proper comparison.

e.g. what type of electric heating is it? Storage heaters that operate on E7 are actually only a little more expensive than gas central heating. But panel heaters using normal/day rate electricity is arguably the most expensive why to heat a property.

But in general terms, the average dual fuel home costs about £1300 per year to heat based on the suppluers most expensive variable tariff. You can usually save about £300-£350 on that by shopping around for the best deal(s) for you. So that brings the annual, average cost down to about £950-£1000.

A flat, assuming it's not a grand 5 bedroom+ luxury apartment, would probably be cheaper than the average home . How much cheaper would also depend on many things like where it actually is in the block, how many outside walls it has, levels of insulation, age, etc.

But £75 a month is £900 a year. It's difficult to perceive any form of electric heating costing double what you would pay with gas fired heating.

So yes, all else being equal, take the electricly heated flat over the gas fired one if the electric one is £900 a year cheaper

CDes

I support that you would be almost certain to save money going for the cheaper electric-only flat if it's £75.

It depends a lot on the conditions in the flat, how much someone's at home though and how prolific you are with using energy.

I lived in a 1-bed electric only flat for a year and used about 2,000 kWh (working full time and using heating as sparingly as possible while at home). This would have cost about £330.

Compare this to moving to a 2-bed house again living on my own but out during the day, using both fuels. Electricity usage fell about 50% but I used about 10,000 kWh from gas (on an inefficient boiler which I have since replaced after it was condemned!). The combined bills were a bit over £500, which seems about right for the additional space in the house.

Definitely make sure you shop around for the best deal though, ask your landlord/agent but you should have no problem switching supplier.

I have also found that choosing separate suppliers for gas and electricity has been cheaper than dual fuel.

SteveRadner

poppasmurf_bewdley wrote: »

It really depends on how many people there are, and how many rooms you have.

Until I had a woodburner fitted last year, I used an electric fan heater in my lounge as the sole means of heating for two years. However, I am lucky that my bedroom is a mezzanine type and the heat from the lounge travels upwards and also heats the bedroom. For the bathroom, I used another fan heater as and when required. That was the total heating during the winter.

I am on one of the MSE deals with eON so electric is approximately 10p per unit and my bills came to about £150 a quarter. I do have gas central heating but it's LPG and very, very expensive.

If it's just yourself, the government's advice on just heating the one room you are using can be cost effective.

Thanks for this. Really helpful advice. The electric only place I mention is actually a tiny house. Living room, kitchen, downstairs shower room, and two bedrooms upstairs - one double and one single. And it would mostly be just me.

SteveRadner

FullForce wrote: »

Agreed - too many variables, details of which you have not provided, to give a proper comparison.

e.g. what type of electric heating is it? Storage heaters that operate on E7 are actually only a little more expensive than gas central heating. But panel heaters using normal/day rate electricity is arguably the most expensive why to heat a property.

But in general terms, the average dual fuel home costs about £1300 per year to heat based on the suppluers most expensive variable tariff. You can usually save about £300-£350 on that by shopping around for the best deal(s) for you. So that brings the annual, average cost down to about £950-£1000.

A flat, assuming it's not a grand 5 bedroom+ luxury apartment, would probably be cheaper than the average home . How much cheaper would also depend on many things like where it actually is in the block, how many outside walls it has, levels of insulation, age, etc.

But £75 a month is £900 a year. It's difficult to perceive any form of electric heating costing double what you would pay with gas fired heating.

So yes, all else being equal, take the electricly heated flat over the gas fired one if the electric one is £900 a year cheaper

I'm not sure what kind of electric heating it is. But will ask these questions in future so thanks for that!

I will absolutely be shopping around for the best deal. And yes, this is a very small mid terrace house, and all the places I'll be looking at are small two bed flats.

I will be in the place quite a lot as I work from home often so that is a factor. I was worried that the better deal on rent would be cancelled out by electric heating costing a fortune! And I guess I'm trying to get a sense of how much more it would cost than gas and taking that into account with the cost of the rent.

SteveRadner

CDes wrote: »

I support that you would be almost certain to save money going for the cheaper electric-only flat if it's £75.

It depends a lot on the conditions in the flat, how much someone's at home though and how prolific you are with using energy.

I lived in a 1-bed electric only flat for a year and used about 2,000 kWh (working full time and using heating as sparingly as possible while at home). This would have cost about £330.

Compare this to moving to a 2-bed house again living on my own but out during the day, using both fuels. Electricity usage fell about 50% but I used about 10,000 kWh from gas (on an inefficient boiler which I have since replaced after it was condemned!). The combined bills were a bit over £500, which seems about right for the additional space in the house.

Definitely make sure you shop around for the best deal though, ask your landlord/agent but you should have no problem switching supplier.

I have also found that choosing separate suppliers for gas and electricity has been cheaper than dual fuel.

Thanks for the advice. Really helpful and much appreciated!

The cheaper place I'm looking at is a two bed house. But very small house. Mid terrace but victorian so probably not that well insulated. Other places would be of similar size and some are newer build flats, others small victorian houses.

As I said above, I work from home a couple of days a week so will be in the house. I'm just trying to get a sense of if I should be thinking about a different level of rent I can afford to pay if the house is electric heating. This one is £75 a month cheaper but what if somewhere was only £25 a month cheaper etc. It seems like it would be smart to have different maximum depending on what the monthly utility bills will be.

And I didn't think about the just electric heating making a significant difference until recently and I'm now nervous that I thought I was getting a good deal when in fact, the heating bills are going to bump up the cost.

It would be a shame to take a cheaper (and often not quite as nice) place to save some money and then find out I'm not saving much at all!

poppasmurf_bewdley

If you are home during the day, there is another method of heating you could consider.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKbFzUEWkA

It may look and sound rather Heath Robinson but I can assure you they do work. But only when you are in the house. I wouldn't leave it on in an empty house. But it really is cheap heating.

SteveRadner

poppasmurf_bewdley wrote: »

If you are home during the day, there is another method of heating you could consider.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKbFzUEWkA

It may look and sound rather Heath Robinson but I can assure you they do work. But only when you are in the house. I wouldn't leave it on in an empty house. But it really is cheap heating.

That is fantastic! I've never heard of that before but looks like it works very well!

lstar337

They do indeed work, however you will need a cheap supply of candles. Otherwise you might as well just use electric/gas heating.

poppasmurf_bewdley

lstar337 wrote: »

They do indeed work, however you will need a cheap supply of candles. Otherwise you might as well just use electric/gas heating.

Like these:

http://www.wilko.com/candles/wilko-unscented-tealights-white-100-pack/invt/0290164

£2 for 100.