Upgrade heating gas not an option

cooners

I've just bought a new house 😁
However to get it connected to mains gas would cost £19k according to the Wales & West quote and that's before actually paying to central heating to be installed.
The place currently has plain old electric heaters.
I've got around £10k to spend upgrading the heating system bit obviously if I can do it for less I would.
What is the best way to go, air source, solar panels, modern night storage, oil, I'm totally confused.
Also is there any grants available, people keep telling me about green grants but I can't work out if the offer is there until next March or it expired this March, it seems to very depending on what article I read.
Lastly is there anyway to get a grant to get the mains gas connected as £19k seems completely insane!

Neil_Jones

For sure it may involves digging up the road, digging up pavements, probably digging up the garden and maybe an internal floor (though these days new meters go outside properties), the pipes, the equipment, the labour...  not as simple unfortunately as turning up one day and flicking a switch.

That being said, according to https://www.wwutilities.co.uk/services/gas-connections/connect/ it says £685 maximum for for up 10m of work on public land and 20m of work on your land.  Where have you got £19k from?

cooners

This is the screenshot of the planner. It was a little less than I said but not much.

Reed_Richards

• Green Homes Grants have finished; you are too late.  The scheme was administered so badly it was terminated early.
• Solar panels will not give you heat in winter when you want it; forget those
• Night rate electricity is not as cheap as it once was
• You should be able to get central heating with an oil boiler and tank within your £10k budget. 
• An Air Source Heat Pump would have similar running costs and you can get money back over time through the RHI scheme but the initial cost would probably exceed your £10k budget
• There are grants available to people on certain benefits but if you just bought a house then perhaps that's not you.

So if you apply your criteria strictly then you want an oil boiler.  That's much cheaper to run than anything electric, apart from an ASHP.

dogshome

In order of running costs from cheapest to dearest, the list is Mains Gas, Oil, LPG, Electricity,

Heat Pumps can be good, but usually only if the dwelling if the has been designed and built for this method of heating from the outset, and there are a lot of retro suppliers out there making promises of running costs that are far from reality.

This house had OIl for 30 years before Mains Gas came into the village and we were quite happy with it

nigelbb

dogshome said:

In order of running costs from cheapest to dearest, the list is Mains Gas, Oil, LPG, Electricity,

Heat Pumps can be good, but usually only if the dwelling if the has been designed and built for this method of heating from the outset, and there are a lot of retro suppliers out there making promises of running costs that are far from reality.

This house had OIl for 30 years before Mains Gas came into the village and we were quite happy with it

Electricity is significantly more expensive. Oil is about double the cost of mains gas per KWh. LPG is about 10-15% more expensive than oil while electricity is up to 5x more expensive than mains gas.

LPG can be quite attractive even if on the face of it running costs are a bit higher than oil. You don't have a smelly oil tank in your garden. LPG boilers are cheaper & more efficient than oil boilers (they are basically mains gas boilers with modified burners). You can have a gas cooker running off the LPG tank too.

cooners

I was leaning towards a heat pump. 
To be honest I don't really want a bloody great oil tank in the garden and I'm aware that oil (and gas) boilers will be outlawed by 2025 so I guess at that point everyone will be in the same boat.
Roughly how much would a heat pump and a central heating system cost to install in a 2 bedroom 57m2 house?
I can get 20% off the rads, copper etc because of where I work but not the ASHP stuff.
Given the RHI payments I might be able to stretch the budget if it's worth it.
However as you guys have just proved I'm getting mixed reviews of ASHP.
I noticed lots of the neighbors have gone for solar panels which is what the EPC recommends but I don't get how they'll be much use because as you guys have said there's not enough sun in the winter when you need the electric.

Neil_Jones

Gas boilers will only be outlawed for new builds from 2025.  They won't spontaneously vanish overnight from the millions of properties they're already in.  They'll still be available to install until I believe some point in the 2030s, when at that point if your boiler packs up it can only be replaced with low-carbon heating system, or an appliance that can be converted to use a clean fuel.  All subject to change of course, you know how government works and targets slip and whatever else.  The average life of a typical combi-boiler is 15-20 years, so will still be a lot of boilers around in 2050.

shinytop

cooners said:

I was leaning towards a heat pump. 
To be honest I don't really want a bloody great oil tank in the garden and I'm aware that oil (and gas) boilers will be outlawed by 2025 so I guess at that point everyone will be in the same boat.
Roughly how much would a heat pump and a central heating system cost to install in a 2 bedroom 57m2 house?
I can get 20% off the rads, copper etc because of where I work but not the ASHP stuff.
Given the RHI payments I might be able to stretch the budget if it's worth it.
However as you guys have just proved I'm getting mixed reviews of ASHP.
I noticed lots of the neighbors have gone for solar panels which is what the EPC recommends but I don't get how they'll be much use because as you guys have said there's not enough sun in the winter when you need the electric.

