Electric combi boiler or LPG gas bottle heating system?

YorkieG wrote: »

Apologies if I’m hijacking the thread, but I have the same exact question and I thought it would be best not to duplicate the subject.

Our LPG arrangement is slightly worse however, 2 bottles connected + 1 spare (Runs out very quickly during Winter months, very expensive to refill, and extremely inconvenient to go outdoors in various weather conditions/times to connect a spare when required).

Long story short, the floors need to be replaced, and I would like to get the boiler replacement done during the floors’ replacement mess to reduce disruption. I am trying to make an informed, but quick decision.

I have been looking at electric combi boilers but other than companies praising their own products, I haven’t seen much feedback from actual owners, which is what I’m looking for, real life experience: Are they reliable? It doesn’t require annual maintenance, but does it break down? Do you get enough water for showers? And possibly filling a bath every now and then? I have found some advertised to be 12KW online, which is slightly higher output than 10KW, but is it enough?

The cost of running on electricity will be expensive, but given the size of the property, and the frequency of using it, I’m willing to swallow my pride and live with it.

My motive behind this is: LPG bottles will always be a pain and run out at some point, but you’ll never run out of electricity.

Thank you in advance, and sorry again for hijacking the OP’s thread

How long do you find a 47kg bottle lasts?

I would say we have the same set up as the OP. i.e. 4 bottles, 2 in use and 2 on standby/awaiting renewal.
I'm not sure why anyone would have only 1 spare bottle when thay have 2 in use? But perhaps that is a different question for elsewhere.

We moved to our house about 3 years ago. It's an old, 3 bedroomed detached cottage with solid walls and has no access to mains gas.
Previously we lived in a house with mains gas, so I can make a direct comparison to that, but we have never had an electric boiler, so cannot comment with experience in that regards.

We use gas for cooking, hot water and general heating puposes.

Even in the midst of winter, or when the Best from the East arrived in Feb/Mar 2018, we find the gas bottles typically last about a month i.e 2 bottles so each bottle could be said to last about 15 days.
That's with day to day cooking, running hot water as required, and heating for about 3 hours every morning, and about 6 hours every evening. (about 16 hours continuously at the weekend) controlled thermostatically.

I think the quickest we ever got through 2 bottles was in 3 weeks. Obviously at other times of the year the gas lasts much, much longer longer - 3 months is not uncommon.

All we need to do when we notice the gas has switched over to the standby cylinders is message one of our suppliers. They tend to be geared up to a rapid response over winter and usually turn up well within the week; in the summer they may take 2 weeks.

They do everything for us, swapping the bottles, etc.

Each bottle usually costs us about £50-£60 each. so a total of about £100-£120 per month during the winter. This is not much more than we used to pay for mains gas over the winter at our previous address.

As I said, I have no experience of an electric boiler. I can only look at price per kWh
Gas (mains) typically costs about 3-4p / kWh
Electricity typically costs about 12-16p / kWh - so about 4 times as much.

Yes it is a small inconvenience keeping an eye on our bottles and requesting refills as and when required. But some of us still remember the electricity blackouts of the 1970's, or indeed the widescale electricity black out that hit many last month, because electricity did indeed run out ...

At least we have a choice of supplier/source for our gas bottles, if the first one we choose cannot re-supply in a timely manner.

But its everyones individual choice in the end.