Would no central heating put you off?

Smalltownhypocrite

I would prefer electric to be honest so not a deal breaker.

I grew up with coal until 2009 and now have gas in the last 2 houses and we STILL mostly rely on electric portable heaters in all the habitable rooms, gas is useless and I really don't get why people like it (and don't get me started on the shower never being consistent, electric all the way in the new house).

Emmia

Smalltownhypocrite said:

I would prefer electric to be honest so not a deal breaker.

I grew up with coal until 2009 and now have gas in the last 2 houses and we STILL mostly rely on electric portable heaters in all the habitable rooms, gas is useless and I really don't get why people like it (and don't get me started on the shower never being consistent, electric all the way in the new house).

I think that's more to do with your installation, rather than gas itself. We have a combi boiler, hot good pressure showers, and the place warms up quickly if we need it to.

Tabieth

Smalltownhypocrite said:

I would prefer electric to be honest so not a deal breaker.

I grew up with coal until 2009 and now have gas in the last 2 houses and we STILL mostly rely on electric portable heaters in all the habitable rooms, gas is useless and I really don't get why people like it (and don't get me started on the shower never being consistent, electric all the way in the new house).

There must have been something wrong with your system. I’ve lived in houses / flats with gas and electric. Both types heated well and provided hot water. But the electric central heating was massively more expensive. 

Emily_Joy

The house across the road from ours without gas central heating has been on/off market for about 3 years now. It's a Victorian cottage, so there might be other issues beside the heating.

Rob5342

I'd be factoring in the cost of getting central heating installed, either a gas system or a heat pump system Panel heaters are very expensive to run and don't have the power of central heating. 

The estate agent will hsve been well aware but they are lying to try and play it down 

FreeBear

Flo87 said:

£8/9K for a heating system it`s on the expensive side if you talk about a standard house.

Neighbour a few doors down had a new heating system installed around the same time as I did mine back in 2023 (3 bed semi). Don't know how much of the pipework was replaced, but the installers were there for well over a week. That cost them around £8K.

In comparison, I spent around £3K to replumb, fit larger radiators, and have a Viessmann combi installed. Could have got a cheaper boiler, but I wanted a decent warranty period, OpenTherm control, and a big modulation range.

Dizzycap

BungalowBel said:

If the property was priced accordingly, and I was in a position to not have to live in it whilst the work was done, then it would not put me off.

Yes, I would totally agree. I certainly wouldn't live in it, I would expect at least a 15k reduction on the asking price: 10-11k for GCH installation & 4K to cover the cost of alternative accomodation while the work was being undertaken. Unless I was intentionally gutting or renovating a property no GCH would be an absolute deal breaker for me

Flo87

FreeBear said:

In comparison, I spent around £3K to replumb, fit larger radiators, and have a Viessmann combi installed. Could have got a cheaper boiler, but I wanted a decent warranty period, OpenTherm control, and a big modulation range.

I`ve had 5 quotes of which 3 of them where around £4000(+/-£200) plus 1 at £3000 and another at £5500( very pushy and availability appeared out of the blue)  
Boiler it`s a Navien NCB500, main pipes 22mm and 15mm when branching for each radiator

biggerpickle

Caveat here in that I live in a flat - moved in and it had antiquated (well 1980's at a guess) storage heaters. The first winter was dire and I had 2 additional portable oil heaters and the place was never really warm and cost an inordanite amout to heat (~£200 per month over winter). I spent £1.5k on new ceramic core wifi controllabe at any time electric rads which cost a bit less to run BUT I was warm and didn't have the expense of running gas in to the property or the disruption of having a wet system installed as the heaters could be run of the existing circuit. So no it wouldn't be a deal breaker for me at all. If you can put solar panels + battery in at the same time as new electric rads am sure that it'd more cost and environmentally effective in the long term. 

silverwhistle

I've wandered in here from doing some research on air to air heat pumps which I'm looking at to replace my gas boiler when it finally dies or I get an extension built: the latter possibly sooner.. With electric shower, wood burner, solar panels, diverter, immersion tank, an EV and cheap overnight electricity I'm half way there already.

I'd have no qualms about buying a house without CH as long as I had the means to do something about it, and I'd have thought most house purchasers would look at the overall cost of buying and setting up.

In the OPs case I wouldn't get gas again but put the savings towards upgrading the electrics, with a potential eye also for an EV charging point, battery or solar panels. That might be as simple as an extra meter board or isolating cut-out to enable easy additions at a later stage.