Let’s not forget that boiler depreciation. I can use gas bottle for cooking, but I am totally new to oil central heating. Much cheaper to heat water and space by the eco, but the problem with night storage, even with the newer heaters is that if you open the dampers in the morning, the damn things give out minimal heat in the evenings. I’m glad you are in the discussion – can you join with me to find a real solution to the costs of heating a home? The majority of mainstream modern central heating boilers are available in LPG versions as well as the standard mains models, so if you are used to a mains gas boiler you can be confident in the knowledge that you will get identical functionality. Thanks. They are not very reliable and have an average life span of only about 7 years before they have to be ripped out and replaced. Of course, your lpg boiler will not be 100% efficient, but it will work out significantly cheaper than an electric boiler, at 15p/kWh. I have a 2 bed semi-detached house that I rent out – a typical 2 up 2 down near Canterbury, Kent It has not got gas in the area so limited on heating choices, at the moment it has a log burner running rads in the bedrooms and bathroom, couple of storage heaters 10+ yrs old and a couple of oil filled rads. Sam, The take the most conservative performance estimate from the installers for payback versus your current situation, then make a judgement call. Gill. The good news is that there are so many more options for off grid properties than there used to be. Their motivation is to avoid EU penalties.

Insurance and/or servicing and repairs is going to add some £175 to your annual bill. Anne, Please can you advise me? The houses were moderately well insulated, I the large old house we also used a log burner for cold evenings. Mains gas is the obvious winner here; it is cheaper to heat your home with gas than electricity, provided you can get it from the mains. By the way, Barry, when calculating costs for oil/gas you forgot cost of running pumps/fans etc, which helps your case for electricity (Don`t know where you live but here in Cornwall,I much doubt if I could match your KWH cost) Interesting debate–keep it going! They give you a quote in less than 2minutes and if you choose to go with them, they will do the transfer for you and u dont have to cancell anything and it wont cost you anything I saved money and my friends also !! Very informative article. If you need to choose between either of these vs flat rate electricity, then both the LPG and heating oil are going to be cheaper options. 500,000 have solar pV on the their roof so it would be strange that some many people went ahead with it if that was the case! And how does a new gas installation that requires new radiators and extensive plumbing compare to electric? Can anyone tell me if a electric boiler at 14p pkw is cheaper to run than a oil boiler at 55p p ltr . We live in a rural area and have lpg gas which can be very expensive. How long before I will get my money back? do you have solar pv? Do you have any experience of the infrared heaters and how warm they make the house feel? The spectrum band on electric is wide – from 9.5p cheapest to double figures. At around 15p per kwh it is also expensive if you are talking about storage heaters or electric radiatiors. The calculation for electricity cost here is almost certainly incorrect. I was considering the option of solar panels and installing electric heaters and under floor heating as opposed to paying out for an oil tank, boiler and all the plumbing work involved. Capital cost £6,430 Fossil fuel costs plummeting, new gas reserves flooding the financial markets will make this a cheaper fuel source at least in the medium term. I also read somewhere that I would need to check with the electricity supplier that the system would be appropriate for the supply. Plus any appliances run during the day will cost you dearly.

This would be run off Natural Gas. Hello James. For around 4k you could install a solar thermal system to preheat your hot water, but you would still need something to get it up to a usable temperature in your central heating system. Even older storage heaters can be turned off so they don’t charge overnight. No James, it wouldn’t! There is also a small log burner which we have serviced, so we have already saved installation costs of new technically efficient systems. The plumber noting our disappointment told us we’d done well with many boilers needing replacing after about 10 years. At present I am hovering bewteen airsource heating and electric floor heating, but I also have access to a 47kg propane cyclinder source, but feel that tha might be too expensive. It is a simple and elegant solution that doesn’t require a wet system. If you don’t have insurance then you could lay yourself open to bills far higher than that! Also the microinverters mean that shading can now impact individual panels without impacting the whole system – but the key here is since they are not exposed to as high power and heat loads as central inverter, they also tend to last significantly longer, and in fact many come with a 25 year warranty. I am both a plumber and a qualified electrician. We also get this question fairly frequently & this is a comprehensive response. Electricity is easy to cost and only one standing charge. do you have solar thermal? I want to replace my 14yr old condensing combi switching to a cylinder. Also if you are renting out property you have additional safety certificate costs.etc I think electricity prices will increase as there has been under investment in generation since the privatisation of the CEGB. This is what has stopped the idea of mainstream electric cars.

