heating costs

[shobo]

Hi guys,

I know this will have been discussed many times in one way or another here ……
Does anyone have direct experience of changing from electric heaters to central heating, in circs similar to mine, as follows ::??

We bought a thatched stone cottage last March, two bedrooms, medium sized rooms, two of the reception rooms being 1980s single storey additions. The walls are not insulated. There is some secondary glazing.
Electric heating is a mixture of storage heaters (using off peak supply coming on twice per day) and non-storage heaters (Electrorad, which are very good btw).
The cottage is usually occupied most days, so there will be heating on for much of the day.
The loft is not insulated, though it is suitable for having loft insulation installed and I am thinking of doing it soon.
The electric heating is effective and comfortable (though if the storage heaters came on only once per day that might be different). We do have to switch individual heaters on and off, perhaps twice per day, which is a gripe, but there is no room that ever gets cold except at night.

I think I have now got a fairly good estimate of my annual heating costs. This is heating only, excluding all other electricity consumption, and including both peak and off peak heating.
Its going to be around £2200 year. That's less than I expected.

Anyone out there changed from electric heating to central heating, and got a cost comparison, or observations ?

Many thanks,

Shobo

 

[Flyfisher]

Cost comparisons are going to be difficult, even meaningless, without knowing what's being compared. For example, how large is your house and what temperatures are you maintaining in the all the rooms?

 

[Cubist]

Sorry Shobo but I'm going to be no help at all. Our central heating is driven by a wood-burner, Clear View 750 circa £2000 7 years ago, and until this year the cost of operation has been limited to the electricity consumed by the water pump - all the timber has come from the land as a bi-product of restoring hedge lines that had been neglected for maybe 25 years - now that that job is mostly done I have had to buy firewood - so can expect to pay something in the order of £1000 per annum from now on.

From a starting point of £2,200 per annum though you should be able to make some significant reductions in outlay depending on your chosen strategy. Electricity, in my opinion, is not the most economic source of heating energy.

 

[Owain]

Depends quite a lot on your mix between peak and off-peak load, but gas is about 1/3rd the cost of peak rate electricity.

Off peak electricity is cheaper, but less controllable, so there may be some wastage too.

I'd guess you will probably about half your heating costs changing to gas, and maybe half again if you can get the place properly insulated to near modern standards.

 

[Feltwell]

As others have said, comparisons are difficult - but unless you're the type of person who likes your house to be very warm all the time (20 degrees plus in my book) that sounds very expensive.

My 5 bed, 3 storey Victorian semi with solid walls, high ceilings, single glazed windows and lots of draughts - £1300 per year for gas & electricity combined. Gas runs heating, hot water & cooking. Thermostat usually at 19 degrees, and the house is occupied during the day with the heating on more than most.

I think you'll get a substantial saving by moving away from electric heating & insulating your loft.

 

[88v8]

£2,200 !!!
Ye gods.
What temperature are you heating it to??

We have storage heaters probably 25/30 years old, and two woodburners that are only lit in the evening, and an electric fire sometimes in my workshop.
Our cottage (thatched c17) is about 950 sq ft, solid walls of course, loft insulated.

Our total electric bill is £1,100. Don't know how much of that is heating.

You should have insulated the loft by now. And the hot tank should be well lagged.

We heat to about 63F. Wear a woolly.

Ivor

 

[a twig]

Without a huge capital investment for solar, ground source etc l, I've never found a cheaper way of heating than via gas, and have put combos into all my places over the years.

Our current 4 bed has had a whopper of a Vaillant ecotec 938 combi inatalled, which has an integral small hot water tank as well, it's been brilliant and has a 10 year warranty.

From memory the boiler, plus replumbing and removal of tanks/ old rads and pipework and installation of new came to around £7k?

 

[a twig]

Oh, one more, wherever I've had floorboards up or had pipes running in roofspace I've lagged/insulated them. Made a big difference as shower is opposite end of house so used to spend the first few minutes heating all the pipework while I shivered!

 

[Cubist]

We heat to about 63F. Wear a woolly.

Now thats what I call good advice.

Here at Fircroft our wood fired central heating can get the temperature up to better than 22C if I'm careless and over-feed the fire. Typically we run the beast to produce a steady 19C in the winter months but on very cold nights, and it being a draughty old place, we often resort to jumpers, a comfy chair and blanket next to our secondary stove - and not forgetting the odd dram of heating fuel from Islay.

 

[skier-hughes]

Do you have a mains gas supply to the house?
If not, it changes the game plan.

 

[worms]

Of course it also depends on location and exposure! Here in the North of Scotland, with an average three-bed, detached, rubble-stone, single storey cottage, I am looking at roughly £2,500 per year in oil costs (although that also covers all cooking as well)...and still consuming £840 of electricity per annum! :shock:

 

[lordmulberry]

Gas is good. But what about the EU threat to ban all gas appliances in the name of climate change and carbon footprint? Even when (if) we leave the EU what's the betting that this country will follow.

 

[Flyfisher]

Yes, I've read various articles about mains gas being phased out around 2030-2050. Even if that turns out to be correct, my guess (and I've not looked at any numbers) is that even over 10 years a new gas fired CH/DHW system is likely to work out cheaper than the current alternatives.

