Electric heating?!

soplum

Hi all,

I am looking to buy a house however it has electric heating. 

It is a 3 bed semi (small)

1 storage heater and 4 electric radiators.

There is gas pipes on the road it is built on but not to the house. 

Can anyone tell me how much my electricity bills will be roughly?? 

How much will it cost to install gas central heating (especially as the pipes don’t go up to the house?)

TIA

Neil_Jones

All electric heating is expensive.  Very expensive.  It will cost the national debt to boil the kettle.    Not quite that expensive but it will feel like it.  Especially when winter comes round again.

Re: installation of central heating - https://www.boilerguide.co.uk/articles/how-much-cost-install-central-heating suggests budget around £4k for everything.  But it will be cheaper to run afterwards.

shinytop

Look on the house's EPC for the heating and HW requirements in kWh and multiply by, say, 13p.  If it's 15000kWh total then that's the thick end of two grand a year.   Direct electric heating is expensive. 

QrizB

My previous house was a 70s 3-bed semi, about 70 sq.m. all told, and it was all-electric. We were using roughly 7000kWh/yr of E7 and 3000kWh/yr day rate, so 10000 kWh/yr total. I don't know what tariff you might get but if you manage 10p/kWh night and 15p/kWh day that would be £1150/yr, plus say £90/yr standing charge.

soplum

QrizB said:

My previous house was a 70s 3-bed semi, about 70 sq.m. all told, and it was all-electric. We were using roughly 7000kWh/yr of E7 and 3000kWh/yr day rate, so 10000 kWh/yr total. I don't know what tariff you might get but if you manage 10p/kWh night and 15p/kWh day that would be £1150/yr, plus say £90/yr standing charge.

Thank you for this!!

I am very interested in how you marked 7000kwh/yr of our E7 rate? Did you have a lot of storage heaters?

QrizB

soplum said:

I am very interested in how you marked 7000kwh/yr of our E7 rate? Did you have a lot of storage heaters?

Heating was storage heaters*.

Hot water was a choice of two immersions for a full tank or ~1/3rd of a tank.

We made reasonable efforts to wash and dry laundry overnight, on E7.

The household was two 30-sometihng adults.

* Specifically, in my case I had one huge storage heater as part of a blown hot air system. It worked OK and was probably state-of-the-art in the 70s when it was installed but was getting on a bit by the 00s.

Gerry1

Gas is a no-brainer.  Much lower bills, it will add value to the property and make it easier and quicker to sell.

Just make sure that you really can get gas before signing the contract !  Why has the existing owner not already installed gas?

matelodave

As Gerry says, gas heating will add  value yo the property and make it much more attractive to buyers in the future. The cost of running it will be about 70% lower than the cost of leccy and it will be more controllable.

You need to get a quote to get the gas extended to your property and several quotes for the installation of the heating system.

Reed_Richards

If I was getting gas central heating installed I would size the radiators to operate at a mean water temperature of (say) 45 C in preparation for the time when I have to replace it with a heat pump.  A gas boiler should be well-able to cope with oversized radiators, particularly if it can do load compensation as well as weather compensation (as the boiler in my old house could).  

[Deleted User]

matelodave said:

As Gerry says, gas heating will add  value yo the property and make it much more attractive to buyers in the future. The cost of running it will be about 70% lower than the cost of leccy and it will be more controllable.

You need to get a quote to get the gas extended to your property and several quotes for the installation of the heating system.

How will gas CH add value to a property which is sold on in, say, 2030? For my money, this needs a detailed appraisal to determine whether the cost of reconnecting a gas supply plus the cost of a new gas boiler, radiators etc outweighs the long term cost/benefits of a heat pump. It is worth bearing In mind that it is being suggested in many quarters that the Government is actively considering transferring some of the present electricity ECO charges on electricity to gas to narrow the price gap between the two fuels to encourage the take up of heat pumps.

https://octopus.energy/blog/heat-pumps/

Neil_Jones

[Deleted User] said:

matelodave said:

As Gerry says, gas heating will add  value yo the property and make it much more attractive to buyers in the future. The cost of running it will be about 70% lower than the cost of leccy and it will be more controllable.

You need to get a quote to get the gas extended to your property and several quotes for the installation of the heating system.

How will gas CH add value to a property which is sold on in, say, 2030? For my money, this needs a detailed appraisal to determine whether the cost of reconnecting a gas supply plus the cost of a new gas boiler, radiators etc outweighs the long term cost/benefits of a heat pump. It is worth bearing In mind that it is being suggested in many quarters that the Government is actively considering transferring some of the present electricity ECO charges on electricity to gas to narrow the price gap between the two fuels to encourage the take up of heat pumps.

https://octopus.energy/blog/heat-pumps/

The government says a lot of things.  By 2030 we'll be at least two governments down the line, an entirely different set of heads and policy/trends/plans may have changed again to an entirely different direction  I'd worry more about what's happening in 2021 than what "might" happen in 2030.