Electric fire or gas central heating, which is cheapest?

donnajunkie

i've never understood why they dont install solar panels on social housing. cost you may say but the thing is they often find money for less needed improvements. for example this year they replaced all the guttering.

Robisere

Donna, we live in Social Housing, sheltered housing in fact, a complex of 23 bungalows and all Seniors. Until last March we had ancient storage heaters which gave no heat after about 4 pm. We had an electric fire in the lounge and that is where we spent as much time as possible before bedtime. Pressure from our local Council Environmental Housing forced our landlord to fit GCHeating and we benefitted immediately, both financially and in terms of a warm home. Our energy bill DD was reduced to £66 per month from £175 (yes, really, not a typo!) for Dual Fuel.

We heat every room and can control each radiator by TRV's. The thermostat we made them change to a digital one as they are more accurate and the temp is never set at more than 21°c. We have never had to switch on the electric fire since we had GCH working. If your radiators are working at optimum, keep them all on and set the temp at 21°c until you feel the benefit. Once the whole house has warmed, you should be fine and able to run the system without worry. Having some rooms cold, affects the rest of the house: cold air moves around, eventually invading a room with a radiator on, affecting the thermostat in turn and making the boiler heat up the system. Not only that, rooms permanently cold can become subject to mould. Think of the house as a box containing more boxes inside it. When each room is at the same temperature, you can decrease the setting until you get things to the right level for yourselves. Is the house insulated properly? Does it have SUDG doors and windows? Your landlord can get funding to carry out all these things. But the funding for Solar Panel in Social Housing was withdrawn by government 2 or 3 years ago. Our landlord carried out a survey for this, but the government withdrew funding before we could get it.

The mention of growing up in a house with just one fire, makes me laugh. I grew up in a pit village: two downstairs rooms had coal fires, the rest of the 3 bed house had none. I literally could scrape ice off the inside of my window on some winter mornings. Well, those were the Bad Old Days and I would not like to go back to them. Coughs, colds and flu every winter, and no it is not right to say that "It never did us any harm." Believe me, it did.