Purchasing a new home with electric heaters

hrm1987

Sorry I can’t reply to the person who posted about the air source heat pump due to posting links 🙈

Attempted a quick quote and it suggests the property can’t have one (or isn’t eligible). Not sure on the log burner output, not sure how I’d find that out (sorry, excuse my ignorance).

molerat

MeteredOut said:

Gerry1 said:

You can find out the annual electricity usage from comparison sites such as Money Supermarket.

In my experience, you cannot relay on that.

https://energy.comparethemarket.com/  gives the industry EAC although mine is not as up to date on the electric as my supplier, I suspect there is a delay in how often they interrogate the database.

Gerry1

hrm1987 said:

I guess my question on the new house (as it already has Fischer) is why would I replace them if the house is inefficient anyway...

Because being cold and broke won't be much fun. 

lohr500

In the new house, every kWh of heat you get from the Fisher heaters will cost you around 25p. The actual cost will vary depending on region and supplier, but 25p is around the national standard variable tariff rate.

We don't know the size of the house, how many Fisher panels, their output or your preference on how warm you like the house to be, so there are lots of variables.

However, I found a possibly meaningless statistic that says the typical annual heat usage for an average UK house is around 8100 kWh. This excludes energy used to heat water. Let's use that figure for now.

The fisher panels would cost you 8100 x 25p = £2025 per annum.

A well set up heat pump running at 3.5:1 efficiency would cost you 8100/3.5 x 25p = £579 per annum.

An oil based system with a boiler running at 90% efficiency would cost you 8100/0.9 x (65p/10.35) = £565 per annum. A litre of oil is currently 65p and each litre of oil is 10.35kWh.

So if you did use 8100kWh a year on heating, every year with the electric panels would cost you around £1500 more than the heat pump or oil alternatives. 

In an older house with higher heat loss, the usage could well be higher!! 

Even if it cost £10k to install a heat pump system, which is £2500 after the grant, it would pay for itself in less than 2 years!!! And sooner if your heat requirements were higher.

Several well respected forumites have already replied above, and i would welcome their thoughts on using 8100kWh as a typical heat requirement and my calculations as I would not want to mislead you.. 

On the wind turbine front, I would say forget it. Small scale turbines are very expensive and everything I have read about them says stay well clear!!

MeteredOut

molerat said:

MeteredOut said:

Gerry1 said:

You can find out the annual electricity usage from comparison sites such as Money Supermarket.

In my experience, you cannot relay on that.

https://energy.comparethemarket.com/  gives the industry EAC although mine is not as up to date on the electric as my supplier, I suspect there is a delay in how often they interrogate the database.

MoneySupermarket and that site both give close-to-accurate Gas readings for my address. But the former is approaching 50% out for my electricity usage and the latter didn't give any estimated electricity usage for my address.

That could be because I'm with different suppliers for Gas and Electricity, which i accept is not the norm.

I tried for some of my neighbours - one gave usage both Gas and Electricity (presumably fairly up to date), but for others it asked for more details, including confirmation of actual usage (though it was pre-populated with some figures) before allowing me to continue.

I'd certainly not be making a house buying decision on either of those two sites.

Spoonie_Turtle

hrm1987 said:

Thanks everyone. I guess my question on the new house (as it already has Fischer) is why would I replace them if the house is inefficient anyway (which is only from the assumed things on the EPC - I also love the suggestion of improving things through a wind turbine)?
Is the money better spent on internal insulation? Or is the only long term solution a combination of this and a new heating system? 

Because the energy you're losing from the inefficient house will cost you the most out of any method.  25p/kWh on average, at current rates.

Storage heaters charged up on an off-peak tariff, heat pump with at least 250% efficiency (should be higher if set up well, but let's go worst case scenario), oil being cheaper per kWh - if you're losing lots of energy from any of those heating options, it'll be MUCH less expensive than losing the energy from the panel heaters. 
You could be looking at more like 10p/kWh lost, although for heat pump at least that is very much a worst case scenario and it should be cheaper if set up well.  (I can't speak to oil prices as I don't know what that swings between.)

Longer term yes you will want to insulate; losing less heat means spending less money on heating whichever method it is.  If you can do both at the same time, great.  But if not, if you're going to be a bit chilly anyway at first, it'll be more miserable if it's cold and expensive, rather than cold and reasonable / cheap.

wrf12345

Depends what kind of "heat" you want, internal insulation plus radical downsizing of the windows might be a good starting point. Air to Air heat pump (looks like an air conditioner) for the lounge might be a good starting point, especially if you have a direct door into the bedroom to syphon off the heat in the later evening - somewhere around a grand including installation unless in London. If you have lots of kids and bedrooms to heat then probably not. If you want constant heat not far off the tropics then get ready to spend at least five grand (maybe double that) plus the "free" £7500 grant on ASHP plus new rads and piping. There is another government grant for homes sans gas, though, which might get you solar plus heat pump for free but can't recall its name, just google.

Ildhund

No-one seems to have mentioned the log burner. That's what I use as my primary source of heat, but of course it depends on how big and efficient yours is, and where it's located. Mine is rated at 5kW, and it doesn't take long to bring my largish (40 m²) living room up to comfort level. Otherwise, I have to turn on the 2kW fan heater in the bathroom for 10-15 minutes to defrost it before showering in the winter if I'm to avoid hypothermia. Other heating is electric blankets - over if I'm up, under if I'm not for an hour before bed. At 60 W rating, they cost pennies to run.

Using barn-dried wood from a reputable local chap, I get 1 m³ for £130 neatly stacked in the stable. That's allegedly about 350 kg - 4-500 logs at about 0.8 kg each. Six logs is enough to keep the fire hot from sundown-ish to bedtime; what effect that has on the indoor temperature depends a lot on how cold the room was to start with and how cold it is outside, but in general it's plenty comfortable for me. With an average CV of ~4.2 kWh/kg, the price to compare is around 
130/350 £/kg / 4.2 kWh/kg ≈ 9 p/kWh. More than gas, but a lot less than electricity, depending on the fire's efficiency (perhaps 70-80% at its best). Add £50 p.a. for the chimney sweep.

In other news, I agree with all those who treat 'economical' direct heaters with the disdain they deserve. Oil-fired central heating will cost a lot in plumbing work and its attendant disruption along with the cost of the boiler and fuel storage. I would be looking at air-to-air heat pumps in your situation, at a price of the same order of magnitude as night-storage heaters (NSH). If an A2AHP is properly designed and configured, you could be looking at an effective price per kWh of 8-12 p, probably less than you'd be paying with NSH, and running it backwards would give you posh air conditioning in the summer (!).

QrizB

hrm1987 said:

Thanks everyone. I guess my question on the new house (as it already has Fischer) is why would I replace them if the house is inefficient anyway

There's a link on my signature to a post that I periodically update comparing the cost of 10MWh of heat from gas CH, E7 storage heaters, and Fischer-like direct electric heaters (either on standard rate electricity or E7).

While tariffs vary, the Fischer-like heaters typically cost 2x as much as storage heaters do for the same amount of heat.

Given that you've purchased a property with an EPC of F, this could be the difference between a £3000 annual electricity bill and a £6000 one.

debitcardmayhem

https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate. for epc and other buldings in the same postcode