Gas Boiler or Electric

das1969

I would really appreciate thoughts and advice about installing central heating.

I bought a leasehold flat in April 2020, the heating for which was a convection heater in the living room, both the two bedrooms and the hallway. The hot water is from an immersion heater in a cupboard off the bathroom.

The flat is on the second floor, and I had hoped that heat from below and the sides would mean that I may not need to have the heating changed.

After my first winter, I can now see that I need to improve the heating in the flat. My living room has two outside walls, one with large windows in, so I lined them with thermal liner paper and put up curtains to cover the windows.

The EPC report suggested HHR storage heaters, and after doing some research I think I'd need the most powerful Dimplex Quantum QM150RF as the living room is quite large.
There is no dedicated circuit for a storage heater so my plan would be to have a single supply circuit installed.

My flat has solid concrete floors, and a flat roof construction so there is no real access to have wiring or pipes installed in the ceiling.

I'm on Octopus Go tariff at the moment, so I get 4 hours at 5p/kWh which is when I have the immersion turned on. I'd program the storage heater to charge during this time.

I got a quote from an electrician to install the circuit for £200, plus £850 for the storage heater.
I also got a quote from a Dimplex Installer for £1250.

However, the flat does have a gas supply installed by the front door. There would need to be a gas pipe run along the hall to an outside wall in the cupboard where I'd put the boiler. Then there would be central heating pipes radiating out into the bedrooms and living room. Possibly a gas pipe into the living room for a gas fire. These would all need to be on the surface of the walls.

I'm really uncertain about what to do. Gas is currently a lot cheaper, but gas boilers are being phased out. If I installed a wet central heating system, it would probably be an idea to install large radiators and pipes ready for a heat pump in the future. I don't think underfloor heating will be an option at any point as there are rules in the lease about having carpeting due to noise.

If I install storage heaters, I'm depending on a suitable tariff being available, At present Octopus Go is a good tariff for me, but now Octopus are only allowing electric car owners to apply (which I am not one). At present Economy 7 night rates are16p/kWh, which is the same as my current day rate with Octopus Go.

I'm prevaricating so much, that I'm tinkering with the idea of waiting until next year until the energy market has calmed down.

BUFF

Gas boilers will be around for the life of any that you install today.
Obviously the cost of installing a full wet central heating system with good controls will be much higher than the prices that you have quoted to install a single electric storage heater (if you need to install more than 1 the balance changes somewhat). Plus you will have the additional cost of an annual service on your boiler (quite probably a requirement for your warranty).

What we can't be sure of is the future running costs - now it would still be much cheaper to run on gas & by quite possibly enough to recover the extra outlay but if in the future they take the current extra green charges off electricity & put  them on gas instead etc.  etc. ...

QrizB

das1969 said:

If I install storage heaters, I'm depending on a suitable tariff being available, At present Octopus Go is a good tariff for me, but now Octopus are only allowing electric car owners to apply (which I am not one). At present Economy 7 night rates are16p/kWh, which is the same as my current day rate with Octopus Go.

Octopus Go is a 12-month fixed tariff. Even if you keep Go past your current fix, you'll find the daytime tariff will be around 24p/kWh.

I did the calcs on Go vs E7 vs single-rate on the Octopus thread yesterday, see here.