When we were making heating decisions 6/7 years ago, we opted for a 'thermal store' approach, which is very versatile in terms of the range of heat sources that can be connected to it. Thus, we have both a mains gas boiler and a boiler stove connected to it and can use one or both as convenient (meaning as our wood supply allows - burn more free wood, burn less expensive gas!). The thermal store also has an electric immersion heater so I guess we're already prepared for any future phase out of gas, though goodness know what it would mean for running costs. Our store also has spare internal coils so we could readily connect thermal solar panels (tubes) and/or solar PV panels to power the immersion heater.

So, lots of technical possibilities but in the end it's going to be economics that drives decisions - both personal and governmental. I suspect that consumers are going to see a shift away from fossil fuels and towards electricity as our prime energy source. Thus, all-electric homes plus electric vehicles etc. This trend will, of course see a massive increase in electricity demand and I feel sure that it will be quite some time before fossil fuels are totally eliminated from the generation side of things. Consumers, however, will likely be 'fully electric' before then. Technically, this should be no big deal - indeed the technologies already exist - but it will be the economics that really drives things, especially considering the huge changes in the tax system that will be required to enable government to make up for lost tax revenues on fossil fuels, and energy is likely to become even more expensive - which could well lead to all manner of unintended consequences, as hinted by the recent Paris disturbances.

Interesting times, as the old Chinese curse has it - certainly for our children, if not for us.

 

[CliffordPope]

1870s stone-built house, 3 stories, 5 bedrooms, solid walls, old sash windows, some secondary glazing downstairs. No insulation.

Wood-fuel Rayburn running a few downstairs radiators, heats kitchen plus cooking 6 months of the year.
Open fire in sitting room as required. Total wood approx £600 pa.
Electricity - immersion heater 6 months of the year, plus usuals, £1200 pa.
Gas cooker, bottled LPG, no mains, 6 months of the year, £60.

Under £2000 pa for everything.

 

[MatthewC]

You bill looks high - is your house completely dry? I have met a lot of people who think that they can warm their place up simply by heating it at great expense. If the house (or a church that I know) has dampness in the walls due (for instance) to high ground outside, then it is in my view effectively IMPOSSIBLE to warm the place up.

I believe that the reason for this is a thing called the "latent heat of vaporization". In respect of water, it is the amount of heat required to convert one cc of water to water vapour without raising the temperature of the water. It is a significant amount of heat.

So, when we were working on my house over 8 years ago (at the end of 2010), it was damp everywhere inside. I used to light a fire before the roofers came down for their tea break, and we used to sit as close to it as we could but we could hardly feel the heat of the fire. I think that the reason was that the heat energy in the air was immediately used to convert water in the air to water vapour rather than raising the temperature of the air itself. After a few months of work the house started to get dry and the effect was noticeable - it became warmer inside than outside!

The church I refer to has high ground around much of its perimeter (and I mean even higher than the floor level in some places) and so this produces an everlasting supply of water to the base of the walls. I think that I have won the argument for a French drain to be included in the first phase of works.

 

[wobs]

Yes, I've read various articles about mains gas being phased out around 2030-2050. Even if that turns out to be correct, my guess (and I've not looked at any numbers) is that even over 10 years a new gas fired CH/DHW system is likely to work out cheaper than the current alternatives.

When we were making heating decisions 6/7 years ago, we opted for a 'thermal store' approach, which is very versatile in terms of the range of heat sources that can be connected to it. Thus, we have both a mains gas boiler and a boiler stove connected to it and can use one or both as convenient (meaning as our wood supply allows - burn more free wood, burn less expensive gas!). The thermal store also has an electric immersion heater so I guess we're already prepared for any future phase out of gas, though goodness know what it would mean for running costs. Our store also has spare internal coils so we could readily connect thermal solar panels (tubes) and/or solar PV panels to power the immersion heater.

So, lots of technical possibilities but in the end it's going to be economics that drives decisions - both personal and governmental. I suspect that consumers are going to see a shift away from fossil fuels and towards electricity as our prime energy source. Thus, all-electric homes plus electric vehicles etc. This trend will, of course see a massive increase in electricity demand and I feel sure that it will be quite some time before fossil fuels are totally eliminated from the generation side of things. Consumers, however, will likely be 'fully electric' before then. Technically, this should be no big deal - indeed the technologies already exist - but it will be the economics that really drives things, especially considering the huge changes in the tax system that will be required to enable government to make up for lost tax revenues on fossil fuels, and energy is likely to become even more expensive - which could well lead to all manner of unintended consequences, as hinted by the recent Paris disturbances.

Interesting times, as the old Chinese curse has it - certainly for our children, if not for us.

I have also read that gas could be phased out for cooking and heating. However, it has been suggested that hydrogen could be used to replace it, meaning there will be little or no modifications required.

I think Leeds could be trialling something along these lines. A low carbon way of supplying hydrogen of course would be a good start.

More use in electric heating, from PV or other low carbon sources will also play a part of course, but I can't see gas appliances being phased out any time soon, as they are such a big cost that people have invested in (and are still doing).