storage heaters/electric central heating or gas?

Do you have any details of your system? £45 for a quarter over the summer seems ok, but I would wait until winter before celebrating!:beer:

Hi All

Noob here (been reading this thread for most of the night :eek: )

Here's our position. We're in a three bed semi and the gas boiler (a Gloworm KFB broke in March). We've been doing the water on lekky since then, and the difference in price factoring in how much we'd have paid for gas is actually a couple of quid cheaper :beer: . Everything else in the house is electric - it's only the water boiler which is gas).

Now the crunch. Obviously winter is looming and we need a new boiler. This is where we're different from most people (I think). We work all day, and only turn the CH on (we've got a wet system fed from the defunct gas boiler) for about an hour a day to take the chill off until the coal fire (soon to be replaced with a log burner...we've got enough dead trees for around 10 year's worth of heat at the moment :j ) has warmed the house up. In other words, our gas use in the winter isn't much different from the summer (about £40 a quarter difference).

Now....what to do??? I'm not keen on gas (apart from the fact that there's a massive wall mounted boiler in the garage where I want to put a door and gas is going to run out one day). Seeing as we don't use much in the way of gas, I was considering either fitting one of the electric boilers which will run a wet central heating system, or whether it's going to be better to fork out for storage heaters to keep the chill off during the day until the fire's alight.

Another question - at the moment (due to the gas system and a hot water tank in the airing cupboard), we have a power shower which is capable of draining the hot water tank in 10 mins flat! Would it be more efficient to consider getting an electric shower instead so that we're only heating the water used, rather than draining the tank and re-heating it?

A lot of questons there unfortunately, and I know there's no simple answer (esp with rising prices at the moment). The only other info I can give at the moment is that we use around £500 lekky pa and £400 gas (when the boiler's working). We're on E7 (not sure if we can get E10 from EON).

We're not worried about whether the end system will affect the value of the house - we've absolutely no plans of moving from where we are so that factor isn't a consideration. Also not worried about the carbon footprint (sorry if that offends and not going to start a row about that one but it seems that green is dear!) - just want whatever is the cheapest on the wallet to install and run.

I appreciate that gas is cheaper to run(?), but bear in mind that we do most of the hot water heating overnight anyway (the shower's used before the E7 cuts out too), so we're only actually using a max of around 2 hours a day (at the moment on a 2k immersion heater) at daytime rates on the lekky. If it gets cold, we put jumpers on (and we're only in our 30's!). Maybe we're just mean.

Any advice welcome.

Thanks Cardew - appreciate the advice, espescially re the shower.

Electric heating is something I'm not used to, and getting any useful information is harder than I thought.

Re the wet system - we only considered that as we already have the rads in place and it seems a shame to rip them all out.

As for why not gas...have you seen the headlines this morning? I'm afraid I've seen that one coming for a while and it can only get worse. The prices won't come down, it will just become more economic for the gas co's to drill in harder to reach places. At least with electric there's several options, such as panels and windmills (I know - neither are brilliant options at the moment, but......).

I'm not a tree hugger or anything, but I seriously think that the days of heating the whole house and walking around in short sleeved shirts in the winter are fast coming to an end, either by lack of energy or the sheer price of it. This is the reason we took the decision a couple of years ago to remove the gas fire in the lounge and re-open the fireplace (we can get the wood for free ) - plus we make paper logs from all the junk mail and newspapers we collect throughout the year.

What we're looking at now is putting in storage heaters in the hall and the lounge (hall should take the chill out of what belts down the stairs and the lounge is the main room anyway), just to keep the ambient temp above freezing. Then we're going to put either oil or convection heaters in the bedrooms where they'll only be used occasionally anyway (so shouldn't cost too much).

Then it's just a case of replacing the existing coal fire with a wood burner (and I've just seen the price of the flues for those :mad: )

Again...thanks for the advice. Now all I've got to do is find someone to fit the electric points to do all of this and look at removing the old radiators.

Captain_Mainwaring wrote: »

You'll find that round thing that you turn the shower on with can be used to regulate flow.

Not on mine it doesn't - it's either on or off - the round thing makes it hotter or colder. I have now found a regulator on the pump though.

Captain_Mainwaring wrote: »

Nobody wants electric heating if there is any other choice so yes you are devaluing the property but that may not be a concern.

I'll agree to disagree on that one. Maybe at the present time it will devalue, but what happens in the future when gas has run out and everyone's paying through the nose to have existing systems converted?
Apart from that, we have absolutely no intention or plans of moving. Our house is our home and not an investment (if it was in investment, I'd have sold up by now seeing as it's worth about 4 times what we paid 10 years ago).

Captain_Mainwaring wrote: »

All fossil fuel is going to run out one day so you may as well dispense with electric lighting and get yourselves some of those Flintstone wall lights, and see if you can get a Fred Dibner Steam traction engine to burn wood so you can get to work.

Agreed - but once it's gone it's gone, and until then it's going to get dearer as it gets harder to extract. We're not our own gas supplier in the UK anymore, having to rely on just about every country we've ever upset in the past to supply it instead. In 2004, we were pretty self sufficient, by 2010, we'll be importing around 50% or the gas we need from these markets. Supply and demand dictates that they're gonna sell to the highest bidder.

At least with electric there are other ways of producing it and these are becoming cheaper and more efficient all the time, from the panels and turbines for home use to nuclear, water and wind on a national level. They're not the most efficient methods yet, but as they become more of a necessity then surely the technology will become cheaper and better

Captain_Mainwaring wrote: »

I dread to think what cold winter evenings must be like in your house - you waving your chopper about to keep warm, and the misses making paper logs in the food processor...

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