Tracey. Solar thermal is a great option because you will get RHI payments as well, so it pays back quickly. Inverter every 10 years £2,500 These households can still run their home on gas, but it will be in the form of LPG (we’ll talk a little more about that below), and will almost certainly be more expensive than accessing it from the mains.

However, research shows that having gas installed at your property can increase the value of the home. I am about to build a 2 bed plus 1 bathroom extension to my house. Some boilers like the Baxi Platinum now come with 10 year warranty these days too. Basically we are trying to find the right balance as lpg was our biggest outlay and we reckoned that by using electricity a bit more it could be the lesser of 2 evils.

Just because you get yours from DECC and I Google it to get it from uswitch doesn’t make either of us correct, necessarily, as both are out of date by 9-10 months. You could save £475-£2,000 over a conventional electric heating. Still, using efficient electric heating like infrared could help keep the bills down while using your solar pv. Which of the 2 above will be the most cost effective? Hundreds of pounds paid to get tepid rads and water. A typical electric heater rated at 1,500 watts could heat a room measuring 150 square feet. I note that previous bloggers are supporting their arguments by calculations, in my experience it is too difficult to control for multiple variaBles such as kW cost, usage profiles, number in home, insulation levels, maintenance, inflation, size of windows, thickness of curtains, etc.

Thanks for your comment. Are you able to give any advice in terms of which would be cheaper long-term including the massive set-up costs of a wet system? ), so I think the £250 depreciation price is quite toppy too! In the event of a power failure in rural Wales I have an LPG gas fire and with an immersion heater and a tank full of hot water I think I’m going to be all set for winter. In the main house we have oil central heating and bottle gas cooker hob. So 5hrs per day in winter and 2 hrs a day in summer (for hot water – there is no storage tank) results in a bill of £1903 for heating and hot water in a house with an EPC rating of 80. Ground source heat pump possibly, air source heat pump average cop of 2-2.5 in UK costing more than gas, and lastly I would personally rather spend £5000 installing a good gas central heating system than£16000- £25000 for a ground source heat pump system offering similar returns in cost.

Coal power stations are being phased out due to being at the end of there life, they have not been built for decades. I did this purely for simplicity (and I hate radiators). Next is a twin immersion hot water cylinder for a solar power dump so i still have hot water. In fact, I actually pay 9.5p but there is a standing charge which ‘effectively’ takes it to just under 11p. We moved into our property in 2005 and immediately had gas installed to the property, along with gas central heating. In my career, I’ve had people cry in my presence (no kidding) when I have had to tell them the repair costs to their heating (not my repair costs, I hasten to add, but what a typical heating engineer might charge to get their system going again). If you can afford the upfront cost, either a biomass boiler or a heat pump could be the best heating option for your home. If your boiler is reasonably efficient (80% or more), it would take some serious loss of heat via lagging to make those 2 values level out. Let’s be generous to you (as I too have been selective) and say that a gas system might work out a couple of hundred pounds cheaper a year. The point I am trying to make is, is that everyone’s demands and requirements are different. May I ask for your advice as I will soon have to make a decision on which way I go. Thankfully, you can still use a conventional gas heating system and then use LPG as a fuel source. You are probably too young to remember Harold Wilson’s technological revolution or even in the late 70s when we thought nuclear and storage heaters was the way the go. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2013/01/2702/5. But my husband seems to think these are inefficient and no better than the night storage we currently have. Will you need to replace it in 10 years? Heating bills are inevitable, but it pays to have a heating system that brings the most warmth for your money. Cost a fortune to run, as needed to be working on day electricity and hardly took the chill off the house (Well insulated, by the way) There is eco installed. Electric is convenient, reliable, and great to use. I am appalled at the picture you have chosen to use showing an LPG bulk tank. Anyone have any direct experience with whole house Infra Red Heating? I Have fitted electric showers for people who could not afford a boiler repair/replacement. You must consider that even at night, the best economy 7 tariffs are around 6.5p/kWh, whilst your average gas price is around 4p.

Try Brivis ducted heating heating, the gas ducted heating has a cheaper capital-to-cost installation and cheaper to run because these are now up to 6-star systems that can be zoned really well. You haven’t addressed Warm Air furnaces and who would be qualified on of those uplow furnaces if and when one was needed to be installed. Having read all the posts I agree with Barry and Barry F that if you take all the associated costs into account then electricity is a viable cost effective alternative to gas.

Never choose Extra Energy as your preferred supplier!