Ours was c. £16k for a 160m2 house with 12 radiators.  That's all in as we had no CH.  It's hard to say for you but ASHPs are expensive - maybe £12k?  You'd have to get some quotes.  How old/well insulated/draught proofed is your house? What does the EPC say for space heating and HW and any recommendations?  Depending on your house you could be a good candidate for an ASHP.  You can get an idea of likely RHI payments from here

https://www.gov.uk/renewable-heat-incentive-calculator

Don't listen to people who say you can't retrofit an ASHP.  As a general statement it's rubbish but it's true that it won't work well in some houses.  It won't be cheaper than mains gas to run either but £19k is a lot of cost to recover. You'll need to do the sums. 

matelodave

Reed_Richards said:

• Green Homes Grants have finished; you are too late.  The scheme was administered so badly it was terminated early.
• Solar panels will not give you heat in winter when you want it; forget those
• Night rate electricity is not as cheap as it once was
• You should be able to get central heating with an oil boiler and tank within your £10k budget. 
• An Air Source Heat Pump would have similar running costs and you can get money back over time through the RHI scheme but the initial cost would probably exceed your £10k budget
• There are grants available to people on certain benefits but if you just bought a house then perhaps that's not you.

So if you apply your criteria strictly then you want an oil boiler.  That's much cheaper to run than anything electric, apart from an ASHP.

This is what I'd say as a well - don't be put off by the HeatPump naysayers, many of whom dont have one or dont know how to use them, they can a good solution providing they are desigend installed and operated correctly and the running costs are around the same or a bit more than oil, a fair bit less than LPG and far cheaper than any other sort of electric heating.

You need to do your sums - work out how much each of the different systems will cost to install and then try to work out the ongoing running costs of each over a suitable period - say ten years or so. Bear in mind that you'd need to be quite clairvoyant to know what was going to happen to energy costs over the next ten years, especially with the push towards "green" energy and away from fossil fuel.

Get a few quotes for different systems, oil, LPG and heatpumps. There isn't a universal solution and all of us have our own ideas and prejudices. In your case although mains gas is probably the cheapest fuel (at present), the installation costs make it very expensive and you'd have to weigh up whether you'd get a payback over a reasonable period.

AS R-R says,although the upfront cost of a heat pump is quite high you can get quite a lot of it back in seven years worth of RHI payments. He's just swapped his oil system for a heatpump and seems quite happy with it. I've had a heatpump for well over ten years and the £5.1k of RHI payments have more than covered the cost difference between an oil installation and the heatpump (and I dont have a ginormous oil or gas tank in the garden).

I'm guessing my running costs are around the same as oil would have been but I dont know. My total leccy bill is around £950 a year). Solar panels would not help reduce my heating bills as I use around 70% of my leccy in the winter when the sun doesn't shine all that much.

I'm not particularly advocating that a heatpump is the ultimate answer, but it's certainly worth considering and I have no hestitation in getting another one in preference to oil, lpg or storage heating if I couldn't get mains gas at a reasonable cost.

Reed_Richards

cooners said:

I was leaning towards a heat pump. 
To be honest I don't really want a bloody great oil tank in the garden and I'm aware that oil (and gas) boilers will be outlawed by 2025 so I guess at that point everyone will be in the same boat.
Roughly how much would a heat pump and a central heating system cost to install in a 2 bedroom 57m2 house?
I can get 20% off the rads, copper etc because of where I work but not the ASHP stuff.
Given the RHI payments I might be able to stretch the budget if it's worth it.
However as you guys have just proved I'm getting mixed reviews of ASHP.
I noticed lots of the neighbors have gone for solar panels which is what the EPC recommends but I don't get how they'll be much use because as you guys have said there's not enough sun in the winter when you need the electric.

Although I did have an oil boiler and radiators I replaced all the pipes at the same time as I installed a new air source heat pump, radiators and hot water tank so effectively I got a complete new central heating system.  This cost me close to £17k for a 12 kW heat pump, 300 l hot water cylinder and 14 (I think) radiators.  So far I am pleased with it and it looks as if the running costs will be pretty similar to with oil.

I had earlier installed solar panels and these boosted my EPC rating from a D to a B.  The electricity they provide will help a bit with the ASHP but not in the depths of winter when the ASHP is working hardest.  My new EPC recommends a Wind Turbine; I think the recommendations are crazy!!!

I got my first quarterly RHI payment of £354.41 earlier this month.  For me, these will continue once each quarter until the end of 2027 and may go up over time.  I will get comfortably enough back from the RHI payments to bring the total cost below your £10k budget so if you can manage the up-front expenditure I would recommend the ASHP option.